Cohesity becomes largest data protection provider after Veritas merger

Cohesity has finalized its merger with Veritas' enterprise data protection business, marking a significant milestone in global data protection. This merger positions Cohesity as the largest data protection software provider by market share, serving over 12,000 customers, including more than 85 Fortune 100 companies and nearly 70% of the Global 500. With hundreds of exabytes of data under protection, Cohesity now offers the industry’s most extensive workload support and one of the largest partner ecosystems, setting a new standard in data protection.

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 per cent 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 honour 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.”

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. 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.