Palo Alto Networks Raises $27 Million in Series C Financing
Lehman Brothers Venture Partners Joins Existing Investors to Fuel Rapid Growth for Next-Generation Firewall Pioneer
SUNNYVALE, Calif., August 18, 2008–Palo Alto Networks today announced that it has secured $27 million in Series C financing. Lehman Brothers Venture Partners led the oversubscribed round, with participation from existing investors Globespan Capital Partners, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. The new funds will be used to support the company’s rapid growth by further expanding sales, marketing and customer service initiatives.
The financing round follows a year of tremendous momentum, in which Palo Alto delivered its award-winning PA-4000 next-generation firewall to market and redefined how enterprises think about infrastructure security. The company has amassed an impressive and growing list of customers, and has also been awarded numerous industry accolades, including the most recent Best of Interop Grand Prize.
"The Palo Alto Networks team has already shown they have what it takes to shake up the market and deliver the next-generation firewall that enterprise customers require for their most critical element of the security infrastructure," said Thomas E. Banahan, Managing Director, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. "We are excited to be a part of the company and look forward to building on their impressive success to date."
"We are extremely excited to have Lehman Brothers Venture Partners join our team of distinguished investors," said Lane Bess, CEO, Palo Alto Networks. "With this new financing we look forward to scaling the company’s operations and offering our innovative security solutions to a rapidly expanding number of enterprise customers worldwide."
ABOUT PALO ALTO NETWORKS
Palo Alto Networks™ enables visibility and policy control of applications running on enterprise networks. Based on innovative App-ID™ application classification technology, the Palo Alto Networks family of next-generation firewalls accurately identifies applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or even SSL encryption – at 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Enterprises can now set and enforce application usage policies to meet compliance requirements, improve threat mitigation and lower operational costs For more information, visit http://www.paloaltonetworks.com.About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs", Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube and Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.
Contact:
Jim Goetz
SEQUOIA CAPITAL
goetz@sequoiacap.com
