NBA Superstar Steph Curry Joins $50M Funding Round for Israeli Cybersecurity Startup

 

Edited by: TJVNews.com

American basketball icon Stephen Curry, known as Steph Curry, has teamed up with Israeli cybersecurity startup UpWind Security in a $50 million funding round, as was reported on Wednesday at the Israeli business website, NoCamels.com. The company specializes in real-time cloud infrastructure security and has already established partnerships with dozens of Fortune 500 firms.

The funding was raised through Sheva, a venture capital fund founded by former Israeli basketball player Omri Casspi, and Penny Jar, a VC fund backed by Curry and a group of investors, according to the NoCamels.com report.  UpWind Security, headquartered in Tel Aviv, has made significant strides since its inception 11 months ago, amassing a total of $80 million in funding and achieving a valuation of $300 million.

UpWind Security’s primary focus is safeguarding cloud infrastructure from threats in real time. The NoCamels.com report said that its innovative platform detects and responds to potential security breaches, making it an attractive proposition for large enterprises. With offices in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, the company currently boasts 70 employees. The newly acquired funds will be instrumental in the ambitious goal of doubling the workforce within a year, according to UpWind’s CEO, Amiram Shachar.

This isn’t the first instance of an NBA player venturing into the Israeli startup scene. In the previous year, basketball sensation Giannis Antetokounmpo invested an undisclosed sum in Antidote Health, a Tel Aviv-based company offering affordable online healthcare solutions, as was noted in the NoCamels.com report.

UpWind Security was founded by Amiram Shachar, who had previously established Spot.io, a cloud service and management optimization firm, the report said. In 2020, Spot.io was acquired by American data storage giant NetApp for a substantial $450 million.

Shachar emphasized the depth of their research and development efforts over the past year, collaborating closely with Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and security engineers to comprehend the most pressing security challenges and priorities, as was indicated in the NoCamels.com report. Through this process, the company identified significant hurdles facing security teams and recognized that addressing these challenges effectively required real-time solutions.

“In the past year, we worked with hundreds of CISOs and security engineers, to get a mile-deep understanding of their biggest security challenges and priorities,” said Shachar, as was reported by NoCamels.com. “Through this process, we discovered major hurdles facing security teams and understood that the right, most complete way to solve them is at runtime. Upwind is shifting the paradigm of cloud security and redefining CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) with runtime insights.”

Steph Curry’s involvement in this funding round not only underscores the growing interest of NBA players in the tech and startup world but also highlights the significance of cybersecurity in today’s digital landscape. UpWind Security’s innovative approach to real-time cloud security has garnered attention from both investors and major corporations, positioning the company as a key player in the ever-evolving cybersecurity sector