With an ever-increasing attack surface, it’s a constant struggle for companies of all sizes to continue to protect their critical assets from bad actors and cyber hackers. That’s why Minneapolis-based cybersecurity startup NetSPI is on a mission to protect enterprises with a comprehensive suite of offensive security solutions and stay ahead of the bad guys.
Today, NetSPI announced it has secured $410 million in growth funding led by the global investment firm KKR, which is also an existing investor in the company. The latest investment, which is a confirmation of investors’ confidence in the company’s direction, further validates NetSPI’s significant outperformance since KKR’s initial investment in May 2021.
This investment follows NetSPI’s most recent $90 million funding round from KKR and cybersecurity specialist investor Ten Eleven Ventures and comes from KKR’s Technology Growth strategy, which is dedicated to growth equity investment opportunities in leading high-growth technology companies in North America, Europe, and Israel.
NetSPI will use the new cash infusion will be used to support its continued technology innovation, talent acquisition, and global expansion, as well as recapitalize NetSPI’s first institutional investor Sunstone Partners.
Founded in 2001, NetSPI leverages its ‘technology powered, human delivered’ penetration testing approach to improving the security of organizations globally, including the top financial institutions, largest cloud providers, leading healthcare organizations, and many of the Fortune 500.
NetSPI’s comprehensive suite of offensive security solutions, which include Attack Surface Management, Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), and Breach and Attack Simulation, help companies to uncover critical security gaps, minimize risk, and reduce the likelihood of a security incident.
“We are excited to double down on our investment in NetSPI to help build a differentiated leader in offensive cyber security,” said Jake Heller, Partner and Head of KKR’s Technology Growth team in the Americas. “We have been very impressed by the performance of the company and the exceptional execution by Aaron and his team over the past 18 months. We believe this is just the beginning of what we can accomplish together.”
Over the past five years, the company has grown its revenue five-fold, exceeding 50 percent organic revenue growth in 2021 and 61 percent growth in 2022 to date.
“We’re both grateful and proud of the industry disruption we drove during our partnership with Sunstone Partners,” said Aaron Shilts, CEO at NetSPI. “As we look forward to this next chapter, NetSPI will continue to challenge the status quo in offensive security. With KKR’s support, we are well positioned to amplify our success building the best teams, developing new technologies, and delivering excellence, so that the world’s most prominent organizations can innovate with confidence.”
