Snyk was worth $8.5 billion. The price of its employees' stock has collapsed.

Snyk was one of cybersecurity's brightest startup stars, worth $8.5 billion at the height of the software boom. Now, the value of the stock it gives employees has fallen to a fraction of that, underscoring how dramatically fortunes have shifted for many software companies in the AI era.

Snyk, which is headquartered in Boston, became best-known for selling a vulnerability scanner that quickly finds bugs in code. It was valued at $8.5 billion in a 2021 funding round and at $7.4 billion in a 2022 funding round. Snyk has raised more than $1 billion from investors since its founding in 2015.

People with Snyk equity have been watching the value of their shares slide over the past few years, two former employees told Business Insider.

One recalled that around Snyk's peak valuation, their shares were worth over $10. By the summer of 2025, that had declined to around $3, the other former employee said. That figure is now down to $1.16 per share as of late August, according to an internal document.

Snyk said it doesn't comment on employee share valuations and declined to provide a valuation for Snyk at this time. Snyk said that 2026 has "brought accelerating momentum" and added that it has launched three new solutions over the past few months.

Dramatic valuation drops have hit some software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies this year due to the rise of powerful new AI systems, said Dan Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust. Morgan added that startups are particularly vulnerable compared to larger, well-established firms.

"I would say it's definitely a trend, not an exception," he said.

Software startup Airtable, which was once valued at over $11 billion in 2021, entered into an agreement to be sold for $1.3 billion earlier this month. Another SaaS company, Domo, was once worth $2.8 billion and has a market capitalization of less than $200 million.

Snyk faces competition and a leadership shake-up

Snyk has been facing rising competition from AI labs like Anthropic and cybersecurity rivals like Wiz, which Google bought in March. Coinbase, for example, previously told Business Insider that it had used Anthropic's Claude to scan its codebase for bugs.

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Snyk was growing steadily, though it remained unprofitable by the end of 2024, losing $188 million on $278 million in revenue, according to UK government records.

In December 2024, then-CEO Peter McKay told TechCrunch the company was "very close to break-even" and had plans for an initial public offering, though it wasn't rushing to do so.

Snyk has gone through at least two rounds of job cuts since 2025, according to former employees' LinkedIn posts. In June, Snyk said it was "flattening leadership" and "simplifying our structure" to move faster.

After about seven years as CEO, McKay announced in February he would step down, saying the company needed a new leader with "deep roots in product innovation and AI."

McKay now works as a "value accelerator advisor" for Goldman Sachs and as an advisor at Snyk. Snyk's chief financial officer, Kenneth MacAskill, stepped in as interim CEO.