Upwind
Upwind combines cloud scanning with sensors that watch running workloads, and uses what it sees running and exposed to decide which security findings need fixing first.
CyberReviewed Editorial Team · Updated · upwind.io
Company details
- Score
- 6.2/10Ranked 11 of 12 (tied)
- Category
- Cloud security
- Founded
- 2022
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, with offices in Tel Aviv, Israel
- Leadership
- Amiram Shachar, co-founder and CEO
- Funding disclosed
- $250 million Series B in 2026 at a $1.5 billion valuation
- Pricing
- AWS Marketplace lists $30,000 per unit for 12 months
- Best fit
- Large, data-heavy cloud estates with many containers and APIs
Our take
Upwind is worth piloting for organizations with large, fast-changing cloud estates that get more scanner findings than they can fix and want alerts ranked by what is running and exposed. Teams that need a vendor with many years in the market may prefer an older company.
Scores by criterion
| Criterion | Score |
|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | 5 |
| Product scope and fit | 8 |
| Company durability | 6 |
| Evidence of adoption | 6 |
| Ease of adoption | 6 |
| Overall score (average of the five) | 6.2 |
Each criterion is defined on our methodology page.
Runtime context for cloud findings
Upwind calls its approach runtime security: it combines agentless scanning with sensors inside the environment so it can see which services are running, how APIs are exposed and what traffic is flowing, then uses that context to separate urgent risks from those that can wait.1 CEO Amiram Shachar has described it as an inside-out view, in contrast to tools that scan an environment from the outside and generate long lists of issues with little context.1
Marketplace contract prices
Upwind's website publishes no price list, but its AWS Marketplace listing prices the Upwind Cloud Security Platform at $30,000 per unit for a 12-month contract and a separate 24/7 managed detection and response service at $6,000 per unit.4 The listing offers 24-month and 36-month contracts with savings of up to 8% and 11%, and says the platform's cost scales with the size of the cloud environment.4
From Spot.io to a $1.5 billion valuation
Shachar founded Upwind in 2022 with Liran Polak, Lavi Ferdman and Tal Zuri, the team behind Spot.io, which NetApp bought for about $450 million in 2020.2 In December 2024 Upwind raised a $100 million Series A led by Craft Ventures at a valuation of about $900 million.3 In July 2025 The Times of Israel reported, citing a source, that Datadog was in advanced talks to buy the company for as much as $1 billion.2 No deal was announced, and in January 2026 Upwind instead raised a $250 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Salesforce Ventures and Picture Capital.1
TechCrunch reported that since the Series A the company had posted 900% year-over-year revenue growth and doubled its customer base, with customers including Siemens, Peloton, Roku, Wix, Nextdoor and Nubank.1
Sensors versus agentless scanning
Orca made agentless scanning popular; Upwind adds sensors inside the environment. Agentless tools are quick to roll out but see the environment from outside, while Upwind's sensors add live context at the cost of a deployment step. Shachar has said that step was a hard sell early on because security teams often lack permission to install software.1
Environments where it fits poorly
Small cloud footprints, and teams that cannot get approval to run sensors in production, will get less from a runtime-first product.
What customers say
Quoted word for word from public reviews and posts on PeerSpot and Reddit, retrieved October 21, 2026. Each quote links to the review or post it comes from.
Where it helps
The combination of runtime visibility, security insights, and contextual risk prioritization makes it much easier to focus on the risks that actually matter.
They are a great overall cloud security platform and they continue innovating and adding new features.
Where it falls short
Upwind can be improved because its UI is a bit difficult to navigate.
When Upwind gets confident enough to collate multiple findings into a threat story, the outcome is really great, though it seems a bit conservative at linking events (this may be because we’ve only recently rolled it out?)
Sources
- TechCrunch, Upwind raises $250M at $1.5B valuation, January 29, 2026
- The Times of Israel, Israeli-founded cyber startup set to be snapped up by Datadog in $1 billion deal, July 23, 2025
- TechCrunch, Cloud security specialist Upwind confirms it raised $100M at a $900M valuation, December 2, 2024
- AWS Marketplace, Upwind Cloud Security Platform, accessed October 21, 2026
