Untangle

IDENTITY RESOLUTION NOTE: This database row (id 10020186) was found with name 'Untangle' and website 'arista.com', which is internally inconsistent -- the real firewall company Untangle operates at untangle.com and (per Crunchbase/Owler) has never had a confirmed Greylock investment relationship; its historical investors were Rustic Canyon Partners and CMEA Capital, and it was later owned by Francisco Partners / Providence Equity. Surprisingly, live verification in this research DID find that untangle.com now 302-redirects to https://edge.arista.com/, meaning Arista Networks appears to have acquired Untangle/Edge Threat Management at some point after February 2023 (the last '200 OK' Wayback Machine snapshot of untangle.com as an independent site) -- so an Arista-Untangle relationship does now genuinely exist, contrary to the initial premise that this was 'very unlikely'. However, this database is scoped to Greylock Partners portfolio companies, and no source found here shows any Greylock investment in Untangle at any point. By contrast, Awake Security (a real Greylock-backed cybersecurity startup, confirmed investor since a July 2017 round with named Greylock partner Asheem Chandna on its board, and listed directly on Greylock's own portfolio page) WAS acquired by Arista Networks (per Wikipedia's Arista Networks article, and corroborated by Awake co-founders' Crunchbase profiles showing their roles transitioning to 'Arista Networks'/'Arista NDR' in October 2020). Awake Security's own domain, awakesecurity.com, also 302-redirects to arista.com (specifically arista.com/en/solutions/security). Given (a) this database's scope is Greylock portfolio companies, (b) Awake Security has a well-documented Greylock relationship while Untangle has none, and (c) both companies happen to have been separately acquired by Arista Networks, the most plausible explanation is that an automated data pipeline built to identify 'Greylock portfolio companies acquired by Arista Networks' confused the two same-category acquisitions and mis-populated the name field with 'Untangle' instead of 'Awake Security', while the acquirer domain field ('arista.com') was coincidentally correct for the true underlying company. Resolution: this row is treated as representing Awake Security, with 'Untangle' as an erroneous/contaminated name field.

Awake Security was founded in September 2014 (originally based in Mountain View, later Santa Clara, California) by Debabrata Dash, Gary Golomb, Keith Amidon, and Michael Callahan (Co-founder & CEO). The company built an AI- and machine-learning-driven network detection and response (NDR) platform centered on a proprietary 'Security Knowledge Graph' data model, which modeled network entities (devices, users, applications) rather than relying purely on IP-address-based analysis, enabling security teams to detect insider threats, corporate espionage, lateral movement, and data exfiltration with full forensic context across on-premises, IoT, and cloud network traffic.

Greylock Partners invested in Awake Security's roughly $30M+ growth round announced July 17, 2017, alongside Bain Capital Ventures; Greylock partner Asheem Chandna and Bain Capital Ventures' Enrique Salem both joined Awake's board as part of that round. Greylock continued as an investor through Awake's $36 million Series C round, announced April 15, 2020, which was led by Evolution Equity Partners (whose partner Karthik Subramanian joined the board) with participation from Energize Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, and existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Greylock Partners. By the time of the Series C, the company's cumulative funding was reported as 'nearly $80 million,' though some third-party databases (CB Insights, Growjo) later listed total funding closer to $66-67 million -- a discrepancy likely reflecting different treatment of debt/undisclosed tranches. By 2020, Rahul Kashyap (former Cylance CTO) had become President & CEO, and additional board members reported around that time included cybersecurity veteran Kevin Mandia (FireEye/Mandiant CEO).

Business model

B2B enterprise security software sold via subscription/license to enterprise security operations teams

Subscription / software license