Tanium is a systems management and security startup founded by father and son David and Orion Hindawi respectively. The two were also the minds behind BigFix, a company bought by IBM for $400 in 2010. 

Today, the product is now called IBM Endpoint Manager.

Tanium began as a pure security company that works by showing companies suspicious practices that could mean malware or hack exist in computers and then giving them a simple method of shutting down the machines before the hack or malware can perform more damage.

Tanium then spread into other areas such as software license management. This allows a company to scan all their machines and determine exactly the software being used. This way, a company will not have to pay for software they are not using, which can save them millions.

Orion Hindawi said that a hotel chain discovered useless software on the first day they used Tanium and with that, they got just enough return of investment to make up for the purchase of the software purchase.

According to sources, the recent deal has doubled the value of Tanium at $3.5 billion, which is double its $1.75 billion valuation in March after it received $52 million funds from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

According to son Hindawi, the investment was unexpected since Tanium was silent about taking in more funds. Andreessen remains their sole outside investor to date, which added in around $142 million in two years.

Hindawi is proud to say that their company is cash-flow positive and that they still have most of their capital of $250 million in the bank. Although he refuses to say when, he did mention that Tanium may ultimately go public.

Hindawi further said that the new funds will be used in expanding to other areas including managing security patches and to expand to mobile devices and other tiny connected devices called "The Internet of things".