There was a shock exit by early stage Israeli firm Apex Safety, which was solely based two years in the past and has raised $7 million from Sequoia, Index and OpenAI founder Sam Altman. The AI cybersecurity firm, which was based by CEO Matan Derman and CPO Tomer Avni, has been acquired by US cybersecurity firm Tenable for about $100 million, sources inform “Globes” – a good-looking return for buyers on an organization which may have had the potential to develop a lot bigger.
Primarily based within the Sarona Azrieli tower in Tel Aviv, Apex Safety is a part of a brand new technology of cybersecurity, which focuses on modular safety, AI and stopping manipulation of fashions via defective coaching. Since language fashions broke into public consciousness and frequent use in 2022, hackers have discovered to take advantage of AI fashions for their very own functions via what is called a “jail break” – convincing the chatbot that the person is the corporate’s CFO, for instance, and making it expose delicate information from the corporate’s servers; others feed the mannequin whereas coaching it with malicious data or hyperlinks to malicious web sites.
In a profile article about Apex revealed in Globes final yr, the entrepreneurs talked concerning the expectation of “turning into a knowledge safety big within the discipline of AI” and spoke of the inspiration they obtained from Wiz. At present, it seems that the dream was extra short-term, though the return on funding was fairly excessive even for Altman himself. So far as is thought, that is the one cybersecurity firm within the discipline of AI that Altman has invested in as he continues his personal funding profession as an angel investor in parallel together with his tenure as CEO of OpenAI – apparently with none connection between the 2.
Assembly with Altman
Derman has beforehand recounted about how he and Avni went to the workplace of Sam Altman. “We sought a connection to him, and we bought it,” says Derman. “We assumed that the AI market can be scorching and we needed the very best coaches on our bench. Once we met him, the market was speaking about duty within the discipline of AI and security, and the large AI firms wanted massive cybersecurity firms to safe using the sector.” Altman doesn’t sit on the corporate’s board of administrators, however serves as an angel investor with whom they seek the advice of every so often.
The corporate is aware of the best way to take care of most closed fashions: Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and most of OpenAI’s fashions, and has additionally begun making ready to work with open fashions reminiscent of Meta’s Llama, in addition to managing processes for complying with regulatory guidelines and firm insurance policies for every mannequin that’s related and every use that’s fabricated from it. Later, they even consider that they’ll be capable of tackle the issue of hallucinations and neutralize incorrect and biased data.
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Derman served within the IDF Intelligence Division for 18 years, and commanded one of many prestigious secret sections accountable. Lots of his subordinates and people who served alongside him have lengthy since been launched, based firms and turn into multi-millionaires.
No response to this report has but been forthcoming.
Revealed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on Could 29, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.
