Blackstone leads investment in secretive Israeli cybersecurity firm fighting AI traffic threat
Huskeys, founded in 2025 by IDF’s Unit 8200 alumni Itai Gafni (CEO) and Roy Weisfeld (CTO), emerged from stealth five months ago and has investments from the world’s largest alternative asset manager.
Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, led a $27 million investment round in Israeli cybersecurity startup Huskeys, the company announced on Wednesday. Founded in 2025 by former IDF Unit 8200 members Itai Gafni (CEO) and Roy Weisfeld (CTO), Huskeys specializes in mitigating the risks posed by AI-generated internet traffic.
As per estimates, 70% of the internet traffic will be produced by AI agents by 2027, necessitating the differentiation between legitimate customers utilizing agents and malicious attacks. Gafni emphasized that "Artificial Intelligence has altered how the internet operates, presenting significant opportunities along with new security risks and potential revenue loss."
The company's solution, Virtual Patching, enables Huskeys to promptly identify and respond to AI agents attempting to breach a system within minutes, while its development team works on fixing the vulnerability after the situation is under control. Moreover, Huskeys is developing an intelligent platform that consolidates all of its clients' security solutions and products, allowing for swift monitoring and response.
Blackstone's CISO, Adam Fletcher, stated that the investment represents the firm's first Early-Stage cybersecurity venture, alongside strategic investments from Okta and Zscaler. Notable investors include Skinos Ventures and Merlin Ventures, with senior executives from major tech companies such as Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Intel, Check Point, AWS, Microsoft, and Google also participating in the company.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post Tech & Start-Ups's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
