Sanjay Poonen, CEO of Cohesity is the previous COO of VMware and President of SAP.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
Data safety agency Cohesity is eyeing a possible preliminary public providing in 2026 with ambitions to attain a valuation that rivals its publicly traded $17-billion peer Rubrik.
The transfer would mark an essential milestone for Nvidia-backed Cohesity, which shelved IPO plans in 2021 to first execute a posh merger with its rival Veritas’ knowledge safety unit, in keeping with Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen.
That deal, which made the corporate the biggest knowledge safety software program supplier, closed in December 2024 and valued the mixed entity at over $7 billion on the time.
Poonen mentioned the mix, which introduced collectively his fast-growing however unprofitable agency with the bigger, extremely worthwhile Veritas, was a dangerous however calculated deal.
“I made a calculation in 2022 that we could go public, but in the midst of all of these companies, we’d be a smaller fish,” Poonen instructed CNBC, referring to rivals that included Rubrik and Commvault. “That’s not what I wanted.”
“We wanted to be the biggest fish, have the biggest market share, and then go public,” he mentioned.
That prominence was achieved when Cohesity, which beforehand held 5% of the market, acquired the 14% held by Veritas. The mixed entity is now the market share chief with 19% of a extremely fragmented business, in keeping with analysis from RBC Capital Markets.
Poonen signaled that the corporate might be able to go public as quickly because it’s in a position to present public-market buyers with a full monetary yr’s outcomes as a mixed entity, which might be as quickly as “early next year.”
The chief govt additionally identified that Cohesity’s monetary yr ends in August, which suggests the corporate might wait till the autumn of 2026 for its IPO.
“I think if the business continues to be doing well, like it is, 2026 will be the year,” Poonen added.
Tech unicorns exit
IPO and M&A exercise amongst know-how firms with a $1-billion valuation or greater has picked up in 2025, in comparison with final yr. Data from Crunchbase reveals that 25 unicorns having gone public or been acquired between May 2024 and May 2025, in contrast with 15 over the identical interval within the earlier yr.
But analysts cautioned that inventory market volatility brought on by macroeconomic components — reminiscent of altering U.S. tariff coverage or lack of stability over the rate of interest outlook — is more likely to throw up hurdles.
“While we have seen some unicorn-scale exit activity through IPOs and M&As since the beginning of the year … macroeconomic volatility has weighed on exits,” mentioned Laia Marin i Sola, fairness analyst at Barclays, in a July observe to shoppers.
‘Comparable or superior valuation’
Cohesity’s valuation expectations are benchmarked towards Rubrik, which went public in April 2024 and presently sports activities a market capitalization of roughly $17 billion.
The firm presently trades at 12.75 price-to-sales a number of (P/Sales), while smaller peer Commvault, trades at 7.16 instances P/Sales, in keeping with FactSet knowledge.
Poonen argued that Cohesity, because the bigger entity post-merger, ought to command a “comparable or superior valuation” if it could possibly show comparable efficiency metrics.
“We’re a bigger ship than them,” he mentioned.
An IPO round or exceeding Rubrik’s valuation would imply Cohesity’s valuation would seemingly greater than double since its 2023 merger with Veritas. That would lead to an enormous windfall for early buyers reminiscent of Sequoia Capital, Wing Venture Capital, Battery Ventures, Accel Partners in addition to later-stage buyers reminiscent of Softbank, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Baillie Gifford.
Yet, Poonen mentioned the administration staff’s focus has been on rising the corporate profitably. “Our focus is not the current share price of the company,” Poonen defined. Instead, he continued, “if you create long-term customer value and profitable growth, valuation just comes. It just happens.”
For the yr ending July 2024, Cohesity had annual recurring income of $1.5 billion and a 28% adjusted revenue margin. Before the deal, Cohesity was rising at slightly below 30% year-over-year, whereas Veritas was rising at round 5%.
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets famous the mixed firm is anticipated to broaden within the mid-teens.
AI’s double-edged affect on cyber safety
Whilst the expansion in synthetic intelligence has at instances elevated the potential for an increase in cyber assaults, AI has additionally been used to construct defenses and protect firms from more and more subtle incidents, in addition to decrease the price of assaults. The common value of a knowledge breach declined by 9% in 2025 to a little bit greater than $4.4 million in 2024, in keeping with IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025.
“The use of AI contributed to the reduction in cost, but improper AI implementation and use of shadow AI introduced significant cybersecurity risks,” mentioned JPMorgan’s analyst Brian Essex in a observe to shoppers this month.
Despite the downward strain on value of cyber assaults, the sector continues to develop, as extra firms deal with cyber safety incidents as a high precedence. A report earlier this yr by safety know-how agency Fortinet highlighted that 4 of 5 giant enterprises are set to make cyber safety a C-suite stage duty over the subsequent 12 months.
Cohesity’s AI play
Cohesity’s progress has additionally benefited from a key partnership with AI chipmaker and investor Nvidia.
Cohesity’s flagship AI product, named Gaia, turns historically backed-up knowledge — beforehand thought-about “useless for AI purposes” in keeping with RBC — into an AI-powered enterprise search assistant.
Poonen mentioned the breakthrough thought of making use of an AI search know-how, generally known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), to again up knowledge emerged from conversations with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — two males Poonen mentioned he has recognized for a few years, given his earlier expertise as a senior govt at VMware and Germany’s SAP.
“We were the first to implement RAG to backup,” Poonen mentioned. “That’s what got Nvidia’s interest. They got it immediately. They put money in the company to back us.”
Poonen added {that a} profitable IPO could be a vital step, however not the endgame for his technique.
“It’s a milestone. It’s a very important milestone, but it’s not the destination,” he concluded.