Story updated 9:30 February 26 with quote from Tufin CEO Ray Brancato.
An Israeli cybersecurity business that boasted the European Space Agency and one of the UK's biggest supermarkets among its customers has abruptly shut down, laying off its 300 employees and taking its website offline overnight.
Skybox Security, founded in 2002, had raised more than $330 million across 12 funding rounds but has now gone into liquidation, with employees seemingly given little warning ahead of a closed-door meeting with CEO Mordecai Rosen.
According to discussions online, staff were left without their final paychecks, with LinkedIn now scattered with former employees looking for new positions, including senior Skybox execs.
While Skybox has ceased all operations, the company's assets have been picked up by security software competitor Tufin, which revealed a transition programme designed to migrate Skybox customers over to its services.
"Tufin has acquired a limited portion of Skybox's assets and has retained some key personnel to ensure a smooth transition for their customers to Tufin," CEO Ray Brancato told The Stack.
"This has made it possible for us to develop our new ExpressPath for Skybox Customers program, which is aimed at helping former Skybox customers make an accelerated transition to the Tufin Orchestration Suite."
The now defunct Skybox website previously touted over 500 customers for its security products, including EDF, Vodafone, Indian multinational JSW and a UK supermarket and multinational retailer with over 300,000 employees.
Investor PSG Equity also once claimed that more than 70 government agencies and "eight of the world's largest consumer banks" were Skybox customers as recently as 2020.
No exact reason has been given for the company's closure publicly but The Stack has approached Rosen for a statement.
See also: Intel bloodbath: 15,000 jobs slashed, dividend frozen, shares tank
Affecting around 100 staff in Israel and 200 in the US, the layoffs only add to a growing list in the tech industry with research from forex company RationalFX claiming more than 280,000 tech employees suffered a job loss in 2024.
The majority of layoffs, 157,950, came from US companies with major players including Intel, Dell and Amazon all cutting thousands of jobs last year, often claimed to be a result of over-hiring through the pandemic.
Germany, South Korea and China also saw some of the biggest tech industry layoffs last year, while Israeli companies ranked lower on RationalFX’s list but still oversaw almost 2,500 job losses.
As highlighted by Skybox’s closure, significant layoffs are expected to continue into 2025, with more than 10,000 people in the tech industry believed to have lost their jobs already this year.
Have you been affected by the layoffs or do you have thoughts you want to share? Get in touch by email or Signal @thestack.01
