Israeli cybersecurity startup Torq will announce on Sunday that it has closed a $140 million funding round, raising its valuation to $1.2 billion.
Based in Tel Aviv, Torq provides an autonomous security operations platform that the company says it built from the ground up using artificial intelligence. Notably, the platform enables organizations to automate repetitive security tasks through AI-driven agents, such as processing massive volumes of security alerts. As a result, cybersecurity teams can redirect their attention toward more complex and high-risk threats.
“You don’t want your team to have a huge backlog and using your team just to do the simple things while you can automate everything,” said Ofer Smadari, Torq’s chief executive officer and co-founder.
Earlier it was reported that Torq had achieved unicorn status through a new funding round, although the report did not disclose the investment amount.
Torq launched operations in 2020; however, the company strategically realigned its product direction a few years later following the rapid emergence of generative AI, according to Smadari.
“By the end of 2022, ChatGPT came into our lives, and we saw the opportunity to start building agents and AI functionality,” he said. Furthermore, he noted that Torq rolled out its first AI agent for security operations in summer 2023. Now, he added, “You can automate and remediate everything.”
Meanwhile, Merlin Ventures led the latest funding round, while existing backers—including Evolution Equity Partners, Notable Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Venture Partners, and Greenfield Partners—also participated.
Currently, the cybersecurity startup employs more than 300 people across Israel and the United States, Smadari confirmed. Importantly, the founding team brings proven entrepreneurial experience, as Smadari and his co-founders previously launched Luminate Security in 2017 and sold it to Symantec Corp. for $250 million in under two years.
Soon after that exit, the founders established Torq in January 2020, just weeks before the Covid-19 outbreak escalated into a global pandemic.
“We said, ‘There is nothing like a big worldwide crisis to build another company,’” Smadari said.
