Fortinet Secures $50 Million in Mezzanine Funding

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 2, 2004 -- Fortinet – the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today announced it has closed a $50 million mezzanine financing. The mezzanine round was
fully subscribed by Fortinet’s existing investors and strategic investors, demonstrating their enthusiasm for and confidence in Fortinet and the rapidly growing security market. Fortinet’s existing investors include RedPoint Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Acorn Campus and DEFTA Partners.

“We evaluate security companies all the time, but rarely do we encounter ones like Fortinet that exhibit all the qualities of a company that can succeed over the long term,” said Rob Ward, vice president at Meritech Capital Partners. “We are excited about the prospects for the security market and are especially pleased with the way Fortinet has defined a category and built a leading position in the integrated security platform space. Fortinet’s management team, highly differentiated technology, compelling products, strong revenue growth and customer base, and clear vision for the future set them apart and position them for long term market leadership.”

This financing will be used to provide the working capital necessary to support Fortinet’s market expansion. It comes on the heels of a number of recent company milestones, including:

• Global Expansion – Fortinet expanded its global operations with the opening of new offices in Singapore, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Tokyo and Germany to meet the high-degree of market demand for its solutions.
  
  
• “Product of the Year” Accolades – Over the last six months FortiGate solutions have received numerous accolades, including two firewall “Product of the Year” awards and a Technology Innovators award from leading industry groups and publications.

"This round of financing, generated from existing and strategic investors, is a testament to the vitality of our markets and the outstanding results delivered by the Fortinet team,” said Ken Xie, CEO of Fortinet. “We see continued strong demand globally for our ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewall products and real-time protection services, and with completion of this financing we have the resources necessary to continue our rapid growth. I am confident about Fortinet’s future and pleased to see this echoed by our investors.”

Fortinet is a privately-held company funded by some of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capitalists. It was recently cited by Dow Jones VentureWire as among the startups most likely to succeed long-term.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time – without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems, the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the Chunghwa Customer Win Release - 4 “Visionaries” category in the 2003 Gartner Enterprise Firewall Magic Quadrant, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.