Contrast Security Closes $150m Series E Funding Led By Liberty Strategic Capital To Expand Leadership In Code Security
Unicorn valuation and funding led by former Secretary Mnuchin sets the stage for global expansion in helping enterprise security and software development teams protect against advanced threats, reduce software risk and cloud software vulnerabilities
LOS ALTOS, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021 — Contrast Security, the leader in next-gen code security tools, today announced that it has closed $150M in a Series E round of funding at a greater than billion-dollar valuation. The oversubscribed round was led by Liberty Strategic Capital, founded by former Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, together with 100% participation from existing Contrast investors Warburg Pincus, Battery Ventures, General Catalyst, Microsoft’s M-12 Fund, AXA Venture Partners and Acero Capital.
This investment allows Contrast to meet the growing demand for the world’s only platform for code security. It will also enable the company to further gain market share with accelerated global expansion plans, following growth in EMEA and rapid customer adoption in APAC, and provide the company with additional flexibility to execute on strategic opportunities and acquisitions.
Many businesses turned to digital transformation, and the development of applications, to sustain and propel business growth and efficiency. As organizations ramped their development efforts, 84% of developers said they have been releasing code faster than ever before. Studies also show code is being shipped with serious and/or critical vulnerabilities. This led to major security breaches like SolarWinds and other successful cyber attacks driving The White House to issue an executive order placing strict new standards to improve the security of software.
“The global economy is running on software applications. We are now seeing business leaders, including Microsoft and Google, commit publicly to spend billions of dollars in order to decrease cybersecurity risks in today’s fast paced application economy,” said Alan Naumann, CEO at Contrast Security. “Supported by President Biden’s recent executive order, our customers, governments, and many of the world's largest companies are investing in prevention and resilience against software cyber attacks.”
“Contrast not only enables development teams to keep pace but provides a platform solution for security and operations teams alike,” said Naumann. “The new investment from Liberty Strategic Capital and all of our existing investors further validates the universal need for improved code security. It is an honor to have them support Contrast, especially given Secretary Mnuchin’s experience with a global approach to reduce cyber threats. I also am pleased to welcome Secretary Mnuchin to the Contrast Board of Directors.”
Secretary Mnuchin, Founder and Managing Partner of Liberty Strategic Capital, said: “Businesses are increasingly dependent on applications to support their critical operations, creating strong demand for solutions like Contrast’s that help developers ensure, in real-time, that the code underlying these applications is secure from evolving threats from hackers and other malign actors. We believe the team at Contrast has developed a market leading solution, and we are excited to partner with them as they continue to innovate in the application security space.”
Today, Contrast gets secure code moving for its customer base that consists of tens of thousands of developers at some of the largest brand-name companies in the world, including BMW, DocuSign, AXA, Zurich, SOMPO Japan, and American Red Cross, as well as numerous other leading global Fortune 500 enterprises. Contrast also partners with AWS, IBM, Google, Microsoft, and VMware to bring security into cloud applications.
Most companies today are using first generation tools and manual tests to try and secure their code. As a result, software is being shipped with critical vulnerabilities, and it is time to stop. The executive order and the rapid adoption of DevSecOps transformation has increased the demand for Contrast’s approach to code security across healthcare, financial services, government, and technology sectors. Outcomes provided by the Contrast platform including reducing time to market, significantly decreasing cyber risk, and increased developer efficiency, all result in providing customers with clear competitive advantages.
About Contrast Security:
Contrast Security secures the code that the world economy relies on. It is the industry’s most modern and comprehensive Application Security Platform, removing security roadblock inefficiencies and empowering enterprises to write and release secure application code faster. Embedding code analysis and attack prevention directly into software with instrumentation, the Contrast platform automatically detects vulnerabilities while developers write code, eliminates false positives, and provides context-specific how-to-fix guidance for easy and fast vulnerability remediation. Doing so enables application and development teams to collaborate more effectively and to innovate faster while accelerating digital transformation initiatives. This is why a growing number of the world’s largest private and public sector organizations rely on Contrast to secure their applications in development and extend protection to cloud and on-premise applications in production.
