Israeli venture firm Team8 has raised $365 million in new capital to invest in the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) companies. The new capital includes $265m. for Team8 Capital’s third fund and over $100m earmarked for follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies.
The fund is led by managing partners Sarit Firon and Liran Grinberg, alongside partners Ori Barzilay and Hadar Siterman. It will focus primarily on Seed and Series A companies developing AI-native technologies across cybersecurity, software infrastructure, fintech, and digital health.
The latest fundraising brings Team8’s total assets under management to nearly $2b. across eight funds launched since the firm was founded in 2014.
Team8 targets AI-native companies as enterprise adoption accelerates
The fund has already recorded an exit before reaching its final close. In February, Palo Alto Networks reported an agreement to acquire Israeli cybersecurity start-up Koi Security in a deal valued at approximately $400m.
Team8 said the new fund comes at a critical moment for enterprises, as the rapid development of generative and agentic AI is forcing companies to rethink their products, workflows, infrastructure, and security models.
The latest fundraising comes as Israeli cybersecurity and defense-tech companies continue to attract significant interest from global investors and strategic buyers, particularly in areas where the rapid adoption of AI is creating new security vulnerabilities and infrastructure requirements.
Companies are increasingly deploying AI agents capable of carrying out tasks autonomously, but many organizations are doing that before they have established adequate visibility, governance, or security controls.
AI agents create new security challenges for companies
According to a survey presented at Team8’s latest CISO Village Summit, 97% of the 111 security leaders surveyed said their organizations had already begun adopting AI agents, and 80% were already running them in production. In parallel, respondents rated their confidence in their ability to secure AI at just 2.32 out of five.
“Agentic AI has become one of the most urgent operational and security challenges facing enterprises,” the firm said.
For chief information security officers (CISOs), chief information officers (CIOs), and others, the rapid emergence of agentic AI is creating a new category of operational and security risks.
“AI is fundamentally rewriting the economics of company building,” Firon said. “Developing breakthrough technology has never been easier; building a company that endures has never been harder.”
Firon said Team8 believes that as AI capabilities evolve “at a pace none of us have seen before,” the strongest companies will not necessarily be those with the most advanced underlying models, but those aimed at solving fundamental enterprise problems that remain relevant as the technology changes.
“That's exactly where we believe the next generation of category-defining, AI-native companies will be built, and it's exactly where our enterprise Village communities and our go-to-market, recruiting, and AI teams give founders an edge nobody else can offer,” she added.
New fund focuses on AI infrastructure and cybersecurity
The firm plans to invest its new capital in what it views as foundational layers of the AI ecosystem, particularly AI infrastructure, orchestration, identity, data, and cybersecurity.
Grinberg said portfolio companies will also have access to its broader company-building platform, including connections to major enterprises, market validation, and assistance with company formation, recruiting, go-to-market strategy, and growth.
“We built this firm on the belief that broad and deep context, not capital, is the scarcest resource at the earliest stage of a company's life,” he said.
“As AI accelerates change and creates real uncertainty across every enterprise, we're more convinced than ever that the biggest opportunities sit in the infrastructure and cybersecurity layers that let enterprises adopt this technology with confidence, and we couldn't be more excited to back the next generation of AI-native founders building exactly that.”
Founded in 2014, Team8 operates as both an early-stage investment firm and a company builder. Its focus spans cybersecurity, enterprise, and AI infrastructure, along with fintech and digital health. The firm has more than 90 employees involved in building companies, and it maintains a network of hundreds of enterprise executives from Fortune 500 and other global companies.