Veeam Software Group GmbH today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Securiti Inc. for $1.725 billion, by far the largest purchase made by the company to date.

Though Veeam has made many acquisitions under the tenure of Chief Executive Anand Eswaran (pictured), this is the first in the security market. As a data protection company, Veeam can be thought of as “security-adjacent,” but now squarely enters the artificial intelligence cybersecurity race.

Securiti had raised $156 million from three rounds of funding with major investors, including Mayfield, General Catalyst, Workday Ventures and Capital One Ventures. The $1.725 billion is about three times its last valuation of $575 million. Though this may seem steep, valuation in the software-as-a-service and cybersecurity markets is often judged by revenue multiples.

Securiti has not reported revenue publicly, but the private equity tracking sites estimate that in the last 12 months, revenue was in the $300 million to $400 million range, which would suggest an acquisition multiple of about five times revenue. This might seem aggressive, but it’s defensible for a high-growth, category-defining asset in a hot market segment.

Also, it has always been my belief that if an acquisition transforms a company, which this should for Veeam, then a couple of hundred million here and there won’t make a difference year from now.

AI supremacy will be built on data and this purchase enables Veeam to bring together data protection, security, governance, privacy and AI trust into a unified platform enabling its customers to accelerate safe AI at large scale. Post-acquisition, Securiti will be a separate division under the broader Veeam company, like the way Kasten is run today.

The combined companies will benefit Veeam customers as it will bring new capabilities to access all their structured and unstructured data, enabling them to realize four big benefits:

• Understand their data everywhere with a unified, real-time data command graph of their entire data estate.
• Secure AI and data by unifying the Securiti’s data security posture management or DSPM capabilities, including compliance, data governance, access controls and data privacy, with Veeam’s security and data capabilities.
• Recover and rollback AI and data with precision, restoring clean data instantly across cloud, on-premises, SaaS, apps, hybrid or multicloud environments, and addressing rogue AI behavior by tracing, auditing and rolling back with precision without disrupting unaffected systems.
• Realize the value of data for AI by rapidly creating trusted AI agents, based on secured data, and creating enterprise-wide search in minutes that respects entitlements with privacy controls and runtime guardrails built in. This will enable customers to deploy the best-of-breed AI pipelines with confidence.

Strengths of the combined company

Before the announcement, I spoke with Eswaran and Securiti CEO Rehan Jalil to discuss why they made the deal and what benefits they expect the combination of Veeam and Securiti will deliver to customers.

Eswaran said the union of Seattle-based Veeam and Securiti, which is headquartered in San Jose, will provide organizations with “one trusted data graph scanning primary and secondary data and one command center, which is the key to understand and secure your data.”

Jalil, who will become president of security and AI for Veeam once the transaction closes, said his company provides capabilities that fit well with Veeam’s data protection, backup and disaster recovery solutions.

“Securiti brings complementary technology, unified controls, which are security controls, access controls and privacy and AI controls,” he said. “Some of these categories are really on a fire, like DSPM. Some of the largest organizations, including four airlines in North America, big banks, major telcos and some of the largest retailers use Securiti for these use cases.”

He summed up Securiti’s philosophy succinctly: “We provide customers with all the security for their data to make sure bad things don’t happen to the data. But if something goes wrong, we provide resilience.”

The power of the Securiti knowledge graph

Much of Securiti’s value comes from its Data Command Graph, which constructs a knowledge graph that maps a network of all data assets. This graph provides a contextual relationship between every object tied to data, including:

• Files, tables, and columns (sensitive data).
• Users and user roles (identity).
• AI models and agents that can access the data.
• Regulatory and compliance requirements.

This single-pane-of-glass Data Command Center allows users to flip the view instantly:

• A chief information security officer can ask: “Which AI agents are touching files with sensitive PII, and where is that data backed up?”
• A data officer can ask: “Show me the full lineage and context of the data fueling this specific AI model.”

This level of comprehensive, real-time context enables actionability, including labeling data for AI agents, controlling access and ensuring cross-border policy enforcement.

The growing role of AI

As with most industries, AI is playing an ever-bigger role in how companies operate, particularly in the technology sector. The acquisition of Securiti AI is expected to inject a significant growth vector to Veeam’s strong, fast-growing business.

“This is where we basically come together to create the first platform which represents the entire data estate in a meaningful way,” said Eswaran. “And we combine everything Veeam has stood for with Securiti’s data command graph, which will then be taken up one layer to look across this entire data estate, and look across the entire agentic AI capabilities. And that’s how you start to get to accelerating safe AI at scale.

“Veeam and Securiti coming together secures the future,” he said. “What we’re trying to do here is what no company has done before—provide a unified view of data to accelerate safe AI at scale.”

From a competitive position, this helps Veeam continue to pull away from the legacy backup and recovery vendors such as Dell Technologies Inc. and Cohesity Inc.’s Veritas. It also creates an interesting competitive dynamic with Rubrik Inc., whose go-to-market has been the strength of its DSPM. Rubrik has a strong DSPM solution but doesn’t have Veeam’s data recovery chops to act on incidents. I brought this up on my call with Eswaran and he agreed and told me old -chool snapshots and recovery, which is how data protection works today, needs to give way to autonomous AI.

Acquisition bolsters Veeam’s IPO positioning

This move is a textbook example of a late-stage private company making a strategic, high-impact acquisition designed to maximize its public market debut. The biggest benefit is the company can re-rate the business from “backup” to “AI security,” which should have greater investor appeal and a higher valuation multiple.

It also enhances the stickiness and value to Veeam’s existing customer base creating a strong platform advantage. Eswaran has yet to give a timeline to IPO, but this creates a direct AI play, which squarely moves Veeam to where the puck is going.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: SiliconANGLE