Sanjay Poonen, CEO of Cohesity is the former COO of VMware and President of SAP.Scott Mlyn | CNBCData security firm Cohesity is eyeing a potential initial public offering in 2026 with ambitions to achieve a valuation that rivals its publicly traded $17-billion peer Rubrik.The move would mark an important milestone for Nvidia-backed Cohesity, which shelved IPO plans in 2021 to first execute a complex merger with its rival Veritas' data tection unit, according to Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen.That deal, which made the company the largest data tection software vider, closed in December 2024 and valued the combined entity at over $7 billion at the time.Poonen said the combination, which brought together his fast-growing but unfitable firm with the larger, highly fitable Veritas, was a risky but 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 told CNBC, referring to competitors that included Rubrik and Commvault.
"That's not what I wanted.""We wanted to be the biggest fish, have the biggest market , and then go public," he said.That minence was achieved when Cohesity, which previously held 5% of the market, acquired the 14% held by Veritas.
The combined entity is now the market leader with 19% of a highly fragmented industry, according to re from RBC Capital .Poonen signaled that the company will be ready to go public as soon as it's able to vide public-market investors with a full financial year's results as a combined entity, which could be as soon as "early next year."The chief executive also pointed out that Cohesity's financial year ends in August, which means the company could wait until the fall of 2026 for its IPO."I think if the continues to be doing well, it is, 2026 will be the year," Poonen added.
unicorns exitIPO and M&A activity among nology companies with a $1-billion valuation or higher has picked up in 2025, compared to last year.
Data from Crunchbase shows that 25 unicorns having gone public or been acquired between May 2024 and May 2025, compared with 15 over the same period in the previous year.But analysts cautioned that stock market volatility caused by macroeconomic factors — such as changing U.S.
tariff policy or lack of stability over the interest rate outlook — is ly 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," said Laia Marin i Sola, equity analyst at Barclays, in a July note to clients.'Comparable or superior valuation'Cohesity's valuation expectations are benchmarked against Rubrik, which went public in April 2024 and currently sports a market capitalization of roughly $17 billion.The company currently trades at 12.75 price-to-sales multiple (P/Sales), whilst smaller peer Commvault, trades at 7.16 times P/Sales, according to FactSet data.Poonen argued that Cohesity, as the larger entity post-merger, should command a "comparable or superior valuation" if it can demonstrate similar performance metrics."We're a bigger ship than them," he said.An IPO around or exceeding Rubrik's valuation would mean Cohesity's valuation would ly more than double since its 2023 merger with Veritas.
That would lead to a massive windfall for early investors such as Sequoia Capital, Wing Venture Capital, Battery Ventures, Accel Partners as well as later-stage investors such as Softbank, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Baillie Gifford.Stock Chart IconStock chart iconYet, Poonen said the management team's focus has been on growing the company fitably.
"Our focus is not the current price of the company," Poonen explained. Instead, he continued, "if you create long-term customer value and fitable growth, valuation just comes.
It just happens."For the year ending July 2024, Cohesity had annual recurring revenue of $1.5 billion and a 28% adjusted fit margin.
Before the deal, Cohesity was growing at just under 30% year-over-year, while Veritas was growing at around 5%.Analysts at RBC Capital noted the combined company is expected to expand in the mid-teens.AI's double-edged impact on cyber securityWhilst the growth in artificial intelligence has at times increased the potential for a rise in cyber attacks, AI has also been used to build defenses and shield companies from increasingly sophisticated incidents, as well as lower the cost of attacks.
The average cost of a data breach declined by 9% in 2025 to a little more than $4.4 million in 2024, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025."The use of AI contributed to the reduction in cost, but imper AI implementation and use of shadow AI introduced significant cybersecurity risks," said JPMorgan's analyst Brian Essex in a note to clients this month.Despite the downward pressure on cost of cyber attacks, the sector continues to grow, as more companies treat cyber security incidents as a top priority.
A report earlier this year by security nology firm Fortinet highlighted that four of five large enterprises are set to make cyber security a C-suite level responsibility over the next 12 months.Cohesity's AI playCohesity's growth has also benefited from a key partnership with AI chipmaker and investor Nvidia.Cohesity's flagship AI duct, named Gaia, turns traditionally backed-up data — previously considered "useless for AI purposes" according to RBC — into an AI-powered enterprise assistant.Poonen said the breakthrough idea of applying an AI nology, known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), to back up data emerged from conversations with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — two men Poonen said he has known for many years, given his previous experience as a senior executive at VMware and Germany's SAP."We were the first to implement RAG to backup," Poonen said.
"That's what got Nvidia's interest. They got it immediately.
They put money in the company to back us."Poonen added that a successful IPO would be a crucial step, but not the endgame for his strategy."It's a milestone.
It's a very important milestone, but it's not the destination," he .