Tigera

Tigera operates within the network management software and cybersecurity sectors, offering an open-core enterprise software platform designed for secure application connectivity in cloud-native environments. Founded in 2016 by Andy Randall, Alex Pollitt, and Christopher Liljenstolpe, the company's origins are deeply rooted in the open-source Project Calico, a solution for container and Kubernetes networking and security. The founding team, composed of the original Project Calico engineers, established Tigera to address the advanced security and observability needs that arose as organizations began to scale their use of containers and Kubernetes.

The company's business model revolves around providing commercial editions of its foundational open-source technology. Tigera generates revenue through its enterprise-grade products, Calico Enterprise and Calico Cloud, which offer advanced features beyond the open-source version. Calico Enterprise is a self-managed service providing high-availability networking and simplified network security for cloud-native applications. Calico Cloud is a fully managed SaaS platform (CNAPP) that delivers full-stack observability and security for containers and Kubernetes, designed to prevent, detect, and mitigate security breaches. In May 2025, the company introduced the Calico Cloud Free Tier to provide open-source users with access to enhanced features at no cost. Tigera serves a wide range of clients, from small businesses to large enterprises with over 10,000 employees, and is prominent in the financial services, information technology, and computer software industries. Notable customers include Discover, Chipotle, NBCUniversal, Siemens Healthineers, and Royal Bank of Canada.

Tigera's core offering, Calico, provides a unified platform for Kubernetes networking, network security, and observability that is compatible with all major cloud providers and Kubernetes distributions. It enables secure communication between Kubernetes containers and traditional workloads like virtual machines and bare-metal servers, ensuring consistent policy enforcement across different environments. Key features include a high-performance eBPF data plane, an Ingress Gateway for managing ingress traffic, and an Egress Gateway for integrating with perimeter-based security tools. Calico's network security capabilities allow for the creation of fine-grained policies to improve security posture, while its cluster mesh feature facilitates connectivity and security for multi-cluster applications. The platform addresses challenges related to workload access controls, microsegmentation, runtime threat detection, and compliance. Since its inception, Tigera has secured a total of $53 million in funding over three rounds, with its latest Series B round in December 2018 raising $30 million, led by Insight Partners.

Keywords: container security, Kubernetes security, network security, cloud-native security, Calico, observability, microsegmentation, policy enforcement, secure application connectivity, CNAPP, Project Calico, container networking, cloud infrastructure security, runtime security, compliance solutions, DevOps security, Kubernetes networking, virtual machine security, eBPF, zero trust