Blackstone leads $27 million investment in Israeli cyber startup Huskeys
Huskeys is developing an agentic AI layer for web application firewalls, arguing that security infrastructure built decades ago needs to be redesigned for a world in which AI agents increasingly act online.
Israeli cybersecurity company Huskeys has raised $27 million, bringing its total funding to $35 million. The round was led by U.S. investment giant Blackstone. Skinos Ventures, Shlomo Kramer's investment fund Yishay Yovel, the investment funds of cybersecurity companies Okta and Zscaler, and Merlin Ventures also participated.
Senior figures from the global cybersecurity industry, including executives from Google, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare, Check Point, AWS and Intel, also participated in the round. Other private investors include actor and comedian Assi Cohen and mentalist Lior Suchard, who also serves as an adviser to the company.
The investments from companies such as Okta and Zscaler are accompanied by strategic partnerships, with the companies working together to accelerate Huskeys' growth, deepen integration between different security solutions and create greater value for customers.
Huskeys operates at the web application firewall (WAF) layer, a security technology developed in Israel nearly 30 years ago in response to the need to filter traffic for individual applications as internet usage expanded. The company argues that the technology has undergone relatively little change since then and continues to operate in much the same way it did decades ago.
Huskeys is developing a platform that adds an agentic AI layer to this existing infrastructure, seeking to adapt the WAF to an internet increasingly shaped by autonomous AI agents.
The company was founded by Itai Gafni, CEO, and Roy Weissfeld, CTO, both alumni of Israel’s Unit 8200. Gafni previously led artificial intelligence initiatives within the unit, while Weissfeld worked as a security researcher focused on web security.
Since emerging from stealth, the company has expanded its business, added customers and increased its presence in international markets.
Its customers include brands such as TikTok, Legoland, Ro, Blackstone and Hugging Face, and the company says it manages internet traffic at significant scale for global organizations.
"Five months ago, we left stealth with a clear vision to build a new cybersecurity category for the AI era, which we have seen grow stronger," said Gafni, co-founder and CEO of Huskeys.
"Artificial intelligence has changed the way the internet works, and along with tremendous opportunities, it has also brought new security risks and the potential to damage organizations' revenues. We believe that in the near future, most identities operating on the internet will be autonomous agents, and organizations will need a new infrastructure that can identify, secure and manage them."
