Versa Networks Gets $120 Million to Harness Growing SASE Market

Versa Networks has secured $120 million in additional financing, setting the company on its planned IPO path. The provider of single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) platforms received the capital as part of a pre-IPO round. It was led by BlackRock, while Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) also participated in the funding.

This new round of funding will enable Versa to expand go-to-market strategies and accelerate on its SASE innovations.

Versa’s Kelly Ahuja

Kelly Ahuja is CEO of Versa Networks.

“As the leader in SASE, the fastest growing security and networking category, and executing on SASE services for years, Versa is the only solution proven to deliver the industry’s leading and differentiated architecture for high performance and security,” Ahuja said. “This funding will allow us to expand our go-to-market and accelerate new innovations that will further expand the market opportunity for us as a company.”

According to Gartner, the SASE market is expected to grow to $15 billion in 2025. Four in five enterprises will have a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access using a SASE architecture. Gartner has identified Versa SASE as having the most SASE components out of all 56 vendors the organization evaluated.

Innovation

Matt Singer is managing director of BlackRock.

“We are excited to support the Versa team and its vision to drive innovation across cloud, data and network security,” Singer said. “SASE represents an important and fast-growing market that is at the core of organizations’ digital transformation and Versa, with its unified, single-code based architecture, is well positioned to deliver mission critical value to its customers.”

The company plans to bring several innovations to the market because of the funding. One such technology is secure predictive networking, which will use artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies will make networks self-healing and secure by automatically troubleshooting and fixing the prioritized issues. Versa Networks will also receive suggestions from the AI/ML engine on issues that might happen in the future.

Versa Networks Kumar Mehta

Kumar Mehta is co-founder and chief development officer at Versa Networks.

“Enterprises are waking up to the power of more efficient and integrated security and networking infrastructure for the expanding attack surface,” Mehta said. “Support from marquee name investors like BlackRock is a testament to not only our leading innovative technology, but to our ethos as a platform company. We look forward to working with BlackRock and all our investors as Versa enters this important pre-IPO phase of the business.”

Channel Partners

The cybersecurity market continues to expand. When it comes to SASE, everything from cloud/SaaS to zero trust is driving growth over the next five years.

“The market is happening now and to accelerate our growth even more we must expand our GTM and scale the company,” Ahuja said. “As a 100% channel company, partners are critical to our success and key to our GTM. This financing will enable us to expand our channel focus through building a larger team, enhancing our channel program and expanding our partner ecosystem.”