Five Companies That Came To Win This Week
For the week ending March 13, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Google, ITPartners, Huntress, Anthropic and Eridu.
The Week Ending March 13
Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is Google for completing its history-making $32 billion acquisition of cloud security startup Wiz and bringing its capabilities into Google Cloud.
ITPartners makes the list for its own acquisition that adds to its growing network of MSPs and expands its presence in the Northeast.
Cybersecurity provider Huntress makes this week’s list for a major expansion of its channel program—including plans to include reseller partners for the first time in its decade-plus history. AI tech developer Anthropic, meanwhile, is also doubling down on the channel with an initial $100 million investment in its Claude Partner Network and partner access to a new certification program.
AI networking startup Eridu completes this week’s list with more than $200 million in Series A funding and plans to disrupt the $200 billion AI networking market.
Google Closes $32B Wiz Acquisition
Google tops this week’s Came to Win list by completing its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security startup Wiz and bringing the company into Google Cloud.
Google is betting that the blockbuster acquisition, the biggest in its history, will lead to the creation of a new unified security platform that improves the speed with which organizations can detect, prevent, and respond to threats using AI.
The unified platform will help customers stay ahead of the curve by detecting emerging threats created using AI models, protecting against threats to AI models, and using AI models to help security professionals hunt for threats more effectively.
Google said the combined platform will also help protect small businesses from increasingly sophisticated and destructive cyberthreats. The upcoming Google-Wiz platform will also provide a consistent set of tools, processes, and policies across all major cloud environments at every layer—from code to cloud to runtime.
Consistent with Google Cloud’s commitment to openness, Wiz products will continue to work with, and be available across, all major clouds including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud, and will be offered through an array of partner security solutions.
It took roughly one year for Google to close the $32 billion deal since first announcing its intent to buy Wiz in March 2025.
ITPartners Expands Northeast Footprint With ASG 365 Acquisition
While not on the same scale as the Google-Wiz deal, ITPartners’ acquisition of Buffalo, N.Y.-based ASG 365 this week is noteworthy as ITPartners adds to its growing network of MSPs, continuing a strategy focused on collaboration over consolidation.
Founded in 2000, ASG 365 will tap into ITPartners’ expanded cybersecurity, planning and engineering resources as part of the deal. Backed by $30 million in funding secured last summer, ITPartners is in active discussions with about 75 MSPs, a process CEO Kevin Damghani says centers less on financial engineering and more on building shared capabilities.
Damghani added that the acquisition reflects the company’s ongoing strategy to bring together smaller MSPs while maintaining their entrepreneurial spirit and customer focus.
The ASG 365 deal also expands ITPartner’s presence in the Northeast. ITPartners COO Denny Bouma said ASG 365 was a good fit not only for its culture but for its reputation with its clients.
Huntress Doubles Down On VARs In ‘Huge’ Partner Program Expansion
Huntress is expanding its channel program to include reseller partners for the first time in its decade-plus history, as the managed security vendor targets a wider range of customer sizes for its next phase of growth, Channel Chief Tuan Nguyen told CRN exclusively.
With the goal of serving customers ranging in size from SMBs up to those just shy of the Fortune 1000, Huntress is now looking to enable VAR partners in addition to its broad MSP base, he said.
The updated Huntress Partner Program represents “the extension of our existing channel-first model,” said Nguyen, vice president for channels and alliances at Huntress.
“We’re expanding our ecosystem to work with the VARs and distributors [who have] a huge opportunity to come downmarket [into] the midmarket,” he said.
The expansion of Huntress Partner Program follows the company’s hiring of Nguyen, a security channel veteran, in October. Prior roles for Nguyen included channel executive positions at Blackpoint Cyber, ExtraHop and Palo Alto Networks.
The three-tier partner program from Huntress will include benefits such as strong margin, MDF (market development funds) and lead-sharing, according to Nguyen.
Anthropic Pours $100 Million Into Claude Partner Network In Channel Push
As part of its effort to become the premier enterprise artificial intelligence vendor, Anthropic this week revealed an initial $100 million investment into its Claude Partner Network, along with partner access to a new certification program.
Anthropic partners are eligible for direct investment as the program scales, with “a significant portion” of the $100 million going directly to partners for training, sales enablement, market development, customer deployment success, co-marketing support for joint campaigns and events, and more, Anthropic disclosed during its inaugural Partner Summit, held Wednesday and Thursday in Carlsbad, Calif.
“We really want to demonstrate that Anthropic is the most committed AI company in the world to the partner ecosystem,” Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s head of business development and partnerships, told CRN in an interview.
Anthropic plans to grow its partner-facing team fivefold, with dedicated applied AI engineers that partners can work with on live customer deals, according to the vendor. Anthropic technical architects will help partners scope more complex implementations. Partners will also receive localized go-to-market support in international markets.
The company is giving partners access to a partner portal with Anthropic Academy training materials. Partners also receive the sales playbooks Anthropic go-to-market employees use and co-marketing documentation, according to the vendor. A services partner directory will list qualified partners for enterprise buyer discoverability.
Anthropic’s new certification program debuts with Claude Certified Architect, Foundations, a credential for solution architects building production applications with Claude.
AI Networking Startup Eridu Steps Out Of Stealth With More Than $200M In Funding
AI networking startup Eridu surfaced from stealth mode this week with more than $200 million in funding and plans to disrupt the $200 billion AI networking market.
Eridu, based in Saratoga, Calif., and led by entrepreneur Drew Perkins, believes that networking is not keeping up with the rapidly increasing demands from AI systems. The startup’s mission is to meet current and future AI demands by “breaking infrastructure barriers holding it back,” in the data center, the company revealed.
Eridu’s oversubscribed Series A round was led by Socratic Partners, John Doerr, Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group and Matter Venture Partners, with participation by SBVA, MediaTek, Bosch Ventures, TDK Ventures, Eclipse Capital, and VentureTech Alliance, among others, the company said.
Eridu said the funding will be used to complete development of its offering.
Eridu is building what it calls a “clean-sheet” networking design, which includes a network switch that provides an “order-of-magnitude advance in performance, radix and efficiency needed to meet current and future AI demands,” the company said.
Business continuity and disaster recovery startup Slide, meanwhile, got noticed this week when it raised $70 million in Series B funding to accelerate product growth, hire aggressively and expand into Europe.