Dream, an artificial intelligence company that provides cybersecurity services to governments and critical infrastructure operators such as hospitals and utilities, has raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation.
Bain Capital Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Dovi Frances’ Group 11, Tru Arrow Partners, Abu Dhabi-based Tau Capital and venture firm Aleph, Dream co-founders Shalev Hulio and Sebastian Kurz said in an interview.
It marks an almost-sixfold jump from the roughly $190 million valuation ascribed in a November 2023 funding round, said Hulio, the chief executive officer of the Tel Aviv-based company.
Hulio, who rose to prominence as a co-founder and former CEO of NSO Group, which makes controversial spyware known as Pegasus that has been used to hack into mobile phones, co-founded Dream in January 2023 alongside Kurz, a former chancellor of Austria, and Gil Dolev.
“Cyberattacks can impose real threats to our day-to-day life,” said Hulio, referencing bank ATM outages, the vulnerability of electric grids and utilities and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021, which led to fuel shortages. “Attacks are becoming more sophisticated,” he added, noting that Dream helps its customers prepare for, detect and remediate such situations.
Dream has built a group of foundational models including a cyber language model, one for anomaly detection and a deep-learning model trained on prior cyberattacks, Hulio said. The startup will use proceeds from its latest funding round to build new models and improve existing ones, and to open offices in regions including the US and South America as its pursues new customers, the executives said. Dream currently has offices in Tel Aviv, Vienna and Abu Dhabi.
This year, Dream is targeting $100 million in annual recurring revenue and plans to double its staff, which includes data scientists and cyber researchers, to 300 from 150, the executives said. Its customers include governments and critical infrastructure operators in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
In connection with the transaction, Bain Capital Ventures partner Enrique Salem and former Teva Pharmaceuticals CEO Shlomo Yanai will join the board.
“The Dream team has a proven track record of developing industry-leading security products and providing them to the most sophisticated customers, government leaders, as well as leading nation states,” Salem said in an emailed statement. The company is well positioned to become one of the world’s largest AI companies focused on national cybersecurity, said Frances at Group 11.
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