Upwind raises $400M after walking away from Datadog acquisition offer
The cloud security startup raised a Series C at a $3.8B valuation, instead of selling itself for the same price.
San Francisco-based AI startup Upwind has secured a $400 million Series C round at a $3.8 billion valuation, led by venture capital firm Bessemer Ventures. This comes nine months after Upwind closed a $250 million financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation. Upwind's valuation nearly fell apart after a bid from publicly traded observability tool provider Datadog, who did not offer a premium over the $3.8 billion valuation set by investors.
Upwind, founded by Amiram Shachar, has experienced rapid growth amid increasing AI-driven cybersecurity threats. The company projects to end the year with $90 million in annualized recurring revenue, leading VCs and Datadog to value the startup at over 40 times its forecast ARR, significantly higher than recent comparable cybersecurity startups.
Upwind remains open to acquisition interest, having been founded following the sale of its previous company Spot.io to NetApp for $450 million.
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