Netskope CEO On The Cloud And AI Push To ‘Modernize Everything,’ 2025 IPO Plans

With its business now surpassing $500 million in annual recurring revenue and massive growth expected ahead from increasing cloud and GenAI adoption, the cybersecurity vendor is aiming to go public in the second half of the year, Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri tells CRN in an interview.

With Netskope’s business now surpassing $500 million in annual recurring revenue — and major growth expectations ahead tied to surging cloud and GenAI adoption — the cybersecurity vendor remains on track for an initial public offering during the second half of 2025, according to Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri.

“Assuming the market conditions are right for that, we do plan [to go public] late this year,” Beri said in an interview with CRN.

Netskope’s goal of pursuing an IPO in 2025 was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

In June 2024, the company announced reaching the $500 million ARR milestone and then, a month later, was ranked in the “leaders” quadrant in Gartner’s influential Magic Quadrant for SASE (secure access service edge) for the first time. Netskope had already been ranked as a “leader” by Gartner in security service edge since the inception of the Magic Quadrant for the SSE category in 2022.

The recognition comes as Netskope continues to find strong demand from customers for its security and data protection capabilities, which can help substantially to “modernize everything” that customers will need to take full advantage of GenAI, SaaS and the cloud, according to Beri.

In effect, the cloud and AI push is “ripping apart the entire architecture of companies’ networks and the billions they’ve spent on security,” he said. “That’s why I think a lot of people have realized, ‘We’ve got to [modernize].’”

In terms of Netskope’s IPO aspirations, the company — which Beri co-founded in 2012 — competes heavily with several publicly traded vendors. Those notably include the two other Gartner Magic Quadrant “leaders” in SSE, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler.

The boost to market awareness from going public is the main driver for Netskope eyeing an IPO, Beri told CRN.

“The big reason why we would go public is not for capital — we don't need that. It’s for awareness,” he said. “We do feel like the lift in awareness we would get from being a public company would be an accelerant for us.”

Netskope was last valued at $7.5 billion in 2021 in connection with its $300 million Series H funding round, which has placed it among the highest-valued cybersecurity unicorns.

IPOs, M&A Heating Up In Cybersecurity

The year has already seen one cybersecurity IPO completed, with identity security vendor SailPoint returning to publicly traded status in February — becoming just the second IPO in the cybersecurity industry since 2021.

Another cybersecurity IPO candidate, Wiz, has opted to go the M&A route instead with the announcement that Google plans to acquire the company for $32 billion, which would be the highest-valued acquisition of a standalone security vendor to date. (Beri spoke with CRN prior to the Google-Wiz announcement this week.)

For Netskope, other top priorities in 2025 include doubling down on its investments into channel partners, especially around partner enablement, Beri said. Netskope generates nearly all of its revenue through partners and, when it comes to expanding awareness in the market, “partners are our main focus and investment point,” he said.

What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with Beri.

What are the big themes of 2025 for Netskope?

Clearly, the North Star for [all] security and network folks right now is to tackle the cloud and AI world, and modernize everything — their network, their security. If you're a partner, modernize your offerings, your services, your training, your ability to offer managed services, and who you select as your go-to vendors that you're going to invest in — so that you are ready for the cloud and AI era. For [Netskope], the reality is, that's what we're built for. And so the North Star for partners and customers is right in our wheelhouse.

We’re investing heavily in R&D and in the platform. I have over 100 data scientists and over 160 machine-learning models. Half my company [spending] is R&D, and we release multiple products in our platform every year.

And then [we’re investing] in our partners — 99-plus percent of my business is driven through partners. My model since the beginning is, partners, partners, partners. We're very clear on what our model is. So as we go not just to the enterprise, but also to the midmarket, we have really focused on enablement. We’re not just training [partners], but we’re also enabling them with the right pricing and packaging — and enabling them to train others, and to offer managed services. So our other focus is just constant enablement of all the partners.

You mentioned modernization is a key theme in the market — are you seeing increased urgency around that among partners and customers because of the AI advancements?

It's really three things. Today, over 70 percent of enterprises’ traffic is destined to cloud and AI. When I started Netskope [it was a fraction of that]. This fundamentally means that the language of the internet is totally different now. It's all cloud and AI, and the language those speak is APIs. And so what's happened is, all these people's equipment is sitting there, and [it only understands] web and URLs and block and allow. But the Internet has changed.

I sit in boardrooms, and [board members] tell me, “All I can do is allow ChatGPT or block it.” And so when I say “modernize” — I mean, CIOs don't want to say “no” to AI and cloud. They have to say “yes” — but they need to modernize so that they can say “yes” and put guardrails around it. For us, it's been a big accelerant, because we were built to understand this new language of [the] internet natively. [Initially] that was cloud, but AI happens to speak the same language. And so it's modernizing their proxy to be a native cloud- and AI-based proxy. That's been a critical modernization.

A lot of people are hitting the wall. They're looking at the tens of millions they've spent and saying [to their IT teams], “Wait a minute — you're telling me I cannot implement this basic policy that I want?” That's where they hit the wall.

So there is this confluence — cloud and AI is now 70 percent of an enterprise's traffic, and [customers] have this equipment which doesn't understand it. And then the other driver is that 90 percent of data is in locations that IT doesn't control. The data is everywhere. And people work from everywhere. This is ripping apart the entire architecture of companies’ networks and the billions they’ve spent on security. That’s why I think a lot of people have realized, “We’ve got to [modernize].”

How would you describe Netskope’s biggest differentiator from competitors in this environment?

What we do is, we look at the traffic that users, devices, AI, agents, apps — as it goes to the internet, or back on-prem, we look at that traffic. We were built for the cloud and AI world, and this new language — that was our fundamental premise. We natively understand generative AI and all cloud traffic. You don't have to configure anything. [Our competitors] were built for the world where it was URLs and websites. They're great for that world. But for the world we live in, where the language is totally different, that's what we were built for. Then the second big thing for us is [around data protection] — finding and protecting data. We do it for over a third of the Fortune 100. In many cases, the only thing between them and their data going to the wrong place is Netskope. You could be in Snowflake, you could be in an LLM. You could be in an on-prem, legacy Oracle server. You could be in a cloud or in one of the 80,000-plus cloud apps, or on your endpoint — we have the ability to see [all] that data and control it. So that's a big one.

How would you summarize what the opportunity is for channel partners and Netskope this year?

We are in a segment that, for the next decade, will be one of the fastest-growing segments — if not the fastest-growing. If you look at Gartner [forecasts], the CAGR in this segment is [around] 20 percent — which is insane for a market. But we're a market share taker. We grow well above that. And so you’ve got one of the fastest-growing segments in all of networking and security. It's now the North Star for all companies. And then our whole model is to go to market through partners. I think that that's the opportunity — to get on board with the leader, who’s fully focused on going to market through partners, in a market that will be here for the next 10-plus years. So for them, they can transform [their business] for the next decade. That's the opportunity for them. We have been focused on expanding our awareness. And partners are our main focus and investment point to do that. We have an over 80-percent win rate if we can get to a [proof-of-concept tryout]. If they can just try the product, we know we're going to win. And so [we are] expanding our partnerships, and broadening our routes to market and our channel.

What are your current plans when it comes to pursuing an IPO for Netskope?

We are targeting to go [out for an] IPO in the second half of this year. So assuming the market conditions are right for that, we do plan [to go public] late this year. For us, the big reason why we would go public is not for capital — we don't need that. It’s for awareness. With such a high batting average [with customer proof-of-concepts], everything we can do to just get into more accounts will help. And we do feel like the lift in awareness we would get from being a public company would be an accelerant for us.