Akamai Doubles Down On API Security With $450M Noname Acquisition Deal

The company said the acquisition of Noname Security will allow Akamai to ‘extend protection across all API traffic locations.’

Akamai Technologies on Tuesday announced a deal to acquire API security firm Noname Security for $450 million.

The company said the acquisition of Noname will allow Akamai to “extend protection across all API traffic locations.”

[Related: Akamai CEO Tom Leighton On API Security Growth And M&A Strategy]

A major focus of the acquisition is on offering improved discovery of “shadow” APIs as well as detection of API vulnerabilities and attacks, Akamai said in a news release.

The acquisition announcement Tuesday came in connection with RSA Conference 2024 in San Francisco, where Akamai is showcasing its offerings in security.

In an interview with CRN last fall, Akamai Co-Founder and CEO Tom Leighton said the company has been seeing strong results in API security, aided by its prior acquisition of Neosec.

“We’re seeing a ton of interest in our customer base there,” Leighton said at the time. “Pretty much every enterprise CISO or CIO we talk to today, they acknowledge they don’t even know all the APIs they’ve got.”

For Noname, which was founded in 2020, the acquisition price is less than half of the company’s $1 billion valuation achieved in late 2021. The startup had raised at least $220 million in total funding.

The acquisition of Noname is expected to close in the second quarter of the year, Akamai said.