The area of IT protection is quickly becoming very active both in terms of business needed and as an investment opportunity. The new development has triggered a major round of funding of $125 million from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) Asset Management to Illumio. The Sunnyvale, California security startup offers data center and cloud security services within an enterprise network.
Illumio has roughly 100 customers among them salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), games company King, Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Its portfolio also incorporates four of the seven largest SaaS businesses. With the new funding, the company says it will enhance expansion of its three business areas, which include business development, R&D, and customer support. The company has so far raised $267 million to date and some of those who participated in the ‘series D’ round of funding are General Catalyst, DCVC, 8VC and investors Andreessen Horowitz.
The company has a strong balance sheet
In 2015, Illumio had another $100 million in fundraising, which earned it the title of a unicorn startup. Besides, the company also reached an estimated $1 billion valuation. The past fundraising has put it in a unique position with a strong balance sheet.
Speaking on a call with Fortune, Illumio’s CEO and co-founder, Andrew Rubin said, “I’ve always had the philosophy that you should fundraise when you don’t need it.”
But there are more competitors in the market
Illumio has taken a unique approach of trying to substitute a software brain for tasks, which were previously done by humans. The idea behind Illumio is that of segmenting workloads and managing them. The reason the company is shifting to machines and AI is primarily because of the rampant growth in the computing business.
That said, Illumio will have to battle VMWare and Cisco, which have also established a huge interest in similar services. However, Illumio has a unique selling point; it has been an agnostic provider in the mix for a while.
In the meantime, J.P. Morgan’s stock was trading at $83.91 witnessing an increase of $0.95 or 1.15%.