This year has seen several big fundraising announcements by Israeli companies, despite the tough economic situation following the war with Hamas. Here we analyze some of the most significant ones.
Wiz Sector: Cyber | Founded: 2020 | Founders: Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik | Funding: $1.9B from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Thrive Capital, Greylock, Wellington Management, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, Howard Schultz, Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Cloud security decacorn Wiz announced in May that it had raised $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation, bringing the company's total funding to $1.9 billion. The Wiz platform scans every layer of the cloud to provide complete visibility, using security graph context to cut through the noise and surface the risks that matter most, allowing customers to quickly identify, prioritize, and eliminate risks across their cloud.
Wiz expanded its cloud security platform (CSPM and CNAPP) in 2022 to add modules for container and Kubernetes security, data security posture management (DSPM), and cloud detection and response (CDR) to help organizations further consolidate their cloud security programs onto a single platform. Wiz was founded in March 2020 by Rappaport, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP of product Yinon Costica, and VP of R&D Roy Reznik. The funding round, the largest in Israeli tech history, comes on the heels of the company's acquisition of Israeli startup Gem Security, a cloud detection and response (CDR) provider.
Axonius Sector: Cyber | Founded: 2017 | Founders: Dean Sysman, Ofri Shur, Avidor Bartov | Funding: $595M from Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Stripes
Axonius, which develops cybersecurity asset management and SaaS management solutions, announced in March that it had secured $200 million in an expansion Series E funding round led by Accel and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Stripes.
Founded in New York in 2017 by Israelis Dean Sisman (CEO), Ofri Shour (CTO) and Avidor Bartov (Chief Architect), Axonius' software helps IT and security teams govern IT environments, including devices, users, software and cloud services, to mitigate threats and manage security risks. The startup expects to exceed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023, and its customer base currently includes more than a dozen global Fortune 500 organizations, including Schneider Electric, News Corp and Anheuser-Busch InBev. The company also supports four of the five major services of the US Department of Defense.
Island Sector: Cyber | Founded: 2020 | Founders: Mike Fey and Dan Amiga | Funding: $487M from Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Stripes, Georgian, and Prysm Capital.
Island, a cybersecurity startup developing a secure enterprise browser, raised $175 million in a Series D funding round in April, doubling its valuation to $3 billion. Island plans to raise $100 million in a Series C in 2023, raising its valuation to $1.5 billion and bringing its total funding to date to $487 million.
Island Enterprise Browser aims to provide enterprises with advanced security, IT and network control, data protection, application access and advanced productivity features in the browsing experience. With Island Enterprise Browser, security teams have complete control over the last mile, from basic protections like copy, paste, download, upload and screenshot capture to more advanced security demands like data redaction, watermarking and multi-factor authentication insertion.
WEKA Sector: AI | Founded: 2013 | Founders: Liran Zvibel, Omri Palmon, Maor Ben Dayan | Funding: $375M from Valor Equity Partners, Generation Investment Management, NVIDIA, Atreides Management, 10D, Hitachi Ventures, Ibex Investors, Key1 Capital, Lumir Ventures, MoreTech Ventures, and Qualcomm Ventures
AI-native data platform WekaIO (WEKA) raised $140 million in a Series E funding round in May. The financing was a combination of primary and secondary transactions led by the company's previous investor, Valor Equity Partners. WEKA has developed a data platform for AI infrastructure with a cloud and AI-native architecture that provides data portability across on-premise, cloud and edge environments.
The round gives WEKA a post-money valuation of $1.6 billion, up from $750 million in its previous funding round in November 2022. The secondary portion of the round is estimated at $40 million, giving the company net proceeds of approximately $100 million. To date, the company has raised approximately $375 million. The investment comes at a time of unprecedented business growth for the company, with the WEKA data platform powering more than 300 of the world's largest AI and GPU deployments.
Silverfort Sector: Identity Security | Founded: 2016 | Founders: Hed Kovetz, Matan Fattal, Yaron Kassner | Funding: $222M from Brighton Park Capital (BPC), Acrew Capital, Greenfield Partners, Citi Ventures, General Motors Ventures, Maor Investments, Vintage Investment Partners, and Singtel Innov8.
Silverfort, which develops an identity security platform, announced it raised $116 million in Series D funding in January, bringing its total funding to $222 million. The company was founded in 2016 by former Israeli Army Unit 8200 officers Kobetz, Matan Fattal and Yaron Kasner.
Silverfort's platform extends modern identity security to all enterprise resources, on-premise and in the cloud. It provides multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), identity security posture management (ISPM), and real-time protection for privileged users and service accounts. Silverfort connects to an organization's entire identity infrastructure in hours.
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