Forward Networks Closes Record 2025 as Multi-Year Deals Surge 175 Percent
Breakout Performance Fueled by New Customer Acquisition, Long-Term Commitments, and Expansion Across the Installed Base
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Forward Networks, the industry leader in network digital twin technology, closed a record year serving the world's largest enterprises, service providers, government agencies, and critical industries. As AI and automation initiatives accelerate, the inability to precisely know how these networks behave across locations, data centers and clouds creates significant operational, security and compliance risk.
Today's complex hybrid IT estates are too large and too dynamic to rationalize with manual processes or legacy tools. Technology leaders choose Forward Enterprise because it provides the industry's only mathematically accurate model of network behavior, giving teams the clarity they need to eliminate blind spots, verify intent, enforce security and operate with confidence at scale. The platform enables organizations to prevent disruptions, accelerate decision-making, and maintain the resilient infrastructure required for modern digital and AI-driven initiatives.
"We started Forward Networks because networks, including hybrid and multicloud, had grown too complex for manual processes or traditional tools to understand," said David Erickson, CEO and co-founder of Forward Networks. "Our customers run connected environments that are critical to their organization's success, and they need a precise way to know how those networks behave at all times. This year's growth, both from new customers and expanded adoption, shows how essential that capability has become. As organizations advance AI and automation in 2026, we remain focused on delivering the mathematical accuracy required to operate with confidence."
The company achieved several key milestones in FY2025, including:
- International expansion, including a new office in Japan, continued growth across Europe, and nearly doubling engineering presence in India
- Proven across the world's largest and most demanding networks, including customer environments exceeding 50,000 mathematically modeled devices in a single Forward Enterprise instance
- Completion of over 2 million path searches, saving an estimated 950 years of manual effort
FY2025 Marked by Record ARR and Broad-Based Growth
- Thirty percent increase in new financial services and technology customers
- Triple-digit growth in the media and entertainment sector
2025 Product Advancements Improve Security Posture and Simplify Compliance
In 2025, Forward Networks delivered targeted product enhancements enabling customers to strengthen security posture, simplify compliance and operate complex networks with greater confidence. These updates advanced the network digital twin across security, discovery, analysis and compliance workflows, including:
- Streamlined vulnerability management experience with CISA KEV integration to help teams prioritize actively exploited threats
- Expanded discovery and analysis of all network-edge endpoints through deeper integration with the Network Query Engine (NQE) feature
- Simplified Compliance and audit response through new historical insights, including configuration history and NQE History
Together, these innovations empower customers to understand network behavior, assess risk and manage security and compliance with greater accuracy and efficiency.
Investing in Senior Leadership to Drive Growth and Scale
Forward Networks strengthened its leadership team in 2025 with the appointments of Sanjay Mehta as chief marketing officer and Bobby Condon as chief revenue officer. Mehta brings experience from Splunk's hypergrowth years through its IPO and beyond, along with building ThousandEyes from an early-stage company into a category leader that was acquired by Cisco and continued to scale rapidly inside the business. Condon led sales at Fastly during the revenue surge that supported its successful IPO and previously helped scale Dyn ahead of its acquisition by Oracle.
2025 Award Recognition
Forward Networks received several industry recognitions in 2025 for innovation, leadership and workplace culture, including:
- Fortune Great Place To Work®-Certified™" as a best workplace in technology, medium-sized business and in the Bay Area
- CEO and co-founder David Erickson named a finalist in EY Entrepreneur of the Year® 2025
- Co-founder Nikhil Handigol named to the Silicon Valley Business Journal's 2025 40-Under-40 list
- Named "Outperformer" in GigaOm® Network Validation and Network Observability Radar Reports
Erickson concluded, "2026 will usher in a new era of network operations as digital twin technology becomes essential for managing complex hybrid environments. Operating complex networks without a clear, verifiable understanding of how they behave across sites, data centers, and clouds is no longer sustainable. Forward Networks is committed to providing the mathematical accuracy that will permanently redefine how IT departments approach network operations and security."
Learn more about what's next for Forward Network at www.forwardnetworks.com/ai
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks created the world's first network digital twin, transforming how organizations manage and secure their networks. Customers include global leaders such as Goldman Sachs, PayPal, S&P Global, IBM, and Dell, as well as other Fortune 500 enterprises, fast-growing companies, and government agencies.
The company's software creates a mathematically precise model of the production network, giving IT teams unmatched visibility, verification, and agility across multi-vendor environments and every major cloud, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. According to a recent IDC report, the average Forward Networks customer experiences US$14.2M in annual benefits through improved efficiency and security.
Trusted by Fortune 100 enterprises and federal agencies, Forward Networks helps organizations reduce risk, ensure compliance, and prepare their networks for the demands of AI and the next wave of digital transformation. Founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D.s, Forward Networks is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and backed by leading investors including MSD Partners, Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, Section 32, Omega Venture Partners, and A. Capital. For more information, visit www.forwardnetworks.com.
For Forward Networks
Dustin Rausa, Guyer Group
[email protected]
Dawn Slusher, Forward Networks
[email protected]
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