Cohesity Becomes World's Largest Data Protection Software Provider After Completing Combination with Veritas' Enterprise Data Protection Business

• Cohesity Becomes #1 in Data Protection Software Market Share, Serving more than 12,000 Enterprise Customers, With Hundreds of Exabytes of the World's Data Under Protection
• Cohesity Offers One of the Broadest and Deepest Sets of Data Protection Capabilities in the Industry, Including Zero-Trust Data Security Principles and AI-Powered Data Insights
• Cohesity Reiterates "No Customer Left Behind" Commitment for both Veritas and Cohesity Customers While Expanding Cloud, Security, and AI Capabilities
• Cohesity Becomes the Fastest Company in the Data Protection Space to Cross $1.5B+ in Annual Revenue
• Transaction Funded by Series H Financing Round Led by Haveli Investments and Term Loan B Facility Arranged by JP Morgan

SINGAPORE, Dec. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Cohesity, the leader in AI-powered data security, today announced the completion of its combination with Veritas' enterprise data protection business, ushering in a new era in protecting the world's data. Now the world's largest data protection software provider by market share^[1], Cohesity will serve over 12,000 customers – including over 85 of the Fortune 100 and nearly 70% of the Global 500 – and protect hundreds of exabytes of the world's data. With the completion of this combination, Cohesity now offers the broadest workload support and one of the largest partner ecosystems in the data protection industry.

Cohesity has become the fastest data protection company to cross $1.5 billion in revenue, reaching that milestone in 11 years. On a pro forma adjusted basis for the fiscal year ending July 2024, the combined entity had revenue of over $1.7 billion, annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $1.5 billion, and a 28 percent adjusted cash EBITDA margin.

"This is a major milestone in the 11-year history of Cohesity, whose mission is to protect, secure, and provide insights into the world's data," said Sanjay Poonen, President and CEO, Cohesity. "By combining Cohesity's scale-out architecture and strong generative AI and security capabilities with Veritas' broad workload support and extensive global footprint, our customers and partners stand to gain more value from their data than ever. As promised, we will honor our "no customer left behind" commitment, supporting existing products from both companies for years to come. As we begin this new chapter, we are committed to driving industry-leading cyber resilience innovations to ensure we are the world's preeminent choice for data security with differentiated AI capabilities."

"We want to congratulate Cohesity on completing their Veritas acquisition. NVIDIA is excited to partner with Cohesity as they build their GenAI products on top of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Cohesity is backing up and protecting the world's data – a goldmine of business value that customers can unlock with GenAI."

"Bringing together Cohesity and Veritas' data protection business – the largest deal in the data protection space to date – addresses the growing need in the market to go beyond backing up and recovering data to handle issues around data security and insights for more robust cyber resilience," said Daniel Newman, CEO, The Futurum Group. "Cohesity now has the largest workload support with world-class security and insight capabilities, a large presence, and a massive joint ecosystem of service providers, VARs, SI partners, and OEMs. Sitting in a unique position at the junction of multicloud, security, and AI, Cohesity is on an ambitious growth trajectory, with an experienced leader in Sanjay at the helm. We believe the company will be a key player as they expand beyond data protection, helping global CIOs exploit the potential for AI and turn organizational data into a competitive advantage."

A New Era in Protecting the World's Data: How the Combination Will Benefit Customers and Partners

The combination of Cohesity with Veritas' data protection business provides:

• Industry-leading Innovation and Capabilities: The combined company will offer cloud-scale and AI-powered data security and management, Generative AI-driven insights, an easy-to-use management interface, and a comprehensive multicloud data protection portfolio. Cohesity now supports the broadest range of workloads within a highly scalable modern architecture.
• Peace of Mind for Current Customer Investments: For years to come, Cohesity will continue to invest in and advance the roadmap and strategy for all products brought from both companies into the new combined portfolio. This includes all existing Cohesity products and services and all the Veritas solutions covered by the combination agreement, including Veritas NetBackup, Veritas NetBackup appliances, and Veritas Alta data protection offerings.
• Global Scale and Support: With an industry-leading Net Promoter Score and a global go-to-market footprint, Cohesity now supports a combined global, "follow-the-sun" customer success organization. Cohesity is committed to helping enterprises succeed by consistently providing positive outcomes for customers' support experience and needs.
• Advanced AI Capabilities: Patent-pending, first-to-market AI capabilities offer customers tremendous data management, protection, and resiliency benefits and help them gain more significant insights and create value for the whole company from their data.
• Strong Partner Ecosystem: The combined company brings together one of the industry's largest partner ecosystems, covering cloud service providers, security players, VARs, system integrators, MSPs, technology ecosystem partners, distribution partners, and hardware OEMs.

Cohesity will target a total addressable market (TAM) of $40+ billion, which includes IDC's data replication and protection software market. IDC's' Semiannual Software Tracker, 2024H1, estimates the data replication and protection software market to be $12.3 billion in projected vendor sales in 2024^[2]. The expanded go-to-market breadth, geographic footprint, and R&D resources will allow the combined company to accelerate new customer adoption and help drive the deployment of innovative solutions within the fast-growing data security and management segment. The transaction values the combined company at over $7 billion.

Transaction Details and Advisors

The combined company received support from current marquee investors, including Sequoia Capital, Softbank Vision Fund I, Wing Venture Capital, Premji Invest, and Madrona. The Carlyle Group, through its ownership of Veritas, is now one of the largest shareholders in the combined company.

The transaction was funded by a Series H investment round led by Haveli Investments, which provided the majority of equity in the transaction and is now one of Cohesity's largest shareholders. Coatue, Sapphire Ventures, and Dragon Fund were also key investors in the Series H investment round. This robust backing ensures the financial and operating resources essential for propelling the company's growth, extending its global presence, and driving continued product innovation.

"We are thrilled to lead Cohesity's latest investment round to fund this transformative transaction," said Brian Sheth, CIO of Haveli Investments. "This combination creates a new data protection and cyber-resiliency powerhouse. We expect the resulting scale and combined resources to accelerate product innovation, extending Cohesity's product leadership. I look forward to serving on Cohesity's Board of Directors and working closely with Sanjay and the management team as we focus on taking Cohesity's business to a new level of success."

A complete listing of Cohesity's leadership team, including the company's Board of Directors, can be found at: https://www.cohesity.com/company/leadership/.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as Cohesity's exclusive M&A financial advisor, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., arranged and committed financing for the transaction. BofA Securities, Inc. also served as financial advisor to Cohesity. Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP and Gunderson Dettmer LLP served as primary legal advisors to Cohesity. Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as financial advisors to Veritas. Alston & Bird LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz served as Veritas' primary legal advisors for the transaction.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may include statements that express Cohesity's opinions, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or projections regarding future events or future results and therefore are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms "believes," "estimates," "anticipates," "expects," "seeks," "projects," "intends," "plans," "may," "will" or "should" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. They include statements regarding Cohesity's intentions, beliefs, projections or current expectations, including statements regarding the expected benefits of the transaction, including the expected financial performance of the combined company and the benefits to customers of the combined company. If a change occurs, Cohesity's business, financial condition, liquidity and results of operations may vary materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a predictor of future performance. Actual results and events in future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements because they are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others: (i) the effect of the transaction on the ability of Cohesity to retain and hire key personnel and maintain relationships with their key business partners and customers, and others with whom they do business, or on their operating results and businesses generally; (ii) the response of competitors to the transaction; and (iii) potential litigation relating to the transaction. These factors are not necessarily all of the important factors that could cause Cohesity's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any of the forward-looking statements. Other unknown or unpredictable factors, many of which are beyond Cohesity's control, also could harm the results, performance or achievements.

New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for Cohesity to predict which factors will arise. In addition, Cohesity cannot assess the impact of each factor on their business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.

All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and Cohesity disclaims any obligation to update publicly any of these statements to reflect actual results, new information, or future events, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable laws. If Cohesity updates one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that Cohesity will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements.

About Cohesity

Cohesity is the leader in AI-powered data security. Over 12,000 enterprise customers, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 and nearly 70% of the Global 500, rely on Cohesity to strengthen their resilience while providing Gen AI insights into their vast amounts of data. Formed from the combination of Cohesity with Veritas' enterprise data protection business, the company's solutions secure and protect data on-premises, in the cloud, and at the edge. Backed by NVIDIA, IBM, HPE, Cisco, AWS, Google Cloud, and others, Cohesity is headquartered in San Jose, CA, with offices around the globe. To learn more, follow Cohesity on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

Media Contact
Michael Thacker
media-relations@cohesity.com         

source: Cohesity