Upwind raises $250m to scale runtime-first cloud security News | January 29, 2026 By Asma AdhimiCloud security startup Upwind has raised $250 million in a Series B round, pushing its total funding to $430 million and reinforcing its position as one of the fastest-growing players in the cloud-native security market. According to Upwind, the funding marks the start of “The Next Wave,” focused on scaling runtime-powered cloud security globally as AI workloads and real-time applications proliferate. “The next era of cloud security requires a fundamentally different approach, centered in realtime signals. That’s actually the only way to protect the cloud in the new era of AI.”Upwind positions itself as a challenger to traditional cloud security tools that rely heavily on static configuration snapshots. As AI-driven cloud workloads continue to grow, the company is betting that real-time context, rather than static analysis, will define the next phase of cloud security.