Snyk raises $300 million at a $4.7 billion valuation as employees cash in and the security company beefs up

Snyk, a developer of application security technology, is now worth $4.7 billion after a new fundraising and secondary sale that totaled $300 million.

In all, investors have poured $470 million into the company after this new investment, which was led by Accel and Tiger Global, with participation from a host of existing investors including Addition, Boldstart Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coatue, GV, Salesforce Ventures, and funds managed by Blackrock.

New investors joining Accel and Tiger on the cap table included Alkeon, Atlassian Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, Sands Capital Ventures and Temasek.

Withe big valuation and very very late stage investors on the cap table, it’s likely that this will be Snyk’s last round before a public offering. And the markets for enterprise software companies have been white hot recently, so the reception for Snyk should be positive.

Snyk’s value and sky high valuation comes from its ability to offer an application security platform that the company said is designed to provide security visibility and remediation for every component of modern applications — including their code, open source libraries, container infrastructure and infrastructure as code.

Investors seem to believe the company’s claims and so do a clutch of key new hires including Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer Jeff Yoshimura, a former executive at Elastic; CIO Erica Geil, who previously worked at Groupon; and Vice President, Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) Sales, Shaun McLagan, who previously worked for EMC.

After the funding, Michael Scarpelli, the Chief Financial Officer of the enterprise software darling and last year’s blockbuster public offering, Snowflake, and Ping Li, a longtime enterprise software investor and a Partner at Accel.

“We first met the Snyk team at the start of their journey, as early investors,” said Li, in a statement. “Throughout our partnership, we’ve witnessed first-hand Snyk’s unshakeable dedication to developer and security teams and their original vision become a reality. We’re looking forward to supporting the successes of Snyk in 2021 and beyond.”

Snyk’s financing comes as application vulnerabilities are becoming an increasingly popular attack vector for hackers. Roughly 43% of data breaches have been linked back to flaws in applications, according to the company.

Meanwhile, a dearth of developers focused on security means that automation has to do more heavy lifting. Snyk says it provides that through automated remediation and the integration of security features directly into developer workflows. The company also offers real-time answers to coders’ security questions.

So far, that suite of services has meant more than 27 million developers around the world are using Snyk tools and the company also provides a marketplace for security coders to pitch their own tools on the Snyk platform.

“We believe Snyk’s developer-first approach to security is a fantastic tool for developers and organizations today,” said Chris Hecht, Head of Corporate Development, Atlassian. “Snyk has already showcased some amazing integrations with our tools, and we’re now thrilled to extend our partnership with them through an Atlassian Ventures investment.”