Checkmarx: The Cyber Unicorn soaring with a $25 billion price tag

TLDR:

• Hellman & Friedman is selling Checkmarx, an Israeli cybersecurity unicorn, for at least $2.5 billion after acquiring it for $1.2 billion in 2020.
• Checkmarx, founded in 2006, focuses on application security solutions and has seen its revenues double since the acquisition.

Four and a half years after acquiring Checkmarx, the American investment fund Hellman & Friedman is initiating the sale of the Israeli cybersecurity unicorn, a leading player in application security solutions. The company aims to sell Checkmarx for at least $2.5 billion, after purchasing it for $1.2 billion in 2020. Checkmarx was founded in 2006 by Emmanuel Benzaquen and Maty Siman and employs around 900 people across 70 countries, with about half based in Israel. The potential sale comes at a challenging time, given the ongoing Gaza war, but the original acquisition by Hellman & Friedman also happened during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Checkmarx’s client base includes global companies like Dell, Adidas, and Salesforce, with the latter recently acquiring another Israeli company for $2 billion. The company’s focus on automated code scanning to identify vulnerabilities during the development process has driven its success in the cybersecurity market.