FireEye, a provider of advanced threat protection solutions for enterprises, on Thursday announced that it has raised $50 million in venture funding, a massive amount that brings the total amount raised by the company to over $100 million.
The additional cash will help support international expansion and continued technology innovation, as well as help the company further scale operations to support it rapid growth, the Milpitas, California-based company said.
In addition to the funding news, the company announced the appointment of six new executives to its global leadership team, following the recent appointment of board chairman David DeWalt to the role of CEO.
DeWalt served as president, chief executive officer and director of McAfee from April 2007 until February 2011, after Intel’s surprise $7.68 billion acquisition of McAfee. DeWalt resigned from his role as President at McAfee in July 2011. DeWalt joined FireEye’s board in July 2012.
The new executives coming on board include Ken Gonzalez as vice president of corporate development; Manish Gupta as senior vice president of products; Tony Kolish as senior vice president of customer services; Sridhar Jayanthi as vice president, managing director, and head of India operations; Barbara Massa as vice president of human resources; and Dawn Song, as engineering fellow.
“FireEye has emerged as a clear leader in combatting the next generation of cyber attacks plaguing businesses and governments today,” Dave DeWalt, FireEye chairman and CEO said in a statement. “Businesses are being breached at an increasing pace as traditional signature-based defenses can’t hold up to the new breed of attacks. Our revolutionary signature-less detection engine and threat protection platform has seen incredible adoption in the past year and we are poised for further growth heading into 2013.”
The large cash injection appears to be stepping stone for the security firm which is planning to go public when the time is right, possibly as early as this year.
“We have not filed for public and we’re looking at this as an important time … to expand ourselves in a private company way that allows ourselves to do the things we need to do to sustain ourselves in a public company way,” DeWalt told VentureBeat.
The funding round came from new and existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, Juniper Networks, Silicon Valley Bank, and others.