{"id":180887,"date":"2026-01-23T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/ai-cybersecurity-firm-becomes-israels-latest-unicorn\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T07:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:40:09","slug":"ai-cybersecurity-firm-becomes-israels-latest-unicorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/ai-cybersecurity-firm-becomes-israels-latest-unicorn\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-cybersecurity firm becomes Israel&#8217;s latest unicorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-884326\">AI-cybersecurity firm becomes Israel&#8217;s latest unicorn<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-884326\">https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-884326<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-01-23 07:22:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.jpost.com\">www.jpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Author: <a href=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p> Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. A cybersecurity company became Israel\u2019s latest unicorn after raising $140 million in a Series D funding round, which valued the company at $1.2 billion.Torq, a cybersecurity startup specializing in managing security operations through autonomous artificial intelligence agents, raised funding from Merlin Ventures, Israeli newssite Calcalist reported.The round raised $332 million and included participation from Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenfield Partners, Evolution Equity Partners, Notable Capital, and JPMorgan Private Bank.\u201cThis funding accelerates our mission to define and dominate the AI SOC (Security Operations Center) market. We are moving far beyond the constraints of legacy SOAR and SIEM, harnessing the Agentic AI Era to deliver outcomes our customers rely on,\u201d CEO and co-founder Ofer Smadari told Calcalist.\u201cWe have achieved tremendous revenue growth, with Fortune 100 customers adopting our AI Agents in their SOCs for everything from investigation to response,\u201d he added.Worldwide expansion of AI focused cybersecurity firmCurrently, Torq employs more than 350 people worldwide, with offices in New York, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, London, Japan, and Germany. This new funding round aims to allow the hiring of up to 200 new employees.In terms of revenue, the company reported approximately 300% growth in 2025, driven mainly by large enterprises adopting the platform to manage security tasks using AI agents.Among their clients are Marriott, PepsiCo, Procter &#038; Gamble, Siemens, Uber, and Virgin Atlantic, and the company expects to expand into the public sector in the short term.\u201cOur partnership with Merlin Ventures is the definitive signal that Torq is now ready to scale this massive customer success into the high-stakes Federal and Public Sector markets,\u201d said Smadari.Torq was founded in 2020 by Smadari, Leonid Belkind (CTO), and Eldad Livni (CINO), all of whom are veterans in the cybersecurity and hi-tech sectors.\u201cTorq is redefining security operations,\u201d said Shay Michel, managing partner at Merlin Ventures.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019ve fused automation and human judgment into a new AI SOC Platform built for asymmetric threats and real-world scale. This is why Merlin is leading the investment,&#8221; he added.\u201cOur focus now is speed, accelerating go-to-market, expanding across commercial and government markets, and building the next global category leader in AI security operations.\u201d<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI-cybersecurity firm becomes Israel&#8217;s latest unicorn https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-884326 Publish Date: 2026-01-23 07:22:00 Source Domain: www.jpost.com Author:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":180888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/q_auto\/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_720,w_1280\/674526","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24],"class_list":["post-180887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180889,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180887\/revisions\/180889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}