Orca Security Cuts 15 Percent Of Staff

The cloud security unicorn blamed ‘current macroeconomic conditions’ for the layoffs, which will impact 60 employees.

A round of layoffs at Orca Security will impact 15 percent of the cloud security unicorn’s employees, the company confirmed Wednesday.

The layoffs impacting 60 Orca employees were first reported Wednesday by Calcalist. The details of the report were confirmed by an Orca spokesperson in an email to CRN.

“Since Orca Security’s founding, a key guiding principle has been growing responsibly and profitably,” the company said in a statement provided to CRN. “Based on the current macroeconomic conditions, we made the difficult decision to say goodbye to a number of our colleagues across the company.”

The cloud security firm plans to “announce updates on our go-forward strategy in the coming weeks,” the statement said.

Orca — which has its main offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, and in Portland, Ore. — had 430 employees prior to the cutbacks disclosed Wednesday, Calcalist reported.

The company joins a lengthy list of cybersecurity vendors that have reduced staff over the past two years amid instability in the economic environment. Within the cloud security market, prior cutbacks have included layoffs by Lacework and Aqua Security.

In October, top executives at Orca Security disclosed their aspirations for the company to grow into a candidate for going public in coming years. Orca — which expected “triple-figure growth” in 2023 — has been aiming to build “a long-lasting company that hopefully in the years to come will also go into an IPO,” Orca Co-Founder and CEO Gil Geron told CRN at the time.

To help advance the plans, Orca hired Oded Edri — formerly the chief accounting officer at publicly traded Payoneer — as its new CFO in early November.

Founded in 2019, Orca was able to rapidly become a go-to vendor in the cloud security market with its “SideScanning” technology. The agentless offering collects data from workloads in cloud environments and analyzes the workloads for security risks without impacts to performance, according to the company.

Orca most recently received a valuation of $1.8 billion in 2021, in connection with its $550 million Series C funding round. Last year, the company unveiled a new channel strategy that includes a commitment to generate 100 percent of its revenue with the help of partners.

Major competitors in the cloud security market include Wiz, Palo Alto Networks and Lacework.