Tech

Salesforce invests in security software provider Tanium at $9 billion valuation

Key Points
  • Tanium said it has now raised $900 million total, suggesting that Salesforce is investing about $100 million into the security company.
  • Salesforce said that it's partnering with Tanium to protect employees in the "the new all-digital, work-from-anywhere world."
  • Salesforce's prior investments include Zoom, DocuSign, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.

Salesforce's venture arm, which has emerged as among the most active corporate venture groups in technology, is investing in Tanium in a funding round that values the security software vendor at $9 billion.

The investment, announced on Thursday, is part of a strategic tie-up between the two companies that will bring Tanium's security tools into Salesforce's massive customer base. Tanium's technology gives IT teams visibility into all those devices that employees are now using from home, an issue that's becoming more important by the day as the coronavirus pandemic drags on and companies keep their staffers out of the office.

"This puts IT departments under incredible strain, with more complex workloads and an increasing volume of service requests — BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) issues, critical software patches — flooding in as employees adjust to working remotely," Salesforce said in a blog post. The company said that it's working with Tanium to "develop an employee service solution for the new all-digital, work-from-anywhere world."

Tanium said in an emailed statement that the new investment brings the total amount its raised to $900 million, suggesting a new investment by Salesforce of about $100 million. While the company didn't disclose the size of the round, it had previously raised a total of about $800 million at the time of its last fundraising in 2018, which valued Tanium at $6.5 billion.

Founded in 2007 by father and son David and Orion Hindawi, Tanium gained traction as companies moved from having to protect traditional data centers and the computers and laptops in their offices to a world of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices that are spread all over the place. Tanium's technology allows IT departments to quickly spot irregularities in the network, no matter where they occur.

Salesforce said that it's partnering with Tanium to develop "a help desk that gives employees a one-stop shop to self-serve, submit, track and resolve service requests or incidents," as well as tools that help IT managers view and manage employee incidents and the ability to use Salesforce's technology "to further automate common tasks."

Salesforce Ventures has taken significant stakes in other subscription software businesses in recent years, reserving some of its biggest investments for companies that are going public. For example, Salesforce invested in the IPOs of Zoom, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey. Previous bets include Twilio and DocuSign. 

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