Cato Networks Raises $359 Million at a Valuation of More Than $4.8 Billion

Cato Networks, the SASE leader, today announced its Series G funding round, raising $359 million led by new investors including Vitruvian Partners and ION Crossover Partners as well as existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Acrew Capital, and Adams Street Partners. The investment brings Cato’s valuation to more than $4.8 billion and total funding to more than $1 billion, a significant milestone in the company’s mission to redefine enterprise security for the digital and AI era.  The investment builds on Cato’s proven track record of leadership: from the creation of SASE with the convergence of security and networking in 2015, through the recognition of Cato’s vision by the global analyst community when the term “SASE” became defined in 2019, and a decade of innovation that continuously stretches the boundaries of SASE and AI security. The Cato Networks funding round will support accelerated growth, product development, and global expansion. “With more than 3,500 enterprise customers, consistent hyper-growth, and repetitive and scalable wins against all leading competitors, Cato is a proven and mature business to invest in,” said Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO at Cato Networks. “Our true SASE platform and decade of AI innovation differentiates Cato from legacy vendors that favor a portfolio of point solutions. Customers and partners understand the difference and select Cato to benefit from proven security, operational efficiency, and business agility.” “Cato has spent the past decade building and optimizing the next generation of cybersecurity, and we are proud to partner with them as they continue to raise the bar for AI-driven security and networking,” said Vitruvian Partners. “The company’s visionary leadership, best-in-class growth and retention rates, and relentless focus on innovation and customer experience are what led us to invest in Cato. We look forward to supporting Cato’s next phase of growth as they expand their market reach and transform how enterprises connect and secure their digital businesses and use of AI.”  A Platform Built for Today’s Digital Business Legacy infrastructure is increasingly viewed as a liability—expensive to maintain, slow to adapt, and dangerously fragmented. Today’s IT and security leaders face mounting complexity, limited staff, and overwhelming pressure to secure everywhere and enable anything. Cato was built to answer that mandate.  Cato delivers enterprise-grade security and networking as a single, cloud-native platform. Unlike a legacy patchwork of firewalls, routers, cloud proxies, and point solutions, the Cato SASE Cloud Platform is architected from the ground up to be self-maintaining and autonomously scalable for enterprises.  A Strategic Inflection Point: AI-Powered SASE Platform With the additional funds, Cato will continue to challenge the industry’s perception of SASE and AI security, expand to additional use cases, and increase the total addressable market (TAM) of the company. To do that, Cato will:

• Advance AI Security: Expand capabilities that enable enterprises to adopt AI across the business in a secure and controlled manner.
• Accelerate Platform Innovation: Increase investment in research and development (R&D) to expand capabilities across DEM, LAN Security, IoT/OT Security, SD-WAN, SSE, XDR, and ZTNA—all natively converged in a single, cloud-native platform.

• Expand Global Reach: Grow Cato’s partner ecosystem and customer-facing teams to meet surging global demand.

Cato’s approach to AI goes beyond automation. Cato empowers IT and security professionals—CIOs, CISOs, network architects, and security analysts—to move faster, make smarter decisions, and focus on initiatives that move the business forward. “With Cato, AI handles the noise so our customers can focus on strategy,” Kramer added. “We’re embedding AI into the DNA of infrastructure itself. Routine tasks are automated. Response workflows are accelerated. Risk management decisions are guided by actionable live data, not outdated reports. This isn’t about tools—it’s about a new operating model that is efficient, resilient, and optimized.” Supporting the True Cause of IT and Security Cato’s business momentum is driven by a growing mandate across IT and security leadership: simplify infrastructure, unify policy, and embed security and AI into the digital business. Whereas legacy vendors offer bundles of point solutions, Cato delivers a single, cloud-native platform that scales with the enterprise and dynamically adapts to constant change. With this latest Cato Networks funding round, the company is positioned to lead the next wave of innovation in network security. Cato’s trajectory in the SASE market reflects more than just product market fit. It signals leadership in a category undergoing rapid expansion. Gartner® projects the SASE market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%, reaching $28.5 billion by 2028. By comparison, Cato recently reported 46% year-over-year (YoY) growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2024, significantly outpacing the SASE market and reinforcing its position as the SASE leader.