Company Overview
About Upwind
Upwind is a San Francisco-based cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) — backed with $180 million in total funding including a $100 million Series A extension in December 2024 led by Craft Ventures with TCV and Alta Park Capital at a $900 million valuation, following an $80 million seed round — providing enterprise security teams with runtime-powered cloud security that combines cloud security posture management (CSPM), workload protection, vulnerability management, identity security, and container security by correlating live workload runtime activity with configuration and vulnerability context to eliminate the false positive noise that plagues legacy cloud security tools. Serving 200+ enterprise customers including Peloton, Bill, Fiverr, and Agoda with 4,000% year-over-year revenue growth, Upwind claims 90% false positive reduction versus traditional CNAPP tools. Founded in 2022 by Amiram Shachar and team from Spot.io (acquired by NetApp for $450 million).
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
Upwind's runtime-first CNAPP addresses the alert fatigue problem that makes cloud security tool outputs ignored by overloaded security teams: traditional CSPM tools (scanning cloud configurations against policy benchmarks) generate thousands of findings for misconfigurations that may theoretically be exploitable but aren't active threats given actual workload behavior — a security team scanning AWS configurations for a 200-service application might receive 50,000+ findings of which fewer than 100 represent actual attack paths given deployed workload context. Upwind's runtime intelligence layer (monitoring actual process execution, network connections, and system calls in running workloads) provides the behavior ground truth that prioritizes the findings where a vulnerability is in running code receiving external traffic versus dormant code that poses theoretical risk only — enabling security engineers to focus on the 200 actual risks rather than triaging 50,000 noise findings.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
In 2025, Upwind competes in the CNAPP, cloud workload protection, and cloud security posture management market with Wiz (CNAPP, $1B+ raised at $12B valuation), Orca Security (CNAPP, $550M raised), and Palo Alto Prisma Cloud (NASDAQ: PANW, $8B+ acquired Bridgecrew and Twistlock) for enterprise cloud security team CNAPP platform adoption. Craft Ventures' Series A leadership reflects enterprise infrastructure security conviction at the $900M valuation. The Spot.io founding team (Amiram Shachar built Spot.io's cloud cost optimization to $450M acquisition by NetApp) provides enterprise infrastructure sales and product-market fit expertise. The 2025 strategy focuses on growing the enterprise security platform consolidation (replacing multiple point tools with Upwind's unified CNAPP), building the AI threat detection layer for automated attack path analysis, and expanding the developer security workflow (shifting security context into the CI/CD pipeline for pre-production risk identification).
The Upwind Story
Founders
Recent Activity
View all →Material Event filed 2026-05-11
Quarterly Report filed 2026-05-11
Material Event filed 2026-04-29
Material Event filed 2026-04-27
Proxy Statement filed 2026-04-24
Material Event filed 2026-04-24
Material Event filed 2026-04-14
Company Timeline
Major milestones in Upwind's journey
Leadership Team
Meet the leaders behind Upwind
Amiram Shachar
Previously co-founded Spot.io, which was acquired by NetApp for $450 million in 2020. Serial entrepreneur with deep expertise in cloud infrastructure and security, leading Upwind's vision to transform cloud security with runtime intelligence.
Tal Zur
Technical visionary behind Upwind's runtime-powered CNAPP architecture. Previously served as a technical leader at Spot.io, bringing extensive experience in cloud-native technologies and security.
Liran Polak
Designs the core architecture of Upwind's platform, including the innovative runtime-first approach to cloud security. Former Spot.io architect with expertise in large-scale distributed systems.
Lavi Ferdman
Leads Upwind's growth strategy and go-to-market initiatives. Previously drove growth at Spot.io, establishing strong relationships with enterprise customers and partners.
Joshua Burgin
Oversees product strategy and development, ensuring Upwind's solutions meet evolving customer needs. Brings extensive experience in cloud security product management.
Max Stevens
Leads global sales organization, building relationships with enterprise customers and driving revenue growth. Experienced sales leader in the cybersecurity industry.
Chas Larios
Directs marketing strategy and brand positioning for Upwind. Focuses on thought leadership and demand generation in the competitive cloud security market.
Key Differentiators
Emerging Innovator
Upwind is an emerging player bringing innovative solutions to the Cybersecurity market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Estimated Visibility Trend (Beta)
Simulated 8-week rolling score
Based on estimated brand signals. Historical tracking coming soon.
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