Salt Security, a cybersecurity startup founded by Israeli Defense Forces alumni, closes $30M Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital

We wrote about Salt Security in the middle of this year after the cybersecurity startup founded by Israeli Defense Forces alumni closed a $20 million Series A funding led by Tenaya Capital. The events of the past year have made digital platforms a primary source of revenue for many companies, and while the rise in API usage has empowered businesses to build applications faster, it also creates security holes.

Today, the Palo Alto-based Salt Security announced that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Tenaya Capital, S Capital VC, and Y Combinator. This latest funding round, which follows closely on the heels of a $20 million Series A raise in June, cements Salt Security as the leader in the API security market. In conjunction with the funding, Salt also announced that Carl Eschenbach, Partner, Sequoia will join Tom Banahan, Partner, Tenaya Capital, and Haim Sadger, Founding Partner, S Capital, on its board of directors.

The additional capital infusion will enable the company to accelerate its business in 2021 more rapidly, with a focus on investing in product development, sales and marketing, and customer acquisition. To date, Salt has raised a total of $60 million in equity financing.

Salt was founded in 2016 by alumni of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and serial entrepreneur executives Michael Nicosia and Roey Eliyahu. The startup protects the APIs that are the core of every SaaS, web, mobile, microservices, and IoT application. Its API Protection Platform is the industry’s first patented solution to prevent the next generation of API attacks, using behavioral protection. Deployed in minutes, the AI-powered solution automatically and continuously discovers and learns the granular behavior of a company’s APIs and requires no configuration or customization to help ensure API protection.

“APIs have become a fundamental unit of software. Salt Security enables organizations to discover APIs, prevent real-time attacks, and facilitate remediation, so customers can continue to operate and innovate in an increasingly digitized world,” said Carl Eschenbach, Partner, Sequoia. “In the emerging API security space, Salt Security has shown its leadership by being first to market and offering the most advanced solution—ultimately, making it the type of outlier company that Sequoia loves to partner with.”

“Raising both Series A and B, growing our customer base 200%, and building unmatched technical capabilities—all during this tumultuous year—gives us a formidable lead in the market we created and defined,” said Salt Security co-founder and CEO Roey Eliyahu. “Having someone of Carl’s caliber and experience guiding us will simply accelerate our success in the API security market.”

“In our rapidly shifting world of digital transformation, API-first strategies are a priority,” said Michael Montoya, CISO, Equinix. “The security landscape is shifting to APIs, and Salt Security is on the cutting edge of enterprise security strategy. As our API economy gains momentum, we look forward to working with Salt Security to secure our digital transformation.”

Salt was named a 2020 Cool Vendor in API Strategy by Gartner, Inc.