Palo Alto Networks forms $20m venture fund for budding security vendors
Palo Alto Networks has announced the formation of a $20 million security venture fund that will be used to fund security applications for its Next-Generation Security Platform.
The fund, a joint effort between Palo Alto Networks, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital, aims to evaluate innovative security applications for potential co-investment.
The fund will be used to provide early stage capital investments for seed, early and growth-stage security companies that take a cloud-based application approach.
Those companies will then be able to accelerate their routes to market by building on Palo Alto's platform and its application framework.
Chad Kinzelberg, senior VP of Business and Corporate Development at Palo Alto Networks, says the new fund is about demonstrating its reputation for developing innovative technologies and expanding its security partner ecosystem.
"It represents an essential part of our mission to help organizations prevent cyber breaches by inspiring and accelerating a groundswell of security innovation in a model that can be easily accessed and deployed by customer organizations," Kinzelberg adds.
According to Palo Alto Networks, the provision of capital towards entrepreneurs and security vendors will help build functionality for customers, rather than developing the underlying infrastructure and data stores necessary to make that functionality work.
The company also says that customers will have more choice of cloud-delivered security applications from different providers as their security needs change.
Asheem Chandna, a partner at Greylock partnersw, says this is a 'milestone' for the security industry, entrepreneurs, developers and customers.
Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, adds that it will be easier to reach the market.
"Many early stage security start-ups have excellent ideas, but struggle to reach customers. By tapping into this fund and application framework, companies can get their technologies to market faster and into the hands of Palo Alto Networks customers," Goetz concludes.
