Team8 Raises $365M to Fuel AI-Native Cybersecurity Ventures
Israeli venture capital firm Team8 has closed $365 million in fresh capital, bringing its total assets under management to roughly $2 billion since its 2014 founding. According to the firm, $265 million is earmarked for Team8 Capital's third fund, while the remaining $100 million will be deployed as follow-on investments into the most promising companies in its existing portfolio. Team8 uses a venture-creation model to co-found and incubate early-stage enterprise startups spanning cybersecurity, AI, fintech, and digital health, pairing strategic capital with operational support and go-to-market assistance.
Team8's cybersecurity track record includes prominent portfolio exits such as Talon, Dig, and Koi, all of which were acquired by Palo Alto Networks. This year's newly funded security companies include Frame Security, Act Security, Mate Security, Jazz, Fig Security, Astelia, and Lema AI, reflecting Team8's continued conviction that the most defensible enterprise value will sit on top of, rather than beneath, emerging AI stacks. As these startups scale, defenders and CISOs evaluating their own external attack surface can run quick hygiene checks with tools like an SSL/TLS checker or a port scanner to baseline exposure.
Managing Partner Sarit Firon framed the firm's AI thesis around durability rather than novelty. "As AI capabilities continue to evolve at a pace none of us has seen before, competitive advantage won't come from the model underneath a product – it will come from solving fundamental enterprise problems that stay relevant across technology cycles," Firon said, adding that Team8's enterprise "Village" communities, recruiting apparatus, and dedicated AI teams give founders an edge competitors cannot replicate. The bet aligns with broader market momentum, as evidenced by peer rounds this quarter including Mindgard's $30 million raise for AI system protection, Corma's $60 million defensive cybersecurity AI round, and Oligo's $60 million for runtime application security.
For enterprises evaluating AI-native security tooling, due diligence should extend beyond vendor pitch decks to infrastructure fundamentals. Security teams onboarding any new platform can verify their own posture with a privacy checkup and confirm credential hygiene for the accounts that will manage these deployments via a password checker. As capital continues pouring into the AI-security intersection, the enterprises most likely to benefit will be those that treat third-party vetting as a continuous discipline rather than a checkbox exercise.