New Israeli Fund Gets an Early Exit; $1 Billion for Anton Levy’s New Fund
Software dealmaking is so hot in Israel right now that an Israeli VC fund notched its first exit before it had even wrapped up fundraising.
Team8, which just raised $365 million to back seed and Series A companies, co-led a $48 million fundraise for Tel Aviv-based Koi late last year out of a new $265 million fund for seed and Series A startups. In April Koi, whose software aims to prevent risks from AI agents, sold to Palo Alto Networks for about $400 million.
Exits like Koi helped the firm’s managing partners, who include Sarit Firon and Liran Grinberg, raise the firm’s latest fund alongside a new $100 million vehicle for follow-on investments.
The 12-year-old firm’s limited partners—pension funds, funds of funds and family offices across the U.S. and Europe—are increasingly looking for “the best bets to make in the Israeli market” given the brisk pace of dealmaking overseas, Firon said in an interview.
The $265 million fund primarily focuses on cybersecurity, software infrastructure, fintech and digital health startups started by Israeli founders. The fund aims to lead and co-lead rounds with $5 million to $15 million checks, the pair said. Team8 manages almost $2 billion in assets across eight funds, investing in early-stage companies as well as helping incubate new ones.
It’s one of several new funds targeting Israeli entrepreneurs after landmark acquisitions of Israeli-founded startups, including Google’s $32 billion buyout of Wiz and ServiceNow’s $7.75 billion takeover of Armis. These include hardware focused Deep33 Ventures and new early stage firm SkyBeam Venture Partners. Meanwhile, Wiz-backer Cyberstarts is planning to raise a new seed fund after raising a $380 million fund for mature startups last year, we reported in June.
“Predicting or building technologies is not necessarily the hardest thing today,” Grinberg said. “But understanding the enterprise context and the demand and the challenges that enterprises face is the thing that founders are in need of the most.”
Grinberg co-founded the firm after serving in the cyber and data division of Unit 8200, the intelligence agency of the Israeli Defense Forces, and previously worked at fintech startup eToro.
Firon previously worked at Israeli VC firm Cerca Partners, after working at P-Cube, a provider of Internet protocol platforms that was acquired by Cisco in 2004, and serving as the chief financial officer at MediaMind, which was acquired by Digital Generation in 2011.