By Steven Scheer
TEL AVIV, June 18 (Reuters) - Israeli AI cybersecurity startup Dream, co-founded by the former head of spyware firm NSO Group, said it raised $260 million in a private funding round, bringing its valuation to $3 billion.
Co-founder Shalev Hulio, who cut ties with NSO in 2022 after the company was accused by Meta of targeting WhatsApp and its users, went on to launch Dream in 2023. Hulio co-founded NSO in 2010 and previously served as its CEO.
Unlike NSO, which licensed its Pegasus software
to sovereign states and law enforcement to fight terrorism and serious crime, Dream focuses on protecting governments and critical infrastructure - such as water, oil and gas facilities - from cyber attacks. It unveiled its sovereign AI platform Atlas on Wednesday.
Hulio said Dream had some $300 million in sales to governments across Europe, the Middle East - including Gulf countries - and Asia last year. "We managed to prevent huge cyber attacks from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea," he told Reuters.
Dream, which has offices in Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Vienna with a total of 350 employees, plans to use the funds to accelerate deployment of its sovereign AI and national cyber defense platforms across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and into the Americas.
"Everybody understands that the next cyber war is actually going to be AI versus AI," Hulio said.
"We built an AI solution that knows how to prevent cyber attacks created by humans, but also cyberattacks created by AI."
Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, a co-founder of Dream, said given global geopolitical tensions, "allies sometimes don't know if they will be able to trust their allies forever, so there's a big need for sovereignty and being more independent."
The funding round was co-led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with participation from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners and other global investors, Dream said.
"Eventually we will go public," Hulio said. "Our goal is to become a big company, a successful company and a public company."
(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Elaine Hardcastle)
