Noname Security, a cybersecurity startup that protects APIs, is in advanced talks with Akamai Technologies to sell its company for $500 million, according to a person accustomed to the deal.
No name was founded in 2020 by Oz Golan and Shay Levi and is based in Palo Alto, but has Israeli roots. The startup raised $220 million from enterprise capitalists and was most recently valued at $1 billion in December 2021, when it raised $135 million in a Series C round led by Georgiana and Lightspeed. While the sale price represents a significant discount from that valuation, the present deal could be for money, the person said. The agreement is not final and should change or not occur in any respect.
Other investors who’ve backed Noname include Insight Partners, ForgePoint, Cyberstarts, Next47 and The Syndicate Group.
While the potential transaction price is lower than half of Noname’s last private valuation, those that invested early will see a significant return on the sale. Meanwhile, the deal should enable later-stage investors, especially those that invested in the last round, to get the complete return on their invested capital, if not the profit they were hoping for in those heady days of 2021 when money was liquid and valuations were optimistic.
The deal values the corporate at about 15 times annual recurring revenue, the person said. Approximately 200 Noname employees are expected to join Akamai upon closing of the sale.
Akamai declined to comment. A spokesperson for Noname Security told TechCrunch: “As a matter of policy, we refrain from commenting on rumors and speculation.”
information reported in January that Noname was trying to raise one other round of financing at a much lower valuation. In February, Israeli news site Calcalist reported that Noname was present negotiations with several potential buyersincluding Akamai.
The valuations of many VC-backed firms that raised capital at the peak of the tech boom fell after the US Fed raised rates of interest. Many of them are currently looking for buyers and a latest round of financing at the identical time, which in the financial world is often known as a two-track process. Meanwhile, many later-stage VCs are looking for liquidity after greater than a 12 months of the IPO market being frozen. So the final mood in the enterprise industry is that unless solid IPOs return soon, it would be time for M&A bargain buys.
Credit : techcrunch.com
