Akeyless Reimagines Cloud Security, Raises $14M Series A
Innovative cryptography allows firm to offer world’s first SaaS-based vault for secrets management and zero-trust access
NEW YORK AND TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – APRIL 28, 2021
Akeyless, the secrets management company, today announced it has secured a $14 million Series A round of financing led by Team8 and with participation from Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).
Akeyless experienced tremendous growth in 2020, being recognized by Gartner as a key player in the realm of workload identities and trusted by enterprises in multiple sectors, including web-scale companies, adtech, internet technology, gaming, consumer goods, and pharmaceuticals, with partners and customers such as Outbrain, Venafi, Progress/Chef and Cimpress. The firm will use the funding to accelerate product development and growth of the world’s first SaaS-based unified vault, built for secrets management and zero-trust access.
As the transformation to hybrid and multi-cloud continues to evolve and expand, secrets – such as passwords, credentials, certificates, and keys – are heavily used between workloads as well as by privileged users, across DevOps and IT security platforms and teams. What was previously solved by plain key management system (KMS) or privileged access management (PAM) solutions has become much more challenging given the scale and ephemeral nature of the new cloud-native distributed infrastructure, which requires a completely new approach to managing privileged access for machines and humans.
Akeyless provides an innovative Secrets Orchestration Platform that successfully unifies several related use cases via a single solution. It offers secrets management, zero-trust access (PAM 2.0) and data protection (encryption, signing and KMS), based on Akeyless DFC™, the firm’s unique virtual HSM FIPS-certified technology.
The platform leverages Distributed Fragments Cryptography™ (DFC), its proprietary, patent-pending IP, to provide a SaaS-based root-of-trust in a non-trusted distributed environment. This innovative zero-knowledge KMS performs cryptographic operations using fragments of encryption keys without ever combining them, ensuring that Akeyless or any third party cannot access a customer’s secrets and/or keys. As a result, this provides protection in relation to the CLOUD Act as well as any supply chain attacks.
“Having the backing of both Team8 and JVP, the ideal venture partners given their track record in powering the success of innovative cyber security startups, is testimony to the disruption Akeyless brings to the market,” said Oded Hareven, Akeyless Co-Founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to have their invaluable support as we bring our innovative secrets management platform into the new era of hybrid and multi-cloud. Our highly scalable enterprise-grade service is designed to serve an infinite number of customers, secrets and transactions, built on top of multi-region and multi-cloud operations.”
“Akeyless is uniquely positioned to take on the secrets management sector – through a platform that not only modernizes the practice but makes it more accessible and effective for businesses,” said Iftach Ian Amit, Chief Information Security Officer, Cimpress. “To top it off, the scalability and cost saving it brings make transitioning from any existing solution a no-brainer.”
“Secrets management is a top priority for enterprises,” said Liran Grinberg, Managing Partner, Team8 Capital. “But cloud providers’ offerings are limited, and Akeyless’s competitors’ solutions are expensive, incomplete and hard to maintain. Akeyless’s robust secrets management as-a-service doesn’t require an enterprise to install and maintain it, making it frictionless and affordable. As companies migrate to the cloud, the combination of secrets management and zero trust is critical – Akeyless applies advanced cryptography to make its SaaS offering resilient to attacks.”
“We are happy to welcome Team8, joining us in building the next category leader in the secrets management domain,’’ said Yoav Tzruya, General Partner, JVP. “We’ve seen Akeyless demonstrate its value, providing a ubiquitous, zero-trust, secrets management as-a-service to large-scale customers over the last year. We believe that in joining forces with Team8 and the founders, we will be able to build Akeyless to its full potential as a dominant solution.”
Akeyless was founded by serial entrepreneurs Shai Onn, President; Oded Hareven, CEO; and Refael Angel, CTO. Onn brings 30+ years’ experience as Founder and Chairman of FireGlass, which was sold to Symantec for $250 million; Israel Country Manager for CA Technologies; and EVP at Ness Technologies. Hareven, a veteran of the Israeli Defence Forces Cybersecurity elite unit, has held multiple product and project management positions, including as a Director of Product Management at Moovit, which was acquired by Intel for $900 million. Angel, a patent pending cryptographer, was previously a senior engineer at Intuit.
The company has assembled a team of cyber and technology experts, including Michael Christenson, the former President and COO of New Relic, who was recently appointed to the Akeyless board.
About Akeyless
Founded in 2018, Akeyless is the first SaaS-based vault for secrets management and zero-trust access, offering bullet-proof cloud security. The Akeyless vault allows organizations to manage and protect all types of secrets, across all environments, seamlessly via a single, comprehensive platform. It is trusted by enterprises in multiple sectors including pharma, internet, gaming and adtech. In 2020, Akeyless was recognised by Gartner for its innovative technology in the realm of workload identity and access management technologies. For more information, please visit https://www.akeyless.io
About Team8 Capital
Team8 Capital is the investment arm of Team8 Group, focused on early-stage companies seeking seed and Series A and B funding rounds. We have a track record in backing future leaders pioneering new-generation solutions to meet critical industry challenges. Team8 Capital offers a unique combination of deep domain expertise and decades of company-building and investing experience and is ready to provide our portfolio companies with a springboard to success.
About Team8
Team8 is a venture group that builds and backs technology companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data, fintech, enterprise software, and infrastructure. We rethink venture to provide entrepreneurs with an unfair advantage, accelerating success in an increasingly competitive landscape. Our deep understanding of the challenges faced by our industry and extensive network of global leaders uniquely positions us as the venture partner of choice. Team8’s leadership team includes unicorn founders, bank and fintech CEOs, and former leaders of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite military technology and intelligence agency. For further information, please visit http://www.team8.vc
About JVP
JVP was founded in 1993 by Dr. Erel Margalit, is an internationally renowned VC fund. JVP has raised $1.5 billion and has been listed by Preqin as one of the top-ten consistently performing VC firms worldwide and has built over 150 companies. JVP has been instrumental in building some of the world’s largest companies to emerge, facilitating numerous IPOs on NASDAQ, including CyberArk Software (NASDAQ: CYBR, $4.7 billion market. cap.), QLIK Technologies (NASDAQ: QLIK, then $4 billion market. cap.) as well as many large industry sales. Over the past decade JVP has spearheaded the creation of international Centers of Excellence, including the AI and Media center in Jerusalem, the Cyber center in Beer Sheva, the Foodtech and Agritech center in the Galilee, the International Cyber and FinTech center in NYC, in partnership with NYC/EDC and the leading universities of the city. Recently JVP has decided to open a newly emerging center in the UAE that will be a new chapter for Israeli technologies to engage with the region. For more information on JVP, visit jvpvc.com.
