Israeli startup Zesty (formerly Cloudvisor), which develops real-time cloud optimization technologies, announced a $6.6 million Seed funding round. The investment was led by S Capital, with participation from the previous investor - M-Fund Club managed by Lior Elkan, a senior VC executive.
Save almost 50% on cloud infrastructure
Over the last decade, the cloud computing and IaaS market have experienced serious growth, with many enterprises utilizing cloud computing capabilities for R&D and manufacturing purposes. Most of the cloud services optimization market use solutions that are based on data that is transferred between 48-72 hours late, and only then does it provide recommendation and remediation for the patiently waiting client. Once the wait is over, the later stages of the process demand infrastructure engineers to manually implement the provided insight.
Zesty, in comparison to those companies, developed an automated platform that accesses data in real-time, monitors expenses and budget, as well as cloud environment vulnerabilities to provide comprehensive insight into finding windows to take advantage of cloud environment.
Zesty claims that beyond the significant savings in cloud expenses (according to the company - can make it up to 45% of costs), their customers receive an automated system for cloud optimization tasks- that way enterprises can save by switching the work of multiple engineers with one comprehensive platform.
Zesty was founded in 2018 by CEO Maxim Melamedov and CTO Alexey Baikov, with the two first meeting while working for Freedvisor. Zesty reported that while many startups, especially early-stage, are struggling to secure investments during COVID, Melamedov notes that the pandemic and the following crisis have rather accelerated cloud migration among enterprises, making the financing round more even more relevant. Zesty aim to focus the funds towards expanding marketing efforts and recruiting talent for the team.
Lightspin emerges from stealth with Seed and CloudSec for Kubernetes & microservices
Israeli startup Lightspin, which developed cloud-based security for Kubernetes and microservices, emerges from stealth mode with a $4 million Seed funding round. The investment was led by Ibex Investors, which comes just a few days after the VC rolled out a new $100 million fund, and Angel investors.
Cloud technologies continue to evolve at a staggering pace, catapulting innovation and business capabilities. However, these advances also bring a host of new challenges for cloud security teams facing a shortage of resources and expertise, along with overwhelming volumes of alerts that lack effective prioritization.
"An increasing reliance on cloud computing is inevitably leading to an expanding threat landscape. Having worked with CISOs and cloud owners from numerous global companies, we know that existing solutions do not address the full scope of security challenges for dynamic, modern cloud and Kubernetes environments," said Vladi Sandler, CEO and Co-Founder at Lightspin.
As the cloud environment grows more complex and dynamic, additional teams are needed to update and maintain system capabilities. Such conditions often lead to decentralized visibility and control of the cloud infrastructure, leaving organizations prone to exploitation by malicious actors through ever-increasing configuration vulnerabilities.
By utilizing a prospective attacker's approach, Lightspin proactively and continuously maps all cloud assets in a matter of minutes to detect potential critical threats and avoid configuration vulnerabilities, providing cloud and security teams with a contextual view of cloud security stature at any given moment.
"Based on our experience in attacking cloud infrastructure, we understand how attackers think, which is our superpower. We are proud to have secured this funding, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to launch out of stealth to further our work in helping organizations significantly reduce risk by identifying and prioritizing critical security gaps for remediation before they fall into the wrong hands,” added Vladi Sandler CEO and co-founder.
Founded by former white hat hackers, Lightspin's technology uses graph-based tools and algorithms to provide rapid, in-depth visualization of the cloud stack, analyze potential attack paths, and detect the root causes – the most critical vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.
"We see great added value in Lightspin's approach to addressing these critical, yet often-overlooked aspects of cloud security, particularly as the future of innovation becomes increasingly dependent on cloud capabilities, and threat actors simultaneously become more sophisticated," said Nicole Priel, Vice President at Ibex Investors. "We are excited to partner with Lightspin on its journey to help organizations defend themselves against the precarious threats that are often missed or not managed by cloud providers and other solutions."
Lightspin was founded by Vladi Sandler and CTO Uri Azarzar. Lightspin tells that its platform is already in use at leading market Fortune 500 players, in addition to 20 global pilots active as we speak.
