Zscaler made zero trust the network and crossed $2B revenue

Zscaler was built on a contrarian claim: as apps moved to SaaS and public cloud, the corporate network perimeter would stop being the right place to enforce security. It chose a cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange instead of another appliance stack.

The platform connected users, devices, workloads and applications by policy, using products such as Zscaler Internet Access and Zscaler Private Access. That let customers route traffic directly to cloud services without backhauling it through data centers.

The architecture scaled into large enterprises. In FY2024, Zscaler reported revenue of $2.17 billion, up 34%, more than 8,650 customers, and roughly 35% of the Forbes Global 2000 as customers.

FY2024 revenue reached $2.17B, up 34%; Zscaler served over 8,650 customers and about 35% of the Forbes Global 2000.

SaaS, cloud and mobile work made data-center hub-and-spoke security slower and less relevant.

Zero trust access reduced dependence on VPNs and exposed fewer internal applications to the internet.

A multi-tenant cloud platform improved as traffic and threat data increased.

When the old architecture is the bottleneck, the bold move is to replace the architecture, not improve the appliance.

Zscaler still reported GAAP losses in FY2024, but the revenue scale and enterprise penetration showed that the cloud security architecture had moved from thesis to mainstream buying pattern.