Meteoric rise: Triangle cybersecurity startup JupiterOne reaches ‘unicorn’ status with $70M cash injection

MORRISVILLE – Less than two years after launching, cyber asset management startup JupiterOne has hit “unicorn” status.

This Thursday, the Morrisville-based startup confirmed it closed on a $70 million Series C funding round. That brings its total raised to more than $119 million since 2020, and an estimated valuation to over $1 billion, otherwise known as a “unicorn” in business circles.

Tribe Capital led the round with participation from new investors, including Intel Capital and Alpha Square Group. Existing investors Sapphire, Bain Capital Ventures, Cisco Investments, and Splunk Ventures also contributed.

“This is a huge deal,” its founder and CEO Erkang Zheng told WRAL TechWire. “Two years ago, we were a tiny startup with less than 20 people. Now we’re valued at over $1 billion.”

It’s even more impressive considering the timing. After a pandemic boom that saw sky-high valuations and VC dollars flood the market, this year has been full of news about valuation cuts and a slowdown in funding.

“The fact that we’re able to close this amount of funding at this valuation in today’s market is very different,” Zheng said. “Even given current market dynamics, we still project to have very strong growth.”

As part of this round, Sri Pangulur, partner at Tribe Capital, will join the JupiterOne’s board of directors and Sunil Kurkure, managing director at Intel Capital, will join as a board observer.

“Know more, fear less”

With the tagline “know more, fear less,” JupiterOne’s cloud-native platform is billed as “DNA sequencing at a digital and cyber level.” As businesses constantly evolve and add new cyber assets (CSP accounts, source control systems, systems, endpoint agents, vulnerability scanners), the platform helps companies manage their IT assets by centralizing its data into a single hub to analyze in a dashboard. Users can visualize, review and update asset relationships on the platform.

In just a short time span, Zheng said the company has sustained consecutive triple-digit growth year over year, though he declined to disclose exact revenue numbers. It has also quadrupled its team to 150 employees.

It now joins a steady and growing list of homegrown North Carolina companies valued over $1 billion in recent years. Among them: Epic Games AvidXchange, Prometheus Group, Pendo and nCino, among others. Last October, it was featured as part of WRAL TechWire’s “Tomorrow’s Unicorns” series, which spotlighted homegrown startups tipped to hit the $1-billion valuation mark.

Part of JupiterOne’s meteoric rise, Zheng said, is the surge in ransomware cyberattacks last year. Governments worldwide saw a 1,885% increase in ransomware attacks in 2021, according to the 2022 Cyber Threat Report recently released by SonicWall, an internet cybersecurity company. Ransomware also rose 104% in North America, just under the 105% average increase worldwide, according to the report.

Coupled with the side effects of the global pandemic and the acceleration of digital transformation, it created prime conditions for JupiterOne’s growth, he said. In recent months, it has partnered with Cisco and Splunk, both investors, to extend the reach of its cloud-native technologies.

“The timing was sort of impeccable,” he said.

Zheng now plans to use the latest injection of funds to scale the company even further. He’s already looking for new office space after outgrowing its current headquarters in Aerial Center Parkway in less than a year. He also wants to hire another 50 employees by year end, extend partnerships and increase product development.

“What we’ve seen so far in terms of growth is just scratching the surface. There’s so much that we could be doing to continue to accelerate. We’re frankly still at the very beginning of it.”

JupiterOne’s CEO and founder Erkang Zheng.

A homegrown success story

Born in Beijing, Zheng moved to California when he was in high school. Later, he enrolled at UCLA but ended up forgoing plans to follow his then girlfriend, now wife, to study at NC State. After graduating, he had extensive stints at IBM and Fidelity Investments, heading up their cybersecurity programs.

Then in 2017, he got the call to work for Indiana-based healthcare software startup called LifeOmic. Zheng served as its chief information security officer, initially building the platform as a prototype to support LifeOmic’s security and compliance needs.

Eventually, he created a subsidiary company, incubated it there, and then spun it out when the time was right in 2020. JupiterOne was born.

Despite its record-setting pace, Zheng maintains the company is still sticking with it central mission that security is a basic right. It offers a free-tier plan alongside products aimed at enterprises building out their cyber security programs. It also launched its first 20222 State of Cyber Assets Report, as well as a free eBook, offering “roadmaps” to cybersecurity programs.

Ultimately, Zheng said he’s in it for the long haul and doesn’t plan to exit anytime soon. However, taking the company public could be on the horizon.

“Three to five years down the road, it could very much be a possibility,” he said, “but it’s not something I want to worry about right now. We still want to take it one day at a time.”