Snyk raises $22 million to tackle open source’s security problem

Snyk announced today it has raised $22 million as the company seeks to plug the growing security holes in open source systems.
“Our mission is to fix open source security, and that can only be done from within the open source community,” said Guy Podjarny, CEO and cofounder of Snyk, in a statement. “This investment is a humbling validation of the impact that security-conscious developers have, and lets us expand open source security into runtime while continuing to serve these amazing users.”
The round was led by Accel, but also included investment from GV and previous investors such as Boldstart Ventures and Heavybit. The company has now raised a total of $32 million in venture capital.
Founded in 2015, the company is focused on the growing use of various open source software by enterprise customers. The company estimates that 77 percent of related applications contain some kind of vulnerability.
Snyk’s tools allow developers to search for vulnerabilities in the enterprises’ systems and block them. In many cases, Snyk can also repair those security issues by drawing on a database of patches.
The company says it plans to use the money to develop additional features that offer more protection while applications are actually running.
“Some of the largest data breaches in recent years were the result of unfixed vulnerabilities in open source dependencies; as a result, we’ve seen the adoption of tools to monitor and remediate such vulnerabilities grow exponentially,” said Philippe Botteri, partner at Accel, in a statement. “We’ve also seen the ownership of application security shifting towards developers. We feel that Snyk is uniquely positioned in the market given.”