A couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that Akamai was in discussions to acquire Noname Security, a specialist in API security, for around $500 million. Today, the deal has been confirmed, though at a slightly lower price. Akamai on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy Noname in a $450 million deal.
The deal underscores the ongoing push for more consolidation in the cybersecurity market. The last several years have seen the emergence of a wide variety of cybersecurity startups. But a number of these companies have found it hard to scale, raise money, or sell to customers that are looking for one-stop shops to manage multiple security needs, so bigger players are picking up the smaller and more promising of these.
Sometimes, that is at a steep discount. Noname was valued at $1 billion at its last private fundraise in December 2021, so it is selling for less than half that price tag.
This is not even the worst discount, though: Wiz was in advanced discussions to acquire Lacework Security for $168 million, a sight less than the smaller company’s previous valuation of $8.3 billion. That deal fell through in due diligence, however.
Akamai said it will be integrating Noname into its API Security business and that it expects the acquisition to deliver approximately $20 million in revenue in its fiscal year 2024.
“Applications run our world, but as applications and users proliferate, so do security risks,” Mani Sundaram, EVP and general manager, Security Technology Group, Akamai Technologies, said in a statement. “Akamai has seen a growing need for API protection with our own data showing 109% year over year growth in API attacks. With the addition of Noname, Akamai believes it will have the breadth of integrations and deployment choices needed to deliver comprehensive API protection for customers across all environments.”
Akamai’s focus, the company said, is on providing more tools to developers and security operations teams to discover “shadow” APIs as well as other vulnerabilities.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024.
“API development continues to proliferate as customers prioritize their investments in application modernization and digital transformation initiatives,” Oz Golan, chief executive officer and co-founder of Noname, said in a statement. “Combining Noname with Akamai’s API Security offering will provide a solution for any type of customer. No matter where the customer’s applications reside — be it in the cloud, natively on the edge, on-premise, or on other vendor platforms — they will be protected.”
Golan and the rest of the San Jose company’s 200 employees are expected to join Akamai as part of the deal.
