SentinelOne Mulling Sale To Private Equity: Report

The publicly traded cybersecurity vendor has hired an investment bank to assist in the process, according to a report.

SentinelOne is mulling the possibility of a sale to a private equity firm, according to a report.

The publicly traded cybersecurity vendor has hired an investment bank, Qatalyst Partners, to assist in the process, Reuters reported Monday.

CRN has reached out to SentinelOne for comment.

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The deliberations follow an 80 percent drop in its market capitalization over the past two years, which have made the company a target for a private equity takeover, according to the report.

As of mid-day Monday, SentinelOne’s stock price was up about 15 percent, to $16.64 a share, in the wake of the Reuters report.

SentinelOne’s 2021 initial public offering had valued the company at $8.9 billion, making it the largest cybersecurity IPO to date. Its valuation prior to the report Monday had stood at $4.2 billion, according to Reuters.

During a recent interview with CRN, SentinelOne co-founder and CEOTomer Weingarten pointed to numerous major growth opportunities for the vendor, including around bringing generative AI to its product portfolio. In April, SentinelOne became one of the first cybersecurity vendors to unveil a new product powered by Large Language Model technology with the debut of its Purple AI threat hunting tool.

Weingarten said at the time that it was no coincidence that SentinelOne was able to unveil a truly powerful tool applying generative AI to cyber defense—and do so more quickly than others. “We were talking about AI, and we were integrating neural networks into our product, for years,” he told CRN.

Weingarten also pointed to massive opportunities for SentinelOne and its partners in cloud security, including through the vendor’s exclusive partnership with Wiz, a fast-growing startup in the segment.

“We have one of the most robust channel ecosystems,” he said. “If you couple what the MSP ecosystem can do with a product like Wiz’s, and what the overall channel distribution that we have can now do with a joint offering then you also start to understand that it’s a force multiplier for [partners] as well.”

Ultimately, “I think it’s very hard to compete against what we have jointly together,” Weingarten said.

Revenue for the first quarter of SentinelOne’s fiscal 2024, ended April 30, grew 70 percent year over year to $133.4 million.