Israeli cybersecurity venture incubator Team8 has raised $85m in new financing from a clutch of new and returning strategic investors.
The studio has launched its second fund, which plans to build eight cybersecurity and data companies over the next five years. Its plans to raise the vehicle were reported by RegTech Analyst back in May, two years after it raised $23m for its first fund.
New investors in the vehicle include Walmart, Airbus, Softbank, Moody’s Investors Service, Dimension Data, Munich Re, Scotiabank and Barclays.
While Team8’s existing investors, including Microsoft’s venture-capital arm M-12, Cisco, Nokia, Innovation Endeavors, Bessemer Venture Partners and Temasek have also joined in.
Team8 said its coalition of partners will focus on cybersecurity as a catalyst for growth, infrastructure that is designed to be resilient and data science as an enabler of business growth.
Following their experience in the Israeli Defense Force’s intelligence unit 8200 and their work in the private sector, Nadav Zafrir, Israel Grimberg, and Liran Grinberg co-founded the business in 2015.
Team8 markets itself as Israel’s leading cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform. Its mission is to develop disruptive companies ‘that challenge the biggest problems in cybersecurity and give organisations the advantage over cyber attackers’ according to its website.
After an entrepreneur or security expert signs on, the team acts as an incubator, providing them with the logistics of starting a new business.
The entrepreneurs that Team8 decides to work are provided with funding, technical guidance, go-to-business planning and the tools for a start-up to get off the ground.
Companies investing into Team8 will be required to contribute insights from their Chief Information, Technology, Data and Security Officer to identify problems, develop solutions, and work on sales and marketing services for these new businesses.
Earlier this month, Temasek, also a Team8 investor, acquired Sygnia, a company from the venture studio’s portfolio that had only emerged from stealth a year ago, for $250m.
Launched in 2015, Sygnia works with organisations to proactively build their cyber resilience and to respond and defeat attacks within their networks. The company, which has offices in Tel Aviv and New York, it is a trusted advisor and service provider of IT and security teams, senior managements and boards of top organizations, including Fortune 100 companies.
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