Cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf Networks, which has an office in Waterloo and deep ties to the region, today announced a US$200-million Series E funding raise and a plan to move its global headquarters from Sunnyvale, Calif. to Eden Prairie, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis.
The funding will accelerate the company’s overall growth plans, including adding 100 jobs to the 200 that already exist at its Waterloo office.
This latest investment round, led by Viking Global Investors, with additional participation from DTCP and existing investors, makes Arctic Wolf the first and only cloud-native managed detection and response vendor to reach “unicorn” status, a valuation of over US$1 billion.
Earlier this year, the fast-growing company – which manages network cybersecurity on behalf of customers – announced a US$60-million round of funding.
Arctic Wolf CEO Brian NeSmith said “this new round of funding will allow us to rapidly scale our business so that we can keep even more organizations safe from cyberattacks.”
The company was co-founded in 2012 by NeSmith and Kim Tremblay, a University of Waterloo computer science graduate and veteran of the Waterloo Region tech sector. She retired earlier this year.
As for the headquarters move, the company said its office in Minnesota has been “at the centre of the company’s corporate growth strategy, with the team in Eden Prairie growing to over 200 employees.”
Arctic Wolf said it plans to make significant investments in its new headquarters by the end of 2021, with the addition of more than 150 jobs and the construction of the company’s third security operations centre.
“The Minneapolis area has a rich and growing history of world-class technology companies, that combined with access to a highly-skilled workforce, central location, and a favorable business environment, make it the ideal place for Arctic Wolf to call home,” said Nick Schneider, Chief Revenue Officer.
Company spokesman Dan Deeth said the latest funding round will also accelerate growth at the company’s Waterloo operation, which focuses on R&D and security operations. Arctic Wolf employs more than 200 people in Waterloo now, and plans to create an additional 100 jobs here by the end of 2021.
Overall, the company employs 550 employees at three locations — Waterloo, Eden Prairie, and an additional security operations centre in Provo, Utah.
Deeth said Arctic Wolf did look at moving its headquarters to Waterloo but opted to stay in the U.S. for a variety of reasons.
“We’re already headquartered in the U.S. and the bulk of our customer base is in the U.S., so it just made the most sense to choose Eden Prairie,” he said.
“Our office in Eden Prairie has been home to our sales and marketing team, which as we highlight in the press release, has helped our business achieve some pretty significant growth,” Deeth said. “There are actually a lot of similarities between Waterloo and Eden Prairie. It has world-class talent, a central location to do business from, and provides a quality of life that employees appreciate.”
