Upwind

Upwind was founded in 2022 by Amiram Shachar (former founder and CEO of Spot.io, which was acquired by NetApp) along with other Spot.io alumni. The private company operates its primary R&D center in Tel Aviv, alongside a US business presence. The company emerged from stealth in September 2023, announcing $50 million in funding backed by investors including Cyberstarts and Greylock. The core product is a cloud security platform built on eBPF technology for runtime monitoring.

Upwind's platform provides Cloud Native Application Protection (CNAPP) with a specific architectural focus on runtime data. The core technology utilizes eBPF sensors to gather telemetry directly from the operating system kernel of cloud workloads. This runtime execution data is cross-referenced with static cloud configuration data to prioritize security vulnerabilities that are actively loaded into memory, reducing the false positive alerts often generated by static scanning. The buyers are typically security and DevSecOps teams managing complex cloud environments.

The product is a SaaS platform that consolidates Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and API security. The technical distinction lies in its capability to map network calls, access permissions, and actual code execution, allowing security teams to verify exactly which vulnerable software packages have been executed in the production environment.

Upwind competes directly against cloud security vendors such as Wiz, Orca Security, and Aqua Security. While Wiz and Orca built their initial market traction around an agentless approach (relying primarily on scanning disk snapshots without installing agents), Upwind's positioning centers on combining agentless static cloud scanning with deep, real-time context obtained via lightweight eBPF agents deployed in the infrastructure.

Upwind's R&D operations are based in Tel Aviv, which houses the majority of the engineering and product teams. The founders and technical leadership are Israeli. In Israel, the company actively hires backend developers (with an emphasis on Go and Rust), Linux/eBPF engineers, and cloud security researchers. The Israeli cyber-focused fund Cyberstarts provided crucial early-stage backing and remains a strategic investor.