From massive funding rounds producing new Unicorns left-and-right, leading to an increase in company valuations, watching Israeli high-tech break new records has become a standard sight over the last six months. Though, after a year when early-stage startups received the smallest piece of the fundraising pie, it seems that the massive amounts of capital have started to seep down to new and young startups.
Israeli startup Talon Cyber Security recently announced a massive Seed round, totaling $26 million, which according to CrunchBase, puts it as the highest Seed funding in Israeli high-tech history.
A couple veteran entrepreneurs
Talon was founded just two months ago, in February 2021. The company’s initial team includes a few experienced entrepreneurs, who have sold companies in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and cyber experts. Like most early-stage cyber startups, especially ones just emerging from stealth, the company refused to reveal too many details about its product and methods, explaining instead that it’s developing a “new generation of cyber solutions, adjusted to handle security gaps and provide complete visibility for data security managers.”
The company reports that these gaps are created when companies try to integrate traditional security solutions on modern models, for example, how the new distributed and hybrid workforce models use cloud infrastructure. Unlike popular zero-trust or VPN solutions, the company says that its technology is “multi-dimensional”, turning vulnerabilities into “defense points against cyber threats, simply, and without compromising user privacy.”
Behind Talon are two veteran entrepreneurs popular amongst the Israeli cyber scene: CEO Ofer Ben-Noon, who founded automotive cyber company Argus in 2013, which was then acquired 4 years later by German giant Continental for close to $430 million; and CTO Ohad Bobrov, who founded mobile device cyber firm Lacoon in 2011, also acquired 4 years later, but by Check Point for $100 million. Talon’s $26 million Seed round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Team8 Capital, with participation from leading cyber Angels. The company noted that the funds will be used to advance product development and expand the Israeli R&D team’s roster.