NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cloud-security firm Netskope said on Tuesday it has raised $169 million in a deal that will help fund global expansion and pushed its valuation over $1 billion.

Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Beri, who last year raised $100 million and said he would never again seek funding, said he would use the proceeds to expand sales, research and development and data centers.

“We initially didn’t set out to raise a new round, but in conversations with our investors, we realized we could double down on scaling and supporting our ambitious global growth plans even faster with additional investment,” he said.

Beri said he wants the company to remain independent.

Netskope has raised $400 million since 2013 through six funding rounds, according to Crunchbase.

Netskope helps secure Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud environments, in addition to web-based software from companies including Dropbox Inc, Salesforce.com Inc and Slack.