Upwind

Upwind is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) built around runtime sensor data rather than periodic agentless scanning. The platform pulls signal from what’s actually executing in cloud workloads — processes, network calls, identity use — and layers that context onto cloud security posture management (CSPM), vulnerability management, and cloud detection and response (CDR), so security teams can prioritize the handful of findings that are actually exploitable in production instead of triaging every static misconfiguration.

The company was founded in 2022 by Amiram Shachar and the founding team behind Spot.io, which NetApp acquired for roughly $450 million in 2020. That track record helped Upwind raise a $250 million Series B in January 2026 at a reported $1.5 billion valuation, bringing total funding to roughly $430 million. QKS Group named Upwind a Leader and Emerging Innovator in its 2025 SPARK Matrix for CNAPP.

What differentiates Upwind is sequencing: rather than bolting runtime detection onto a posture-management product, it built runtime-first and is now extending outward into build-time and posture use cases with its CNAPP 2.0 release. That’s a meaningful architectural bet, though Upwind still competes in a crowded field against runtime-capable incumbents like Wiz and Sysdig, and most of the momentum evidence available is investor and analyst confidence rather than named, independently verified customer outcomes.