An Israeli-Iranian founding team, $107 million, and a bet on the future of Physical AI
Former Apple engineers from Israel and Iran reunite at Lyte to tackle one of robotics’ hardest problems.
At a moment when Israel and Iran are edging yet again to open confrontation, and as Iran itself grapples with recurring waves of internal protest and repression, Lyte’s founding story reads almost like an artifact from a different era of globalization.
The Silicon Valley startup emerged from stealth last week with $107 million in aggregate funding and a sweeping ambition: to become the perception foundation for “Physical AI” - robots and autonomous systems that must operate safely in the real world.
The company was founded over four years ago by two Israelis and an Iranian, engineers whose careers converged inside Apple’s most sensitive hardware teams and who are now attempting to build shared industrial infrastructure at a time when political trust between their countries is at a low ebb.
All three founders have lived and worked in the United States for many years. Still, the symbolism is difficult to ignore.
Lyte’s CEO, Alexander Shpunt, is Israeli. He co-founded PrimeSense, the 3D-sensing company whose technology powered Microsoft’s Kinect and later became a cornerstone of Apple’s depth-sensing platform after its $350 million acquisition in 2013. Shpunt went on to serve as a Distinguished Engineer at Apple, working on perception systems used by hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. His academic training began at Tel Aviv University.
The company’s CTO, Arman Hajati, followed a very different path. Educated at the University of Tehran, he later built his career in the United States, eventually becoming a Lead System Architect and senior engineering manager at Apple. There, he worked on precisely the kind of tightly integrated sensing systems that now form the conceptual backbone of Lyte.
Completing the founding team is Yuval Gerson, another Israeli engineer who came from PrimeSense and later worked as a MEMS system architect at Apple, before becoming Lyte’s engineering fellow and vice president.
Lyte is aiming to solve a structural problem in robotics. Despite rapid advances in artificial intelligence, most robots still struggle with perception, the ability to accurately sense, interpret, and respond to complex physical environments. Today, robotics teams typically assemble perception systems from multiple vendors, spending months integrating sensors, calibrating data, and debugging failures.
Lyte’s answer is a vertically integrated approach. Its core platform, LyteVision, combines 4D sensing, RGB imaging, and motion awareness into a single system that delivers unified spatial and visual data through one connection. The company positions this as foundational infrastructure, not a robot, but the layer that allows robots of many kinds to function safely and reliably.
Lyte’s chairman is Avigdor Willenz, the Israeli semiconductor entrepreneur whose career spans several generations of foundational silicon companies. Willenz is also an investor, alongside Fidelity Management & Research Company, Atreides Management, Exor Ventures, Venture Tech Alliance, and Israeli venture firm Key1 Capital.
At CES 2026, Lyte’s technology received a Best of Innovation award in Robotics and recognition in Vehicle Tech and Advanced Mobility.
"Lyte is building at the right layer, at the right moment," said Willenz, founding investor and Chairman. "I’ve seen how foundational technologies unlock entire industries. What stands out here is the depth of the team and the discipline to solve perception as a system - where lasting value is created."
