Cloud security startup Upwind has raised $250M in a Series B round, valuing the company at $1.5B just four years after launch.
Despite its rapid rise and an enterprise customer list that includes Siemens, Peloton, Roku, Wix, Nextdoor, and Nubank, the path to scale was far from straightforward.
Co-founder and CEO Amiram Shachar says the early years were defined by doubt, with the team frequently questioning whether their approach would resonate in a crowded security market or prove too difficult to deploy inside complex enterprise environments.
Rethinking cloud security from the inside out
Upwind is built around a runtime-based model that focuses on threats and vulnerabilities in active services, using real-time internal signals such as network traffic and API activity to determine what truly matters. Rather than scanning cloud environments from the outside, the platform prioritizes context from within running workloads.
Shachar’s perspective was shaped by his experience after selling Spot.io to NetApp in 2020. Working closely with security teams, he observed that traditional tools often produced noisy alerts without understanding how systems were actually used in production. That gap between DevOps teams and security workflows became the foundation for Upwind’s inside-out approach.
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Selling a new model in a crowded market
Adoption did not come easily. Security teams are often hesitant to deploy new internal tooling, and many organizations rely on agentless solutions because they are faster to roll out. Convincing customers that runtime visibility was essential took time, particularly as teams were already overwhelmed by fragmented security stacks.
Upwind responded by building a broad, integrated platform rather than a narrow point solution, aiming to consolidate cloud security workflows into a single system that could operate at enterprise scale.
Rapid growth and global expansion
The strategy has gained traction. Since raising a $100M Series A in 2024, Upwind reports 900% year-over-year revenue growth and a doubling of its customer base. The company has expanded beyond its core markets in the U.S., U.K., and Israel into Australia, India, Singapore, and Japan, targeting large, data-intensive organizations with complex cloud environments.
Fueling the next phase of development
The Series B round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Picture Capital. The new capital will support continued product development and global go-to-market efforts.
Upwind plans to deepen its AI-driven security capabilities and move closer to developers, helping teams identify and prevent risky configurations before they reach production. As cloud infrastructure becomes more ephemeral and interconnected, the company is betting that runtime visibility will be essential for securing the next generation of applications.
