Upwind, the runtime-first cloud security provider, has raised $250 million in Series B funding, bringing its total funding to $430 million. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Picture Capital. Existing investors include Greylock, Cyberstarts, Leaders Fund, Craft Ventures, TCV, Alta Park, Cerca Partners, Swish Ventures and Penny Jar Capital.
“Cloud infrastructure has changed faster than the security models designed to protect it,” said Amiram Shachar, CEO and co-founder at Upwind. “The next era of cloud security requires a fundamentally different approach, centered in realtime signals. That’s actually the only way to protect the cloud in the new era of AI. We built Upwind for where the cloud is going, not where it has been. This funding round is a small milestone in our journey, but it marks a big day, and it reflects a growing recognition and validates what customers and the market see.”
Cloud security remains a massive and still maturing market, and within that, Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) has emerged as a core category for securing modern cloud environments. According to Frost & Sullivan, the global CNAPP market is projected to reach $18.79 billion by 2029, growing at about 28% per year. Gartner also predicts that by 2029, 40% of enterprises that successfully implement zero trust in cloud service provider environments will rely on CNAPP solutions for advanced visibility and control. As cloud and AI adoption accelerate, cloud-native architectures have outgrown approaches based on posture snapshots and static signals, which drive heavy alert volume without clearly showing what is truly exploitable.
“Cloud security is already one of the largest and fastest growing segments in cybersecurity, and Upwind stood out to us as the right team with the right product in the right time, building for where the market is going. Their modern, runtime-first approach, focus on signal over noise, and battle-tested founding team have translated into a company and product that are trusted and loved by security, engineering and platform (DevOps) teams, and used as a true platform. We’re very proud to partner with Upwind as they build the runtime-first cloud security platform for the next generation of enterprises,” said Elliott Robinson, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
“Upwind is incredibly impressive. We are honored to invest in and partner with them, as their pace of innovation is relentless. If you have seen them before, I strongly suggest you meet with them again. If you haven’t seen them yet, you owe it to your organization and architecture to see what they’ve built,” said Rakesh Loonkar, managing partner at Picture Capital.
Upwind has a presence in the U.S., U.K. and Israel – with momentum building in Australia, India, Singapore and Japan. Today, Upwind secures millions of workloads for global enterprises, including Waste Management, Siemens, Carvana, Roku, ClickUp, Wix, Nubank, Agoda, Peloton, Fiverr and BILL,
“Cloud security has been missing real context for too long,” said Jerich Beason, CISO at Waste Management. “Upwind changes that by showing us what is actually happening at runtime and why it matters. The agent built on top of the platform lets us interrogate our own data in real time, which saves us time and money while making our cloud security operations more efficient and effective. They are building the future of cloud security, and we are glad we got on board early.”
“Upwind’s rapid growth reflects the industry’s urgent need for a new approach to cloud security, one built for real-time challenges. We’ve partnered with Amiram and the Upwind team since the company’s inception and have seen firsthand how they’ve set the standard for category leadership through real innovation and a platform designed for modern cloud environments. We’re incredibly proud to continue partnering with Upwind as they continue to lead the category forward,” said Saam Motamedi, general partner at Greylock.
“From the beginning, the team recognized that securing modern, AI-driven cloud environments would require a runtime-centric approach, a view that has since become central to enterprise cloud security strategies. This is our third major investment in Upwind, reflecting our conviction in a customer-obsessed team that is shaping the future of cloud security in the AI era,” said Michael Robinson, partner and head of investment team at Craft Ventures.
“We’ve believed in Amiram and the Upwind team since the Spot.io days, and our conviction has only grown as the company has executed. Each time we’ve had the opportunity to invest further, we’ve doubled down. The shift away from static security approaches is inevitable in an AI-powered, real-time cloud security world, and Upwind is purpose built for how modern cloud environments actually operate. This is the team setting the standard for cloud security in the largest market in the cybersecurity industry,” said Gideon Hayden, co-founder and managing partner at Leaders Fund.
“As cloud security shifts towards runtime at an accelerating pace, we believe Upwind has emerged as the clear leader in this new paradigm with the first and only runtime-native cloud security platform. Upwind’s runtime-centric CNAPP has now been battle-tested by leading enterprises with some of the most complex and demanding cloud environments,” said Carson Fullard, managing director at Alta Park.