From social platforms to enterprise solutions, software is big business, and it’s only getting bigger. To boost productivity, developers have turned to open-source software and made their products’ code available for the public to modify.
This approach opens the door to new ideas and continual improvements, but it also lets in security risks. With no way to thoroughly check new code for vulnerabilities, developers and enterprises leave themselves open to breaches.
Boston- and London-based startup Snyk pioneered an end-to-end security tool that helps developers find, fix and prevent security vulnerabilities in open source code. Users can even test their code and search Snyk’s database of vulnerabilities right on the platform, which integrates with software development services like Github, Bitbucket and GitLab.
And now Snyk is set to grow even more, following this week’s announcement of a $70 million funding round led by Accel, Boldstart Ventures and GV.
Snyk already counts names like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and ASOS among its customers, but there’s room to grow. The company recently expanded its focus to include containers, or software units that neatly package code for use in different computing environments.
This latest funding will help Snyk build out that area of the business, and the stage is set for significant growth.
While 95 percent of enterprises use open source, only 30 percent of computing environments currently use containers. However, that number is expected to shoot up in coming years, according to technology research firm Gartner. By 2022, Gartner approximates that more than 75 percent of businesses across the world will use them.
Meanwhile, Snyk’s valuation shot up since its last funding round in 2018. That $22 million investment — supplied by Snyk’s three most recent investors and Heavybit — was made at a $100 million valuation. Now, the company sits at somewhere around $500 million, a source told TechCrunch.
In many ways, the jump is unsurprising. Snyk achieved 400 percent revenue growth and increased its customer base by 200 percent this past year. What’s more, over 90 percent of those customers came from inbound inquiries, the company said in a statement.
Snyk last month appointed its first investor, Peter McKay, as CEO.
