Fulton-based Sonatype secures $80M growth round

Sonatype, a Fulton, Md.–based company that makes a platform to manage and secure open source software development, closed on $80M in growth funding, the company announced on Friday.
The round was led by San Francisco–based private equity firm TPG, which took a minority investment. Previous investors Accel, Goldman Sachs Group and Hummer Winblad.

Excited to announce that #Sonatype has raised an $80 million round of growth financing led by TPG Capital 👉🏻 https://t.co/empI2vOlaA pic.twitter.com/v2Kvzu2RZE

— Sonatype (@sonatype) September 7, 2018

The company is looking to grow development and sales of its Nexus platform, which helps corporate and government clients automate the process of finding and managing open source software components. The platform monitors the components for security risks and other potential issues. It’s built on the principle of “DevSecOps,” which brings security to the process of rapidly developing software.
“Open source innovation has never been more vibrant but, as with any software, there is also potential downside,” Sonatype CEO Wayne Jackson said in a statement. “At Sonatype, we’re enabling organizations to confidently embrace open source so that they can both accelerate innovation and also mitigate risk.”
Founded in 2008, Jackson joined the company as CEO after leading Columbia cybersecurity company Sourcefire. The company said it has 1,000 customers, and grew sales 80 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2018.
Sonatype last made a funding splash with a $30 million round in 2016, led by Goldman Sachs. Per data from Crunchbase, the $80 million total is larger than all of its other rounds combined.
The company was recently featured on Technical.ly’s realLIST 2018 featuring Howard County companies.