Seattle-based Cloudentity, which offers cloud application security and identity-aware authorization services, raises $13M Series A led by ForgePoint Capital
Cloudentity, a Seattle, WA-based provider of cloud application security and identity-aware authorization solutions, raised $13M in Series A funding.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cloudentity's raise lands two months after ForgePoint Capital led Area 1 Security's $25M round, making this the firm's second disclosed cybersecurity bet of 2020 out of the $450M second fund it raised earlier that lifted its assets under management to $750M.
First-order effects
- Cloudentity gains $13M to scale its identity-aware authorization product from Seattle, while ForgePoint deepens its concentration of cybersecurity bets in a single portfolio thesis.
- The deal puts Cloudentity into a cloud-security funding lane where peers were raising far larger rounds on similar timing — Orca Security followed with a $55M Series B just three months later.
Second-order effects
- Capital keeps accelerating behind cloud-security specialists: Orca's Series B converted into a $210M Series C at a $1.2B valuation within four months, raising the fundraising bar Cloudentity and Anitian — which later drew a $55M Series B from Sageview — must compete against for enterprise budgets.
- Enterprise buyers evaluating cloud application security now face a widening field of funded vendors spanning authorization (Cloudentity), workload protection (Orca), phishing defense (Area 1), and compliance automation (Anitian).
Third-order effects
- Dedicated cyber funds like ForgePoint are institutionalizing a specialization pattern: identity and authorization maturing into a separately funded security layer rather than a feature inside broader cloud platforms, with round sizes stratifying accordingly.
The trend: Specialist cybersecurity capital is funding an increasingly layered cloud-security stack in which identity-aware authorization emerges as its own category between 2019 and 2022.