CTECH – Latest Israeli Innovation & Tech News Sept. 2026
Intel let RealSense go. Now Cognex is paying $600 million to buy it. The Haifa-based robotics company grew rapidly after its spinout 14 months ago, and its CEO says independence allowed it to pursue opportunities that would have been difficult to develop inside Intel. Read more
Cyera raises $400 million from Goldman Sachs, bringing 2026 funding to $1.4 billion. The latest investment extends Cyera’s Series G and comes as the Israeli cybersecurity company expands from data security into AI agents and non-human identities, with a valuation of more than $12 billion. Read more
Chamelio raises $26 million Series A to replace legacy legal software with AI agents. Backed by Entrée Capital, the startup is building software designed to execute routine legal workflows and escalate only the cases that require human judgment. Read more
How two 23-year-old former IDF operators plan to map the spectrum for wireless systems everywhere. Started by two childhood friends and business partners after witnessing the drone mission failures caused by unreliable spectrum data, Israeli startup Bond is building a distributed sensor network to give operators continuous visibility over the environments where their wireless systems operate. Read more
Venn acquires a16z-backed Zuma for $50 million in push to build AI layer for real estate. The Israeli-founded company is combining Zuma’s AI agents for leasing and collections with its broader platform as it approaches one million homes under management. Read more
Israel selects two funds for state-backed defense-tech investment. Adir Capital and SLING Capital will raise private capital for investments in Israeli defense companies and startups. Read more
Buildots raises $130 million at nearly $1 billion valuation as AI boom drives data center construction. The Israeli construction software company has more than quadrupled its valuation from its previous funding round and now has over 400 employees. Its AI system is increasingly being used on massive data center projects, where delays can carry particularly high financial costs. Read more
“Our next milestone will be a billion-dollar valuation”: MIND triples valuation to $300 million with $72 million Series B. MIND has raised $112 million to date and reached a $10 million annual revenue run rate just 18 months after beginning to sell its product, as demand for data loss prevention grows with the adoption of GenAI and AI agents. Read more
CHEQ CEO warns AI-powered bots could distort Israel’s next election. Guy Tytunovich says the combination of AI-generated content and increasingly sophisticated bots could make foreign and domestic influence campaigns significantly more powerful than in previous elections. Read more
Amdocs server farm was allegedly chosen as target in planned terror attack. Prosecutors say a 20-year-old spent 18 months exploring ways to attack the Ra’anana facility, including with an explosives-carrying drone. Read more
Israeli medtech company FIZE Medical raises $20 million to advance AI-guided ICU care. The Series B, co-led by Asahi Kasei Medical and Rapha Capital, will accelerate development of a platform designed to predict fluid-related risks in critically ill patients. Read more
Ondas in advanced talks to acquire Israeli defense company Nirosta Zafon for $250 million. The U.S.-listed defense group is negotiating to buy the 250-employee manufacturer that supplies major Israeli defense companies including Elbit, IAI and Rafael. Read more
An AI agent retrained itself without being told to. An experiment by Israeli cybersecurity company Irregular found that an autonomous coding agent identified a model problem, fine-tuned the model and deployed the modified version on its own. Read more
Israel’s tech exports hit a record but foreign owners are claiming more of the gains. The primary income deficit reached $15.6 billion in the first half of 2026, nearly twice the figure for all of 2025. Read more
Sayeret Matkal veterans raise $22 million to teach the world English with AI. Loora says its app has more than 15 million users and annual recurring revenue in the tens of millions of dollars. Read more
The man who helped build Palo Alto’s Cortex is leaving the company. Gonen Fink is stepping down after a decade at the cybersecurity giant, ending his tenure as head of its Israeli R&D center. Read more
Five months old, Noetive raises $41 million Seed to build AI for the physical economy. Israeli founders Amir Frenkel and Dan Barak are betting that AI’s next major frontier lies in factories, logistics operations and other physical businesses. Read more
Wiz founders Rappaport and Costica add television to their post-exit portfolio with $120 million Reshet 13 deal. The pair will take control of Reshet 13 through the Merit Fund after the Second Authority approved the ownership transfer. Read more
“AI has not changed what good engineering looks like.” Chris Jones, chief trust & security officer at Axonius, joined CTech to share his thoughts on agentic AI security, and why he thinks agentic AI’s biggest risk is exposing which engineering teams already had discipline, not creating some new kind of threat. Read more
How an Israeli engineer went from Rafael to iPhone Portrait Mode and a $300 million OpenAI exit. Ziv Attar spent years developing camera technology before Apple acquired his startup in 2015. His second company, Glass Imaging, pursued a different idea: using AI to make smaller cameras capable of producing higher-quality images. Read more
Island: “AI made it cheap to produce an answer and expensive to trust one.” Idan Revivo, Head of Security Research at Island, explains why human researchers must evolve into research engineers as part of CTech’s Security Researchers series. Read more
Why are AI’s biggest winners suddenly warning about the dangers of winning? Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk have all called for a slower pace of AI development, leaving investors to weigh genuine safety concerns against the enormous costs and valuations built into the AI boom. Read more
“The risk isn’t malice, it’s specification failure at scale.” Einat Shimoni, Chief Information Security Officer at Lusha, joined CTech to share her thoughts on agentic AI security, and why she thinks the real danger in agentic AI is agents doing exactly what they were told and not what anyone meant. Read more
Keewano raises $12 million Seed to build a new database for the age of AI agents. The Israeli startup argues that traditional databases were designed around humans asking predefined questions, not machines investigating unfamiliar patterns across billions of events. Its new system keeps data in sequence and context so AI agents can reason over it directly. Read more
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen joins Israeli quantum tech company Quantum X Labs. The former intelligence chief has been appointed president of Quantum X Labs’ Scientific Advisory Board, where he will help shape its strategy and commercialization efforts in quantum computing, sensing, cybersecurity and GPS-denied navigation. Read more
Buildots raises $130 million at nearly $1 billion valuation as AI boom drives data center construction. The Israeli construction software company has more than quadrupled its valuation from its previous funding round and now has over 400 employees. Its AI system is increasingly being used on massive data center projects, where delays can carry particularly high financial costs. Read more
Startup Nation Central shuts down Finder, its flagship database of Israeli tech, and starts looking for a buyer. Interim CEO Aviva Steinberger says the platform was becoming overshadowed by AI search tools. A source close to SNC points to a cost problem too, and says the org quietly tested a paid version before pulling the plug. Read more
Oracle begins another round of layoffs as $2.8 billion restructuring plan expands. Employees were told their positions were being eliminated as part of a “broader organizational change” and that their last working day was immediately, but Oracle has not disclosed how many workers are affected. Read more
Ondas expands into munitions with $205 million acquisition of Israeli Gate Technologies. The U.S. defense holding company is acquiring Gate and its Polish partner Bron as it expands beyond autonomous drones and robotics into electronic fuzing systems used across more than 90 weapon systems. Read more
Greece will get Israel’s air defense technology but not its source code. Israel says it will transfer know-how and work with Greek forces and companies on software and technology, while the source code for its existing systems remains outside the licensing agreement. Read more
Terra: “The researcher of the future isn’t competing with agents on speed.” Ofek Haviv, Cyber Security Researcher at Terra Security, describes how building autonomous penetration testing today is operating without a playbook as part of CTech’s Security Researchers series. Read more
