Venafi

Deal Snapshot

Company: Venafi, Inc.

Website: venafi.com

Sector / Category: Machine identity management / certificate and key lifecycle security

Headquarters: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Founded: 2000

Investor: Frazier VC

Investment Vehicles: Fund I; Fund II

Deal Type: Secondary

Company Overview

Venafi is a cybersecurity company focused on machine identity management, helping enterprises secure machine-to-machine connections by orchestrating cryptographic keys and digital certificates (including SSL/TLS and SSH, plus other machine identity types).

Public Funding / Capital Events

Jun 30, 2015 — $39M financing led by QuestMark Partners, with Intel Capital and Silver Lake Waterman named as new investors.

Nov 29, 2018 — $100M financing led by TCV, with participation from existing investors QuestMark Partners and NextEquity Partners.

Dec 31, 2020 — Thoma Bravo strategic growth investment completed (valuation of ~$1.15B widely cited in deal coverage).

Oct 1, 2024 — Acquired by CyberArk (transaction completed) for approximately $1.54B (cash + shares).

Investment Summary

Frazier VC invested in Venafi through secondary purchases across multiple years, with Fund I purchasing secondaries in 2016–2017 and Fund II purchasing secondaries in 2018–2019. These transactions provided exposure to a category-leading machine identity security platform ahead of the company’s eventual acquisition by CyberArk, which closed on October 1, 2024.

Why We Invested

We invest in durable, mission-critical software with strong workflow embed and defensibility. Venafi sat at the center of enterprise security operations by managing and protecting machine identities at scale, a category with increasing urgency as cloud adoption and automation expand the number of non-human identities inside modern environments. Over time, deep integrations and certificate/key lifecycle ownership can create meaningful switching costs and barriers to entry.

Other Investors

TCV

QuestMark Partners

Intel Capital

Silver Lake Waterman

NextEquity Partners

Thoma Bravo