Lookout’s long-running transition to changing into an enterprise safety firm is all however full, revealing at the moment that it’s promoting its client cellular safety enterprise to Finland’s F-Safe in a deal valued at round $223 million.
Based out of Boston in 2009, Lookout initially began out as a consumer-focused smartphone safety and knowledge backup enterprise, garnering thousands and thousands of customers and a whole lot of thousands and thousands in funding from esteemed traders together with Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Greylock, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Telekom, and Jeff Bezos.
Over the previous 10 years, Lookout has step by step prolonged its attain into the enterprise realm, notching up enterprise partnerships with expertise giants comparable to Samsung alongside the way in which. A few years again, Lookout went many of the approach towards cementing its B2B credentials when it snapped up cloud-native cybersecurity startup CipherCloud, an organization centered on the rising safe entry service edge (SASE) safety section.
Quick-forward to at the moment, and whereas Lookout nonetheless gives a set of safety merchandise for the buyer market together with antivirus software program for smartphones, it’s clear that its trajectory lately has been heading a lot nearer to the enterprise, which is why it’s offloading just about all the remnants of its client enterprise to F-Safe — a long-established European client cybersecurity firm that sells every part from password administration instruments to antivirus purposes.
Lookout says that with this transaction, which it expects to conclude inside the subsequent two months, its enterprise will “now evolve right into a pure-play enterprise firm,” specializing in cellular endpoint safety and cloud safety. Whereas it didn’t disclose how a lot it gained for its client enterprise, it stated that the proceeds will likely be be plowed again into its enterprise merchandise, alongside the $150 million in debt-financing it secured from BlackRock final summer time.
“Our success within the extremely aggressive enterprise market has compelled us to focus our product and go-to-market efforts to realize benefit,” Lookout CEO Jim Dolce famous in a press launch. “By doubling down on the enterprise market, we’ll be higher positioned to capitalize on its projected hypergrowth, fueled by a rise in distant and hybrid work, a shift to cloud-based supply fashions and the transition to zero-trust architectures.”
For F-Safe, the deal provides it a stronger foothold within the U.S. market particularly, in addition to bolstering its present client software program lineup with a set of pretty related merchandise.
“In keeping with F-Safe technique, we’re in search of progress each organically and thru acquisitions,” F-Safe CEO Timo Laaksonen stated in a press release. “The acquisition of Lookout client enterprise unit is a major step in creating our enterprise in the US. With a complementary software program product portfolio and powerful competence in creating cellular merchandise, Lookout client enterprise unit is an ideal match for F-Safe.”
*This text was up to date with a deal valuation and extra remark from F-Safe.
