Teleport raises $110M to help engineers access infrastructure remotely

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Teleport, the company behind an identity-based infrastructure access management platform for engineers, has raised $110 million in a series C round of funding.

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While remote work and a more distributed workforce has been one of the most notable effects of the global pandemic, this has meant a greater need for tools and technologies to help people work collaboratively from disparate locations. However, even before the remote work revolution, the burgeoning cloud computing movement meant that there was already a growing demand for ways to access critical systems without being physically present where the actual programs are running — and that, essentially, is what Teleport does.

Founded in 2015, Teleport provides companies with easy, secure access to their critical infrastructure through connectivity, authentication, authorization, and audit — in short, making sure the right people can access the right systems at the right time, from anywhere.

“Most computer programs run in data centers, but engineers work from offices or homes,” Teleport CEO, Ev Kontsevoy, told VentureBeat. “They have to use remote access solutions to access computing infrastructure — Teleport is the easiest and most secure way to do it.”

Unified

Teleport serves to supplant a host of third-party technologies with a unified product, spanning the likes of VPNs, secrets vaults, among other “legacy” access management tools.

“Remote access should not be siloed — it must be consolidated because having a single-source-of-truth not only improves security, but also lowers operational overhead and makes end-user experiences better,” Kontsevoy continued.

Teleport assigns identities to all the hardware, software, and “peopleware” that constitutes a company’s stack, eliminating the need for passwords or private keys. Used by major companies including Elastic, Snowflake, VMware, and DoorDash, Teleport is all about helping companies grow their infrastructure footprint without compromising on security.

“We want to eliminate the need for secrets when accessing infrastructure and replace them with identity,” Kontsevoy added. “Teleport removes the tension between security and productivity, so that companies can grow fast while also improving security and compliance.”

It’s also worth noting that Teleport offers an open-source community edition, for situations where a company needs to build and run its software, hosting everything on their own infrastructure. And that is how Teleport divides its pricing plans — a completely free and open-source incarnation, and an enterprise version replete with premium support and features (which can also be self-hosted, if the client desires).

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“Teleport’s code is in the open — anybody, including security researchers, can inspect the source code against vulnerabilities and back doors,” Kontsevoy explained. “This builds trust with our users, and raises the bar for our engineers, as they’re well aware that every line of code they commit will be instantly visible to the outside world. This is why we believe that proprietary solutions cannot be as secure as their open-source counterparts.”

Teleport had previously raised around $59 million, and with its latest cash injection which values it at a cool $1.1 billion, the company is well-positioned to build on its recent growth. Teleport claims it has seen its customer base almost double and revenue triple last year.

Teleport’s series C round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Insight Partners, and S28 Capital.