Fast Facts
- Company HQ: Santa Clara, California, USA
- Number of Employees: 250-500 (estimated)
- Investment: $346M (Tracxn)
- Valuation: $2 Billion USD (2022)
- Founded: 2014
Aviatrix Overview
Aviatrix is a cloud-native network security company with a focus on delivering enterprise-grade networking and security architectures designed for public cloud environments. The company supports more than 500 global enterprises in securing and operating distributed cloud networks.
Aviatrix is led by Doug Merritt, who became CEO in 2023. Merritt has extensive experience in scaling enterprise software companies, most notably as the former CEO of Splunk, where he guided the company through a period of growth in data and security solutions. At Aviatrix, his focus is on advancing the adoption of cloud-native security at the network layer, enabling organizations to manage security in complex multi-cloud environments.
Aviatrix’s Cloud Native Security Fabric (CNSF) is a distributed firewalling and segmentation architecture built natively for the cloud. It provides policy enforcement, visibility, and encryption across multi-cloud and hybrid environments without slowing development teams.
Aviatrix CNSF takes a different approach to firewalling: instead of relying on appliances, it functions as a fabric embedded across the network layer in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. Whereas user-centric platforms such as Zscaler or Cloudflare primarily focus on secure access, Aviatrix CNSF is designed to protect workloads, data flows, and application infrastructure, with particular attention to east-west and egress traffic.
Rather than extending legacy firewall models into the cloud, Aviatrix has re-architected firewalling to provide observability, identity-based policies, and automation aligned with DevSecOps workflows.
Let’s start by zooming out with some quick background context on the network security market and the key challenges organizations face, before taking a deeper dive into Aviatrix itself.
Network Security Background
Network security continues to be an absolutely critical part of an organization’s security stack in the era of the cloud. The rapid rise of cloud computing, while enabling higher scalability, introduces significant challenges.
Chief among these is that in the past, when you built an application, your data would largely be stored in your data center. Now, when you build an application in AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, you need a web service (which you may own) and a storage service, which you can’t really own, but you just interact with.
You also have API integrations to third party services, like OpenAI. Increasingly, network security is about protecting workloads and apps connected to the internet not users. This requires a very different set of security standards and performance requirements.
There are also challenges around how enterprises deal with these challenges. Application and developer teams are normally incentivized by speed and quickly launching new features. Security teams are driven by mitigating risk, which more often than not, slows development down.
The traditional perimeter that security teams once controlled has dissolved. East-west traffic still exists, but itnow spans zones, regions, and even clouds, making it harder to observe and enforce. Security must follow workloads across a distributed, dynamic infrastructure.
There are some tough inherent challenges for security teams around the complexities of managing multiple cloud environments without slowing down developer workflows.This is where Aviatrix has found strong success.
Mission Statement
“Aviatrix closes the cloud’s critical security enforcement gap by embedding intelligent, real-time controls directly into the network fabric. We make zero trust an actionable reality and stop threats in motion. We’re tackling the high-level problem of reinventing cloud security so that app, cloud, and security teams all love it – that it moves at the speed of business, and fits with the existing security ecosystem. That is our mission.” – Chris McHenry, Chief Product Officer, Aviatrix
Aviatrix’s core offering is a cloud network security platform that delivers observability and integrates with policy as code. The company works with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle cloud and more.
The Aviatrix Cloud Network Security Fabric (CNSF) includes embedded firewalling, data encryption in transit, network flow visibility, and a cloud operating model proven at scale, available via cloud marketplaces or private offers. Aviatrix enables networking security, automations and visibility for teams using these platforms to build applications and services.
Aviatrix has fundamentally rearchitected what the firewall looks like for cloud services Aviatrix builds consistent network security across multiple different cloud environments, providing a virtual perimeter guarding your multi-cloud multi-region environments. It aims to allow teams to regain control of the perimeter to implement network segmentation policies at the speed both developers and security teams need. It also offers deep integrations with platforms like Kubernetes so you can apply policies, and have it followed workloads as it evolves.
Company Background
Aviatrix was established in 2014 by co-founders Sherry Wei and Pankaj Manglik. Sherry Wei, a former Cisco manager, founded Aviatrix with the premise that cloud networking fundamentally differs from traditional data center networking from an enterprise customer’s perspective. In 2023, Doug Merritt was appointed CEO. Merritt, formerly CEO of Splunk, brings deep experience in scaling enterprise security and observability platforms.
Since 2014, the company has had impressive growth and has been described as a ‘pioneer’ of security cloud networking software. Aviatrix has had five VC funding rounds at the time of writing in June 2025, raising a total of $346M per Tracxn.
- Series A: $10M USD, September 2015
- Series B: $15M USD, January 2017
- Series C: $46M USD, November 2019
- Series D: $75M USD, February 2021
- Series E: $200M, USD, September 2021
Aviatrix has grown very rapidly. They’ve seen 100% year-on-year revenue growth and as illustrated above, raised $275m USD in a single year (albeit across two funding rounds).
The company has expanded from an initial focus on network firewall services into the broader cloud network security market. Aviatrix continually adds new features: last year at the RSAC 2024 conference, Aviatrix announced a new cloud network security platform-as-a-service offering for channel partners, with a consumption-based model.
The strategic direction of the company has been described as a ‘next-generation Cisco’ for the cloud era. Aviatrix’s objective is to reinvent traditional networking and security solutions like Cisco and Palo Alto for the public cloud, focusing specifically on securing applications and the cloud rather than user-centric security.
Key Customer Segments
Aviatrix primarily targets large enterprises and currently supports 10% of the Fortune 500. This demonstrates a clear emphasis on serving organizations with considerable scale, intricate IT landscapes, and stringent requirements for cloud networking and security. Aviatrix is a specialized network security tool that functions as a cloud firewall for enterprise applications, data, workloads, and PaaS applications.
The sweet spot for Aviatrix is enterprises looking to secure the public cloud, so AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. If you’re developing your own applications in these clouds, you are likely to be familiar with some of the challenges we discussed earlier in this report, regardless of your company size.
Aviatrix is purchased primarily through cloud marketplaces.
Market Position
As mentioned, Aviatrix is hard to pin into one specific market segment. Gartner lists Aviatrix within its Multicloud Networking Software. We would see it as a leader in this space, with a strong ability to execute and a clear vision for success. We would also classify Aviatrix as a cloud firewall combining zero trust, next-generation firewall (NGFW), and microsegmentation capabilities, focusing on east-west and egress connectivity.
Aviatrix Use Cases
Aviatrix addresses a broad spectrum of enterprise use cases, focused around resolving complex cloud networking and security challenges:
- Multi-Cloud Connectivity: The platform standardizes and simplifies network architecture across disparate cloud service providers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI. This capability extends to providing seamless and secure cloud networking to edge locations and facilitating multi-cloud connectivity over both private and public networks.
- Hybrid Connectivity: Aviatrix enables secure and high-performance connections between on-premises data centers and multiple cloud environments, ensuring consistent policy enforcement and visibility across the hybrid landscape. The entire fabric is end-to-end encrypted in software at speeds up to 100 Gbps, which is significantly faster than other firewall vendors.
- Zero Trust Security: The platform facilitates the implementation of a pervasive Zero Trust model by enforcing identity-driven policies, leveraging “SmartGroups” for automation, and securing egress traffic to prevent lateral movement and data exfiltration across and within clouds. SmartGroups use workload identities (e.g., app type, data classification) instead of IP addresses, pulling from developer identity sources to create dynamic policies.
- AI/GenAI Data Acceleration & Security: There is a dedicated focus on optimizing network performance for demanding AI and Generative AI (GenAI) workloads. This includes accelerating data transfers, providing end-to-end encryption, and micro-segmentation for sensitive AI data during model training and inference. This explicitly encompasses data connectivity for Large Language Models (LLMs). The platform also detects AI-related threats, such as typosquatting, using real-time natural language analysis.
- Kubernetes Networking & Security: Specific solutions, such as the Aviatrix Kubernetes Firewall, are provided to address the unique networking and security requirements of containerized applications. These solutions update at the speed of Kubernetes, often in seconds.
- Operational Visibility & Troubleshooting: Through tools like Aviatrix CoPilot, the platform offers centralized, global visibility into multi-cloud networks, aiding in threat identification, problem remediation, and reducing Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR). It provides a customizable dashboard with a cloud topology network graph.
- Egress Security: Many customers start with egress security to control connections out to the internet. Aviatrix offers an elegant solution for brownfield environments, allowing deployment as a one-for-one replacement for a NAT gateway without requiring a complete re-architecture. It provides an egress security score and enables organizations to transition their egress security from unprotected to zero-trust.
- Network Detection and Response (NDR): Aviatrix provides deep visibility into network traffic, beyond native APIs and logging, including intrusion prevention and detection capabilities. It recently introduced anomaly detection, which baselines network traffic and identifies unusual activity, tying anomalies back to affected applications.
- Global Policy Management: Supports global policies across multiple customers, ensuring consistent security for specific resources under defined conditions.
- Landing Zones: Provides cloud-native VPN gateways for secure third-party connectivity, specifying which partners can access specific services.
Strengths and Cautions
Strengths
- Zero-trust cloud firewall: Aviatrix’s Distributed Cloud Firewall uses SmartGroups and intent-based policies to enforce zero-trust, designed for multi-cloud workload security in finance and technology.
- High-performance encryption: Aviatrix’s patented encryption supports up to 100 Gbps, targeting secure connectivity for enterprises in healthcare and retail against threats like data exfiltration.
- Cloud-native integrations: Aviatrix’s Terraform provider and Kubernetes integration align security with developer workflows, designed for cloud-native environments in technology firms.
- Advanced Security Features: Aviatrix deeply embeds Zero Trust principles into its cloud networking fabric, extending protection to every connection point—users, applications, data, and Internet egress—through dynamic, identity-driven policies. It ensures baseline security policies cannot be compromised, even with extended privileges.
- Operational Visibility, Automation, and Cost Optimization: Aviatrix integrates a suite of capabilities to enhance operational efficiency, automate processes, and optimize cloud spend.
- AI/GenAI Optimized Networking: Aviatrix has strategically positioned its platform to support and optimize Generative AI (GenAI) workloads, offering an “AI-optimized network” designed to accelerate data movement, fortify security, and simplify management specifically for these demanding applications.
- Simplified Management: The platform offers a simple to manage interface. It deploys in 10 minutes via marketplaces, requiring no major network changes.
Cautions
- Limited on-premises support: Aviatrix focuses on public clouds, potentially requiring additional solutions for hybrid environments with on-premises infrastructure like VMware.
- Complexity for smaller organizations: Aviatrix’s enterprise-grade features may overwhelm smaller firms with simpler cloud setups, per podcast’s focus on Fortune 50 challenges.
Conclusions
The Aviatrix Cloud Network Security Platform is best suited for enterprises grappling with the inherent complexities, security challenges, and escalating costs of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. It provides a unified network security platform for public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, targeting industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. By combining zero-trust principles, high-performance encryption, and cloud-native integrations, Aviatrix aims to secure workloads and simplify network management.
Aviatrix’s forward-looking investment in securing networking for demanding AI/GenAI workloads further solidifies its value in the enterprise space. This strategic foresight positions the company to capitalize on new, high-growth market segments, demonstrating a commitment to meeting future enterprise infrastructure demands.
If you’re considering this solution, we would caution you to account for the enterprise focus. We’d also consider looking at the pricing structure and ensuring this aligns with your budget. However, despite these considerations Aviatrix offers a mature, comprehensive, and strategically valuable platform capable of delivering measurable improvements in cloud visibility, policy enforcement, and security posture.
