Israeli Startup Cato Networks Hits $1 Billion Valuation

Israeli Startup Cato Networks Hits $1 Billion Valuation

Cato Networks hit the milestone mark by bringing in $130 million in new investments.

Cato Networks, an Israeli startup and provider of the world’s first Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform, is now valued at $1billion in another big success for Startup Nation. Cato achieved this mark by bringing in $130 million in a new round of funding.

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation of a new investor, Coatue, and existing investors, Greylock, Aspect Ventures / Acrew Capital, Singtel Innov8, and Shlomo Kramer.

A valuation is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for a share of a company which is privately held. So if someone agreed to pay $10 million for just 1% of Cato Networks then the company is worth $1 billion.

But this is based on what investors believe a company will be worth in the future. A company which is already publically traded has a total value based on its stock price. And every company has a real bottom line value based on its assets and revenues minus any debt.

Founded in 2015 Cato Networks SASE platform converges SD-WAN and network security into a global, cloud-native service. Cato optimizes and secures applications access for all users and locations.

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So what does all of that mean?

SASE, Cato explains, is an architectural transformation of enterprise networking and security that enables IT to provide a “holistic, agile and adaptable service to the digital business.” The company says that its SASE is unique because it offers transformational impact across multiple IT domains.

The idea here is to simplify something that is usually complicated and due to its complicated nature it takes a long time to get done. Well time is money, as they say, so a service which can speed up complex computer processes is a benefit to any company.

In order to provide this service Cato explains that a true SASE solution must be built on a cloud-native and cloud-based architecture. As a cloud based service it can be distributed globally across many Points of Presence (PoPs); and support all edges (locations, users, clouds, and applications).

With SASE, enterprises can reduce the time to develop new products, deliver them to the market, and respond to changes in business conditions or the competitive landscape.

You can watch this video for an explanation:
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“SASE is the hottest area in IT, and this funding round further attests to Cato’s leadership of the SASE market,” says Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato Networks. “Only the Cato Cloud was built from the ground up as a converged and cloud-based global SASE service.”

“SASE will transform the multi-billion-dollar markets for enterprise networking and security, and we believe Cato will lead this transformation. Cato’s architecture is purposely built to enable IT to support current and future business requirements such as the need to dynamically support secure and optimized work from anywhere”, says Yoni Cheifetz, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Read more about: Cato Networks, SASE, Shlomo Kramer, startup nation