SentinelOne's new funding will help it 'displace incumbent antivirus vendors'

CEO Tomer Weingarten tells CRN that record $120m investment will be spent on expansion and marketing

SentinelOne's latest investment round will be used to disrupt the current cybersecurity landscape, according to CEO Tomer Weingarten.

The end-point security vendor has raised $120m (£94.5m) in its latest Series D funding round, which was led by American venture capital firm Insight Partners, and brings its total raised to over $230m.

CEO Tomer Weingarten told CRN that the money would be used for expansion and sales and marketing.

"We're going to use it to grow massively and continue the path of displacing the incumbent antivirus vendors all across the board," he stated.

"[We will also use it to] bring machine learning and artificial intelligence-based device protection to the edges of the network, really covering the datacentre, laptops, desktops and cloud workloads in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

"We have a new product line, SentinelOne Ranger, that covers IoT devices, so we're trying to protect every device out there in this edge-to-cloud model that we feel is where the world is really headed."

The vendor's last funding round earned it $70m in January 2017, and Weingarten said that the reason for the $120m investment this time around is due to SentinelOne's "explosive" growth in the past year, as well as the evolution of its products.

"The efficacy and the autonomous nature of the product really allow us to scale very well and to keep a very high margin," he said.

"On the one hand we are building a very sustainable business and on the other hand, growth has been massive as well, with us supporting some of the biggest companies in the world. Obviously, our trajectory is something that people want to fund to help us grow."

Teddie Wardi, managing director at Insight Partners, stated: "End-point security is at a fascinating point of maturity, highlighting a massive market opportunity for SentinelOne's technology and team.

"Attack methods grow more advanced by the day and customers demand innovative, autonomous technology to stay one step ahead.

"We recognise SentinelOne's strong leadership team and vision to be unique in the market, as evidenced through the company's explosive growth and highly differentiated business model from its peer cybersecurity companies."