SentinelOne has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with a goal of raising $100 million. It’s the latest cybersecurity company in the channel to initiate an IPO.

SentinelOne filed its registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO. It hasn’t yet determined the number of shares and the price range for the proposed offering.

SentinelOne’s stock would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “S.”

Tomer Weingarten is SentinelOne‘s CEO and founder.

“The world is full of criminals, state actors and other hostile agents who seek to exfiltrate and exploit data to disrupt our way of life,” he said. “Our mission is to keep the world running by protecting and securing the core pillars of modern infrastructure: data and the systems that store, process and share information. This is an endless mission as attackers evolve rapidly in their quest to disrupt operations, breach data, turn profit and inflict damage.”

Last November, SentinelOne said it raised $267 million in Series F funding. Since February 2020, the company’s valuation has tripled, exceeding $3 billion.

SentinelOne protects enterprises from ransomware and other malware. The late-stage startup helps organizations secure their data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Delivering ROI to Investors

Eric Parizo is principal analyst of Omdia’s cybersecurity operations intelligence service. He said the SentinelOne IPO is driven by the desire to deliver maximum possible ROI to its investors.

Omdia’s Eric Parizo

“As one of the few remaining independent pure-play endpoint detection and response (EDR) vendors, SentinelOne has already taken in nearly $700 million in venture capital funding,” he said. “That means to pay off its investors and ideally deliver them a profit, it would need a multibillion-dollar acquisition, or an IPO.”

SentinelOne’s biggest challenge going forward could be joining the fray in extended detection and response (XDR), Parizo said. That’s a broader and more well-heeled competitive landscape.

Top-tier vendors like Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Trend Micro are making XDR a centerpiece of their solution strategy.

SentinelOne must differentiate based on specialization and independence, Parizo said.

“This is not an impossible task, but it is a difficult one indeed,” he said.

S&P Global’s Fernando Montenegro

Fernando Montenegro is principal analyst of information security at S&P Global.

“There is significant awareness of cybersecurity as a key strategic issue for most organizations,” he said. “This was already a factor before the pandemic and now even more so, as the increased dependence on technology makes it even more important for organizations to secure their systems. With this dynamic in mind, interest in security vendors grows significantly, which ties to strategic transactions such as M&A and IPOs as we’ve seen with SentinelOne.”

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