How Crowdstrike's $3bn valuation stacks up against its peers

The endpoint protection vendor has joined the cyberscurity big league following a $200m funding round - but how does its fresh $3bn valuation compare with next-gen and legacy rivals?

Red hot cybersecurity start-up Crowdstrike has just put a $3bn valuation on its head after raising $200m in a Series E financing round.

One of a gaggle of next-generation endpoint protection specialists causing pain to traditional anti-virus players, Crowdstrike claims its revenues and headcount have doubled in the last year and that it now serves 16 per cent of the Fortune 1000.

The latest funding round was led by General Atlantic, Accell and IVP, with participation from March Capital and CapitalG.

Although next-gen outfits such as Cylance and SentinelOne failed to make headway in Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant for endpoint protection platforms, Crowdstrike moved further right and further north within the Visionaries segment, and in today's press bumpf stressed it is now the most geographically advanced of the Visionaries.

Crowdstrike, which earlier this month launched a $1m warranty, claims the latest round propels its valuation to $3bn, thrusting it into the big league when it comes to investor sentiment.

That compares to the $5bn rival Tanium is now reportedly worth after TPG raised its stake in it last month with a $175 million investment, while Carbon Black - which underwent its IPO in April - is currently worth $2.03bn.

Possibly the most illustrious of Crowdstrike's contemporaries, Cylance - which is making more noise again following a quiet 2017 - was valued at $1bn as far back as 2016.

Still, Crowdstrike's valuation is dwarfed by many of the more established cybersecurity outfits it is seeking to overthrow.

Symantec currently has a market cap of $13.15bn. On the network security side, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point and Fortinet are valued at $19.82bn, $15.72bn and $10.7bn, respectively.

The figure is, however, almost on a par with FireEye, which is currently valued at $3.25bn.

"We are building the business to support massive sales volume and this round of funding will accelerate the growth of our operations, continued innovation, technology development, and geographic expansion," said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.