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Heavyweight Funding Wave Reinvigorates Israeli Deep Tech

Top-tier venture capital backs local founders with massive seed and early-stage rounds in cyber, defense, and neural AI.

Signalpoint TeamBrief

Startup

Oak's massive seed round proves top-tier global venture capital remains highly eager to back veteran founders — cementing AI-native identity as the next major cyber battleground.

BackgroundShai Morag previously founded and successfully exited cybersecurity startups Ermetic and Secdo before co-founding Oak. Traditional enterprise access management relies on static rules that fail to track human and machine behaviors across complex cloud networks.

Points
  1. The $60 million seed round stands as one of the largest early-stage investments in the history of the Israeli cybersecurity sector, signaling robust investor appetite for premium security architecture.
  2. Co-founders CEO Shai Morag and CPO Tal Marom secured heavy backing from top-tier firms Greylock, Accel, and CRV, allowing the company to accelerate its engineering hiring locally.
  3. Oak's system dynamically maps and unifies human and machine permissions across public clouds in real time, preventing unauthorized lateral movement during network breaches.
SourcesCTech: After three cyber exits, Shai Morag raises $60 million to reinvent enterprise identity (opens in new tab)

Startup

Hemispheric is applying advanced foundation models to non-invasive brain data — attempting to turn subjective psychiatric diagnoses into objective, biology-driven clinical metrics.

BackgroundCo-founder Gidi Littwin previously co-invented Apple's Face ID technology after selling facial-recognition startup RealFace to Apple in 2017. Clinical tracking of psychiatric and central nervous system conditions historically relied on subjective interviews rather than biological metrics.

Points
  1. The startup secured $52 million across pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds from Hanaco, L Catterton, and Protocol Labs, demonstrating broad venture backing for neural-AI technologies.
  2. Hemispheric trained its 6-billion-parameter Descartes foundation model on over 250,000 hours of non-invasive EEG data, achieving unprecedented mapping of electrical brain activity against behavioral inputs.
  3. The technology targets early diagnostics for severe conditions like PTSD, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's, which could allow clinicians to measure treatment efficacy objectively for the first time.
SourcesCTech: After six years in stealth, Hemispheric emerges with $52 million to build a foundation AI model for the human brain (opens in new tab)TNW: A Face ID pioneer raised $52M to read the brain like a blood test (opens in new tab)

Startup

Sequoia's backing of Sable signals intense venture conviction in autonomous AI agents — highlighting a shift toward replacing human customer onboarding and sales workflows entirely.

BackgroundSable's flagship agent, Aidan, operates inside shared browser windows to execute tasks alongside humans. Co-founder Nim Ravid previously built the high-profile 'Survived to Tell' initiative, which preserves the testimonies of October 7 survivors.

Points
  1. The $45 million funding round drew participation from BoxGroup, SV Angel, and founders of major technology companies, helping fuel Sable's expansion in both local and international markets.
  2. Sable's agent Aidan autonomously navigates live product demonstrations, onboarding steps, and complex enterprise software integrations, aiming to reduce human customer-support burdens.
  3. The company plans to double its engineering headcount in Israel, leveraging local expertise in deep-tech and autonomous AI agent architectures to refine its multi-modal models.
SourcesCTech: Sequoia leads $45 million bet on Israeli entrepreneur building the next generation of AI employees (opens in new tab)TNW: Sable raised $45 million from Sequoia to build an AI that runs product demos instead of humans (opens in new tab)

Startup

Architects of Israel's Iron Dome are leveraging their military experience to build mobile defenses — aiming to commercialize solutions that neutralize autonomous drone swarms on the battlefield.

BackgroundCheap, autonomous drone swarms have altered modern warfare by overwhelming expensive air defense systems and threatening critical infrastructure. Existing jamming systems struggle against drones that navigate autonomously without GPS or radio communication.

Points
  1. The seed round was co-led by UP.Partners and Khosla Ventures, alongside local and international investors including Fusion VC, signaling growing commercial interest in dual-use defense tech.
  2. Skapion was co-founded by Brig. Gen. Pini Yungman, a key architect of Israel's multi-tier missile defense, and former XTEND executive Ido Bar-On to commercialize battle-tested designs.
  3. The company is building a mobile, end-to-end defense system that operates without cloud connectivity, protecting remote civilian or military sites from spoofing and hacking.
SourcesThe Jerusalem Post: Israeli startup to build world's first 'Iron Dome for drone swarms' (opens in new tab)CTech: A startup led by Israeli air-defense veterans raises $36 million to tackle the growing threat of drone swarms (opens in new tab)

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