Team8 occupies a unusual position in Israeli tech: it is part venture-creation foundry, part venture-capital fund. Founded in 2014 by veterans of Israel's elite Unit 8200 intelligence unit — including Nadav Zafrir, Liran Grinberg and Israel Grinberg, later joined by managing partners Yuval Shachar, Sarit Firon and Rakefet Russak Aminoach — the firm runs two lanes side by side: a Venture Creation model that ideates, validates and builds companies in-house, and a Capital model that invests in promising early-stage startups in its domains.
The domains are fixed: cybersecurity, fintech, data and AI, and digital health, with a growing interest in enterprise infrastructure. The firm describes itself as building where those domains intersect. It operates from Tel Aviv and New York, and its venture fund reports over $1 billion in assets under management. Its backing is distinctive — a syndicate of corporate LPs that reads like a who's who of global industry, including Microsoft, Walmart, Cisco, Barclays, Moody's, SoftBank, Airbus, Temasek, Qualcomm and Nokia. Those corporates double as design partners, customers and acquirers for portfolio companies.
The built portfolio is the story. Team8 created Claroty, the operational-technology security platform that exited stealth with $32 million from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners; Illusive Networks, the deception-based threat-detection company; Sygnia, the military-grade incident-response firm acquired in a deal reported at $250 million; Hysolate; and Portshift. In 2025 the foundry's Venture Creation Fund launched Charm Security, an AI-powered scam-prevention platform, with $8 million in seed funding — evidence the company-building engine is still running.
Alongside creation, Team8 Capital invests in external early-stage companies in its sectors. And the firm runs a powerful convening programme: the annual Team8 CISO Summit, which gathers more than 130 global CISOs and cyber leaders in Tel Aviv, culminating in Rethink: Optimism, the official opening event of Tel Aviv University's Cyber Week — a pipeline of customers, talent and validation that founders inside the ecosystem can tap.
Founders who partner with Team8 get something rare in venture: a village of world-class operators and former C-level executives embedded in the build process, plus corporate-backed distribution from day one. There are no published startup credit bundles; the perk is the platform — talent, validation, customers and follow-on capital engineered into the model.
Why it matters for founders
If you are building in cyber, fintech, data/AI or digital health and want a co-founding partner rather than a cheque-writer, Team8 is the most institutionally serious option in Israel. Its corporate LP bench — Microsoft, Walmart, Moody's and others — turns into customers and validation; the trade is that its model is thesis-driven, so your company must sit squarely in its domains.