Snyk
Company History
Snyk History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2015 in London, United Kingdom
When was Snyk founded?
Snyk was founded in 2015 in London, United Kingdom by Guy Podjarny, Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander, making it 11 years old.
- Founded
- 2015
- Founding place
- London, United Kingdom
- Founders
- Guy Podjarny, Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander
- Headquarters today
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States & London, United Kingdom
- Milestones documented
- 8 (2015–2026)
- Current CEO
- Kenneth MacAskill (Interim CEO)
- Acquisitions
- 3
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Snyk founded |
| 2019 | Peter McKay becomes CEO |
| 2020 | DeepCode acquisition |
| 2021 | $8.5B peak valuation |
| 2022 | $196.5M Series G at $7.4B |
| 2023 | Acquired Enso Security |
| 2025 | Invariant Labs acquisition |
| 2026 | CEO transition |
- Where was Snyk founded?
- Snyk was founded in London, United Kingdom in 2015.
- Who founded Snyk?
- Snyk was founded by Guy Podjarny, Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander.
- When did Snyk start?
- Snyk was founded in 2015.
- How old is Snyk?
- Snyk is 11 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Guy Podjarny, who had co-founded web-performance startup Blaze (acquired by Akamai in 2012) and later served as a CTO at Akamai, started Snyk in 2015 with Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander. They saw that most of a modern application's code came from open-source packages that nobody was checking, so the first product was a command-line tool that found and patched vulnerable npm dependencies. The name is usually explained as 'So Now You Know'.
Founders
Guy Podjarny
Guy Podjarny co-founded Snyk in 2015 and was its CEO until July 2019, when Peter McKay took over and Podjarny became president and chairman. He later founded AI-native software development startup Tessl. He stepped off Snyk's board in January 2025 and was reappointed a director in March 2026, returning as chairman during the 2026 leadership change. Guy Podjarny was born in 1981.
Assaf Hefetz
Assaf Hefetz co-founded Snyk in 2015 alongside Guy Podjarny and Danny Grander. A highly elite cybersecurity researcher, he recognized that the massive explosion in open-source software libraries meant that developers were accidentally importing millions of severe vulnerabilities into corporate codebases. He helped build Snyk's core scanning engine to automatically detect these hidden threats. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Danny Grander
Danny Grander co-founded Snyk in 2015. Bringing absolutely critical, deep technical expertise in software exploitation, he built the foundational vulnerability database that Snyk relies on. He designed the platform to proactively suggest actual code fixes to developers, completely changing how security was integrated into the software development lifecycle. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Snyk founded
Guy Podjarny, Assaf Hefetz and Danny Grander founded Snyk to find and fix vulnerable open-source dependencies.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgPeter McKay becomes CEO
Former Veeam co-CEO Peter McKay succeeded Guy Podjarny as CEO; Podjarny became president and chairman.
Source: snyk.ioDeepCode acquisition
Snyk acquired Zurich-based DeepCode, whose AI code analysis became Snyk Code.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$8.5B peak valuation
Snyk raised a $530 million Series F at an $8.5 billion valuation.
Source: calcalistech.com$196.5M Series G at $7.4B
Snyk raised its last disclosed round at a lower $7.4 billion valuation and cut about 14% of staff.
Source: calcalistech.comInvariant Labs acquisition
Snyk bought AI agent security research firm Invariant Labs; full-year revenue rose 11% to $309.2 million.
Source: globenewswire.comCEO transition
Peter McKay stepped down, CFO Kenneth MacAskill became interim CEO and Guy Podjarny returned as chairman.
Source: theregister.comMajor Acquisitions
DeepCode
2020Add AI-based static code analysis.
Enso Security
2023Enter ASPM.
Invariant Labs
2025Expand AI agent security.
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Snyk Company History FAQ
When and where was Snyk originally founded?
Snyk was founded in 2015 by Guy Podjarny, Assaf Hefetz, and Danny Grander, establishing joint operations in London, United Kingdom, and Tel Aviv, Israel, before establishing dual corporate headquarters in Boston and London.
What does the company name "Snyk" stand for?
The name Snyk is an acronym for "So Now You Know," embodying the company's mission to give software developers immediate, transparent visibility into security vulnerabilities lurking in their open-source dependencies.
What inspired the creation of developer-first security (DevSecOps)?
Before Snyk, legacy application security tools (like HP Fortify and Veracode) scanned code late in the release cycle, dumping massive PDF reports on developers. Founder Guy Podjarny realized security had to shift left, integrating directly into developer IDEs and Git pull requests.
What was Guy Podjarny's background before founding Snyk?
Guy Podjarny served in the Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit 8200 and founded web performance startup Blaze.io, which was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2012, where he served as Chief Technology Officer.
How did Snyk pioneer automated "fix pull requests"?
Unlike legacy tools that merely flagged security flaws, Snyk introduced one-click automated fix pull requests in GitHub and GitLab, calculating the minimum non-breaking version upgrade required to remediate vulnerable dependencies.
What was the landmark acquisition of DeepCode in 2020?
In August 2020, Snyk acquired Swiss AI startup DeepCode, an ETH Zurich spinoff. DeepCode's symbolic AI engine analyzed millions of code commits, providing the real-time machine-learning foundation for Snyk Code (SAST).
When did Peter McKay join as Chief Executive Officer?
Peter McKay, former co-CEO of data management giant Veeam Software and board member at Snyk, was appointed CEO in July 2019, scaling Snyk's go-to-market operations from early-stage startup to multi-hundred-million-dollar ARR.
What was Snyk's peak venture capital valuation?
In late 2021 and 2022, Snyk achieved an enterprise valuation of $7.4 billion to $8.5 billion following a $196.5 million Series G funding round led by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Tiger Global, Accel, and Boldstart Ventures.
How did the Log4j and SolarWinds vulnerabilities accelerate Snyk's adoption?
The devastating Log4Shell (December 2021) and SolarWinds software supply chain attacks forced global enterprises and government agencies to map their Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), driving massive enterprise demand for Snyk Open Source.
What was the acquisition of Enso Security in 2023?
In June 2023, Snyk acquired Tel Aviv-based Enso Security, pioneering Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) to help Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) catalog all deployed applications and prioritize remediation by business risk.
How has Snyk evolved with the generative AI coding boom?
As developers adopted GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT to generate code, Snyk introduced Snyk Code AI and DeepCode AI, automatically scanning AI-generated code for security hallucinations and vulnerable open-source snippets in real time.
What is Snyk's current market presence and scale?
Snyk protects over 3,000 enterprise customers worldwide (including Google, Salesforce, Comcast, and ASOS) and integrates with millions of open-source developer repositories, scanning billions of lines of code annually.
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