Tanium may not be a household name, at least not yet. But the fast-growing cybersecurity company, which moved its headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Kirkland, Wash. last year, is well on its way. And now it has a fresh round of capital to help fuel the next phase of growth.
Tanium announced Thursday that it sold $150 million in common stock to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Canada’s largest pension plan and an active investor in late-stage technology companies.
“Tanium is transforming the way organizations of all sizes protect their mission critical networks against increasing cyber threats,” said Olivia Steedman, senior managing director of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in a press release. Steedman added that Tanium has great growth potential as it looks to “transform IT management.”
Tanium was co-founded in 2007 in the San Francisco Bay Area by the father-and-son team of David and Orion Hindawi. Last month, the 1,500-person company moved its headquarters from Emeryville, Calif. to Kirkland, Wash., securing a small office space at Carillon Point.
At the time, Orion Hindawi told GeekWire that “San Francisco is not the city it was 20 years ago.” The move — part of a larger trend of companies departing Silicon Valley amid the pandemic — was welcomed by tech industry leaders in the Seattle area. Hindawi told GeekWire last month that he intends to grow Tanium’s presence in the Seattle area.
“I actually don’t think there’s any stronger pool of engineering talent globally than there is here,” Hindawi said. “So, yeah, absolutely I expect that we’re going to be hiring a good number of engineers and relatively quickly.”
Tanium, which in 2019 posted revenue of more than $430 million, immediately became one of the biggest privately-held technology companies in the Seattle area, at least by revenue and valuation. It debuted at #7 on the GeekWire 200, a list of the most important privately-held Pacific Northwest tech companies.
Customers who use Tanium’s cloud-based endpoint security offerings include AutoNation, GoDaddy and Whirlpool. It also struck a deal last summer with Google Cloud to help companies detect cybersecurity threats.
Tanium sees an opportunity to bring its products to middle market companies, which may not have the sophistication or talent to deal with an ever-increasing level of sophisticated cyber attacks.
It was unclear whether Tanium’s valuation changed as a result of the new investment by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. We’ve reached out to the company for comment, and we’ll update this post as we learn more. At the time of the company’s $150 million financing round last October, Tanium was valued at more than $9 billion.
With the new funding, it has raised more than $1 billion. Backers of the company include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price Associates and Andreessen Horowitz.
Orion Hindawi plans to speak at a Washington Technology Industry Association virtual event next Thursday. Details of the event, moderated by Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain, are here.
Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/cybersecurity-giant-tanium-scores-150-million-following-hq-move-seattle-area/?web_view=true
