Enterprise Weekly #477: Crowdstrike's Massive Outage, Big M&A Pipeline, and More
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Happy Friday!
Breaking news this morning - a faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike caused a global outage, forcing affected PCs and servers into a recovery boot loop – Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) – preventing proper startup. This calls attention to the risk of auto-updates and the importance of testing any change to production before release. The only fix now is to physically reboot and delete the specific driver.
At a higher level, what should have been a simple update has now inflicted massive ramifications downstream. As Crowdsrike is a ubiquitous and critical vendor, this situation is impacting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, hospitals, and many other businesses worldwide, highlighting the fragility of the entire global software supply chain and the need for customers to have a backup plan in case of vendor failure. For now, chaos still remains - follow live updates.
Also, this week, the M&A market heated up:
Datadog is considering acquiring GitLab to become the only full DevOps chain offering on the market. This acquisition would allow Datadog to shift left in the software development life cycle by owning areas like source code management and CI/CD. While GitLab would provide Datadog a comprehensive suite across developers, security, and ops teams, it's hard to say just yet if it would make the common complaint about Datadog costs worth it or if contracts will become even more expensive.
Google is in talks to acquire Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity software company, for around $23B, marking its largest acquisition ever. Wiz serves 40% of the Fortune 500 (including Amazon and Microsoft), which would help boost Google’s lagging (yet growing!) cloud business by adding more in depth cloud security coverage, a major concern for CISOs. While the deal will go through a heavy round of antitrust scrutiny, this is a big step up from Wiz’s last round in May where they raised $1B at a $12B valuation.
Lastly, if you’re a founder or pre-founder, effective leadership skills are a critical factor to the success of your company. For those wanting to level up, join our virtual Enterprise Masterclass next Wednesday, 7/24 with David Politis, Founder of BetterCloud on his 5 Battle-Tested Leadership Tactics of Highly Successful Founders.
📚 Read more news:
Business Insider: AI Startup Founders Discuss What It's Like To Be a Part of Nvidia's Sprawling Startup Empire
TechCrunch: Major Stripe Investor Sequoia Confirms $70B Valuation, Offers Its Investors a Payday
TechCrunch: You Could Learn a Lot From a CIO With a $17B IT Budget
📚 Read more (th)reads:
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Didero raises $7M led by First Round Capital
Future of Work • Seed • New York, NY
Co-Founders: Tom Petit (CEO), Lorenz Pallhuber & Tim Spencer
Lemonado raises $1.4M led by Node.vc
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Stockholm, Sweden
Making Space raises $2M led by Beta Boom
HR Tech • Pre-Seed • Los Angeles, CA
PairUp raises $2.8M led by HearstLab and Hillsven
Collaboration / Productivity • Venture • Chicago, IL
aiXplain raises $6.5M led by Wa’ed Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Jose, CA
Merly.ai raises $6.8M led by Greycroft and IBM Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Palo Alto, CA
Shaped.ai raises $8M led by Madrona Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Brooklyn, NY
Doinstruct raises $8.3M led by Creandum
Future of Work • Venture • Berlin, Germany
Culture AI raises $10M led by Mercia Ventures
Risk / Security • Series A • Manchester, UK
Xapien raises $10M led by YFM Equity Partners
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • London, UK
OnRamp raises $14.2M led by Javelin Venture Partners
Future of Work • Series A • Boston, MA
Momento raises $15M led by Bain Capital Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Seattle, WA
LegalFly raises $16.4M led by Notion Capital
Future of Work • Series A • London, UK
Exa raises $17M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Thoughtful AI raises $20M led by Drive Capital
Future of Work • Series A • Austin, TX
Arcee AI raises $24M led by Emergence Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Miami, FL
Leya raises $25M led by Redpoint Ventures
Future of Work • Series A • Stockholm, Sweden
Vectara raises $25M led by FPV Ventures and Race Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Palo Alto, CA
Freshpaint raises $30M led by Threshold
Risk / Security • Series B • San Francisco, CA
One Data raises $34.5M led by Molten Ventures, VSquared Ventures and HV Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • Passau, Germany
Thyme Care raises $55M led by Concord Health Partners, AlleyCorp and Others
HR Tech • Series C • Nashville, TN
DataCore raises $60M led by Vistara Growth
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Venture • Fort Lauderdale, FL
Huma raises $80M led by AstraZeneca, Hitachi Ventures and Others
Future of Work • Series D • New York, NY
Kandji raises $100M led by General Catalyst
Risk / Security • Series D • San Francisco, CA
Census acquires Fulcrum for an Undisclosed Amount
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA