Upwind raises $400m Series C led by Bessemer for cloud and AI security

Upwind raises $400m Series C led by Bessemer for cloud and AI security

28 October 2026: Upwind, a cloud security company, has raised a $400 million Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners, chief executive Amiram Shachar announced on 28 October. The round comes less than nine months after a $250 million Series B and takes the company's total funding past $800 million.

Not yet independently verified. The round, investors and total come from Upwind's own post. A $3.8 billion valuation and a rejected acquisition offer were reported by Globes but are not on Upwind's page, so we do not repeat them as fact, and Upwind's headquarters city is not stated on the page we read. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Who invested

Shachar writes that every existing Upwind investor took part: Greylock Partners, Cyberstarts, Craft, Salesforce Ventures, Alta Park, Picture Capital, Swish Ventures, Cerca Partners, TCV, Penny Jar and Leaders Fund. Canapi Ventures is the new name on the list.

What Upwind is building

Upwind sells a cloud security platform that starts from what is actually running in a customer's environment rather than from periodic scans. HedgeServ's chief information security officer, Michael Cannizzo, is quoted as saying it "gave us visibility into what is actually running, not just what a scan found". Ping Identity's CISO, Russ Kirby, praises its speed of execution.

The money will go to product and engineering, and Shachar sets out a wide roadmap: AI sensors for endpoints, scanners for AI agents and skills, a rebuilt inventory graph, and coverage he describes as "endpoint to code to cloud". He names three agents: Blue, which investigates across logs and assembles one attack story; Red, which checks whether an exposure can actually be exploited; and Green, which fixes findings at scale. The company has also set up an AI lab for cybersecurity with four areas of research, and plans to extend into identity and data security.

Where this fits

The round follows Upwind's acquisition of the Israeli AI security start-up Aegis and the launch of its AI lab, which we covered. A round of this size gives Upwind room to compete on breadth as well as on its runtime approach.

For buyers, the practical questions are about the newer pieces of the roadmap. Endpoint sensors and AI agent scanning are announced as being built, not as generally available, so customers evaluating Upwind against established platforms should ask which capabilities are in the product today, how the Red agent's exploitability checks are run against production systems, and what the Green agent is allowed to change without approval.

Sources

• Upwind: The next wave is here, Upwind's $400M Series C to build the cloud and AI security platform (Amiram Shachar, 28 October 2026), 28 October 2026
• Globes: Upwind raises $400m, 28 October 2026