Crediting his wife and co-founder Jyoti Chaudhry for the $17 billion cybersecurity empire they built together, Zscaler ZS CEO Jay Chaudhry told CNBC in an interview last month, "Without her, none of this would've happened." The buildup began nearly 30 years ago.
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Spouses Turn Risks Into Returns
The Chaudhrys in 1996 invested $500,000 of their savings to launch SecureIT in Atlanta. VeriSign in 1998 acquired the company in a $69 million all-stock deal.
"She comes from a strong finance background, and I come from engineering," Chaudhry told CNBC, adding he never handled incorporation papers or payroll.
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The windfall financed three more startups—CoreHarbor, CipherTrust, and AirDefense—launched between 2000 and 2008. Motorola in 2008 acquired AirDefense to expand wireless-intrusion tools.
"Nothing significant gets done by an individual person," Chaudhry told CNBC.
The pair in late 2008 founded Zscaler in a Palo Alto loft, betting that cloud delivery would replace appliance firewalls. Today the platform protects federal agencies and thousands of enterprises.
Zscaler in late May reported that its fiscal Q3 revenue for the three months ended April 30 was $678 million, up 23% from the prior-year period. Its shares have risen 60% since the start of this year.
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Zscaler's March AI-risk brief warned of a 36-fold jump in AI-related cloud traffic year over year, highlighting the rapid expansion of enterprise AI adoption and prompting heightened attention to securing emerging threat surfaces.
The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2025 VPN Risk Report, released April 10, found that 65% of organizations plan to retire their VPNs within 12 months, while 81% aim to implement Zero Trust strategies. The report also notes that 92% of security leaders are concerned about ransomware threats stemming from VPN vulnerabilities.
Forbes put Chaudhry's net worth at roughly $17.8 billion. Yet personal finances remain delegated. "I'm a risk taker," he told CNBC. "She's a lot more conservative. If I get excited, I'm ready to jump; she can pull me back."
Only 18% of first-time founders ever reach profitability, Exploding Topics reported last month, underscoring why Chaudhry touts balanced teams. "You want to do a great startup, get your spouse involved as a partner," he said.
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