Okta acquiring cybersecurity startup Spera for over $100 million
Okta acquiring cybersecurity startup Spera for over $100 million
The American identity and access management giant is making its first purchase in Israel. Spera, which raised $10 million in Seed funding earlier this year, has developed a solution to provide end-to-end identity attack surface management, risk reduction and identity threat prevention, detection, and response
American identity and access management company Okta is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity company Spera for approximately $100-130 million, Calcalist has learned. The final purchase amount is contingent on meeting milestones and payments to the company's employees. Spera has raised only $10 million to date in a Seed funding round announced in March of this year.
The round was led by YL Ventures, with participation from prominent angel investors and serial entrepreneurs from leading enterprises including Google, Palo Alto Networks, Akamai, Zendesk, Zscaler, and others.
This marks the first acquisition of an Israeli company by Okta, which currently has a market cap of about $14 billion. Both firms operate in the identity and access management market, a prominent sector in the security landscape, particularly amid recent identity theft hacks, including at MGM. Okta and Spera were not unavailable for comment.
Spera, founded by cybersecurity veterans Dor Fledel (CEO) and Ariel Kadyshevitch (CTO), has developed a solution to provide end-to-end identity attack surface management, risk reduction and identity threat prevention, detection, and response. It employs 25 people who are expected to form the base for Okta's R&D center in Israel.
Spera’s platform creates a real-time, continuously updated, risk and context-based inventory of identities and access across cloud and on-prem environments. This inventory is then rapidly analyzed, assessed, and normalized, providing security teams with granular insights for remediating and preventing identity-driven attacks.
Okta, founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, has around 6,000 employees and recorded revenues of about $1.8 billion in the last year.
"Spera's excellent team, led by Dor and Ariel, did a commendable job identifying a significant gap in protection against identity-based attacks, in a field that has become one of the most sought-after sectors in the cyber world in the last year," said Yoav Leitersdorf, managing partner at YL Ventures, which led Spera's seed round. "Spera has shown rapid growth and garnered great interest among customers. Therefore, it is not surprising that Okta, the world's leading company in the field of security and identity management, acted quickly to realize the potential and chose Spera to establish its first development center in Israel. The acquisition of Spera by a huge international company in a challenging time in the Israeli climate once again emphasizes the resilience and strength of the Israeli cyber industry, which serves as a breeding ground for leading entrepreneurs and attractive solutions at the global level. Thanks to a team with exceptional abilities, customer-oriented service, and groundbreaking technology, we have no doubt that now, with Spera combining forces with Okta, the identity revolution in the entire market will accelerate."
