The 50 most promising Israeli startups of 2026: AI, cybersecurity, quantum computing, and the new tech ecosystem
Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum computing, and even personal electric aviation — Israel is showing in 2026 that the country’s startup ecosystem has entered an entirely different phase. The environment that was once dominated by companies growing fast, raising billions, and delivering little has given way to a more mature, more surgical movement and, honestly, a much more interesting one for anyone following the tech industry closely.
Enough with the empty hype and billion-dollar rounds with no real product on the market. This year’s list put together by Calcalist and CTech makes that clear from the very first name: the selected companies have revenue as a priority from day one, they tackle specific high-value problems, and they are not trying to be everything to everyone. Focus has become the watchword, and that is directly reflected in the kind of solutions these startups are bringing to the global market.
The 50 most promising startups of 2026 are building the infrastructure that others need to operate — from tools that protect artificial intelligence models against real threats, to platforms that bridge the massive gap between the promise of enterprise AI and what actually works in the day-to-day operations of large companies. And as a bonus, there is a startup looking to put an electric aircraft in the hands of anyone, with a waiting list of more than 3,000 buyers paying half a million dollars per unit. 🚀
The new profile of startups that matter in 2026
What stands out most about this selection is how much the profile of these companies has changed compared to what we were seeing five or six years ago. We are no longer talking about startups that need ten investment rounds to get to a viable product. The companies on this list came to market with clarity about what pain they were solving, for whom, and at what cost. This leaner, results-driven model is becoming the standard, especially in an economic environment where investors are increasingly demanding when it comes to return on capital.
Another point worth highlighting is the concentration in strategic sectors. Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence lead the list, but not in isolation — the majority of selected companies operate at the intersection of both fields. That makes total sense when you think about the current moment: as more companies adopt AI in critical processes, the attack surface grows proportionally, and the need to protect those systems becomes urgent. The startups that understood this before everyone else got a head start.
Smaller teams, revenue showing up early in the company lifecycle, and an obsession with solving specific, high-value problems instead of chasing generic markets — that is the DNA connecting virtually all of the companies on the list. This pattern reflects a structural shift in the Israeli ecosystem, which is maturing in a very visible way.
Irregular: the AI safety lab working with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI
At the top of the list is Irregular, founded in 2023 by Dan Lahav and Omer Nevo. The company describes itself as the only safety lab in the world dedicated to advanced artificial intelligence, and the numbers and partnerships back up that claim. Irregular already works with Anthropic — whose contract carries the signature of founder Dario Amodei — as well as Google, OpenAI, and even the British government.
What Irregular does in practice is build tools that allow clients to evaluate how advanced AI models behave under threat and develop methods to reduce risks. If the company’s plans come together, many traditional cybersecurity firms could become obsolete. The funding announced in September 2025 consisted of two rounds completed within a few weeks — the first at $30 million led by Sequoia Capital, followed by another of approximately $50 million with participation from Sequoia again, Redpoint Ventures, Swish Ventures, and Israeli angel investors including Assaf Rappaport, founder of Wiz. In total, the company raised $80 million and employs 40 people.
Unframe, AIR, and ZyG: enterprise software, personal aviation, and AI for e-commerce
Unframe, founded in 2024, tackles an interesting paradox. While voices on social media say that anyone can now build products that only large software companies used to be able to create, the reality is different: a recent MIT study showed that 95% of independent AI-based projects fail when organizations try to implement them. Unframe steps into that gap by offering large enterprises the ability to create custom AI agent-based solutions, with a commitment to deliver a working solution in just one week. The company has raised $50 million and already has 120 employees.
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AIR, born in 2018 in Kfar Yona, in the Sharon region, is not just building aircraft — it is creating an entirely new category in the transportation sector. The AIR ONE reaches speeds of 155 mph with a flight range of approximately 100 miles on a single charge. With Light Sport Aircraft certification granted by the FAA and a waiting list of 3,300 people willing to pay around $500,000 per unit, the company plans to produce dozens of aircraft by 2027 and thousands in the years following. AIR also already generates revenue of about $35 million annually from unmanned cargo models for the logistics and defense sectors.
ZyG, founded by the creators of ironSource — which sold for billions — is building an autonomous platform to replace the marketing and operations systems of e-commerce brands. The system features more than 60 AI agents that communicate with each other, and the company has established three proprietary e-commerce brands that generate millions of dollars in revenue and serve as a real-time testing ground. With about 65 employees and approximately $58 million in investment, ZyG expects to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue in 2026.
Gaming, payments, and the end of the app store monopoly
Appcharge is one of the most impressive cases on the list. With revenues approaching $100 million per year and a platform processing more than $1 billion in transactions, the company is positioning itself as the Shopify of gaming — returning power and revenue to developers who have historically paid 30% of every in-app purchase to Apple and Google. Founded in 2022 by Maor Sason and Roei Barassi, Appcharge recently closed a $58 million Series B round with participation from gaming companies like Playrix and Supercell. Its growth was fueled by regulatory and legal decisions in the United States, the European Union, and South Korea that restricted Apple and Google from preventing developers from directing users to external payment systems.
Port, Qodo, and ScaleOps: the invisible infrastructure that makes AI work
While most tech headlines focused on AI’s ability to write code faster, the team at Port identified a different bottleneck: writing code accounts for only about 15% of a software engineer’s working time. The other 85% — spent on version management, cybersecurity, infrastructure maintenance, and troubleshooting — is the real barrier preventing large organizations from accelerating development. With a $100 million round led by General Atlantic and a post-money valuation of $800 million, Port is turning the developer portal into the nervous system for AI agents within organizations. Its clients include Visa, GitHub, and British Telecom.
Qodo (formerly CodiumAI) attacks another critical problem of the AI era: trust in code generated by language models. LLMs are great at generating generic code, but they do not understand organizational context — development history, architectural patterns, or risk boundaries. Qodo’s platform integrates AI agents that scan code in real time, analyze past decisions, and provide immediate feedback to developers. With a $70 million Series B led by Qumra Capital, the company serves hundreds of clients including Walmart and Nvidia, with revenues growing tenfold in a single year.
ScaleOps solves one of the most expensive problems in the cloud world: wasted computing resources. Its platform makes real-time decisions, dynamically adjusting the exact amount of resources allocated to each application based on demand. The reported result is a reduction of up to 80% in cloud costs. With a $130 million Series C round and a valuation exceeding $800 million, the company grew more than 350% year over year and serves clients like Adobe, Wiz, DocuSign, and Armis.
Quantum computing: three Israeli startups in the global race
Quantum computing shows up in force in this edition, with three companies representing different approaches. Quantum Art uses the trapped ion method and has raised more than $150 million to build a complete quantum computer, with plans to launch its first commercial model by the end of 2026. Competitor IonQ, which went public in 2021, is currently valued at around $15 billion — which gives you an idea of the potential upside.
Qedma, founded by Dr. Asif Sinay — who was involved in developing the Iron Dome system at Rafael — focuses on the software side of quantum computing, developing solutions to prevent and correct errors that are inherent to current quantum systems. The company already has dozens of clients in the banking and automotive sectors.
Q Factor, the youngest on the list, was founded in early 2026 and completed a $24 million Seed round with participation from Intel Capital. Its bet is on cold atom technology, an approach that received significant validation recently when Google chose the same technology for its own quantum computing efforts.
Cybersecurity in the era of AI models
Cybersecurity has always been a strong sector in Israel, but what is happening now is qualitatively different from what we saw before. The focus has shifted from simply protecting networks and endpoints to also protecting AI systems themselves — a category that barely existed three years ago and today already attracts billions of dollars in investment.
Guardio, for example, is an anomaly in the Israeli landscape: with just 110 employees — all based in Israel — the company generates more than $100 million in revenue, with 99% coming from individual consumers. Founded in 2018, Guardio has tripled its revenue for four consecutive years and expects to reach positive cash flow this year. Its recent strategic partnership with the Lovable platform illustrates how the company is expanding to also protect infrastructure created by generative AI tools.
Vega, founded in 2024 by Unit 8200 graduates, recently completed a $120 million Series B round at a valuation of approximately $700 million. Its innovation lies in the ability to identify and investigate threats in real time directly within the organization’s storage environment, without needing to transfer massive volumes of data to an external system. Noma Security, in turn, rejected attractive acquisition offers and chose to stay independent, opening a significant lead over competitors that were acquired and got stuck in integration processes. Its revenue in 2026 is expected to surpass the $10 million mark.
Nir Zuk, founder of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks, also reappeared on the list with Cylake, a new startup that has already raised $45 million in a Seed round led by Greylock. The bet is on protecting large enterprises, governments, and regulated organizations that cannot rely on public cloud infrastructure, offering an AI-based platform that operates entirely in on-premises environments or private clouds.
From open-source intelligence to health and fintech
Vetric stands out for being built without any outside capital. Founded by Omer Bachar — who created a technology unit within the IDF military police at 24 — the company jumped from $250,000 in revenue in 2022 to $15.5 million by the end of 2025, with a target of $30 million for 2026. Its technology collects billions of pieces of public information from the web for the Open-Source Intelligence market, while maintaining clear ethical boundaries: it does not work directly with governments and refuses to operate in sanctioned countries.
In healthcare, Converge Bio is using AI to accelerate drug development — a process that typically takes ten years and costs around $2 billion. With just two years of existence, the company already works with 12 pharmaceutical companies, is involved in the development of 40 drugs, and received a $2.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In fintech, April is solving one of the most dreaded processes for Americans: annual tax filing. The company went from 100,000 users last year to more than one million in the current tax season — about 2.5% of Americans who file taxes. The business model is distributed through partners like PayPal, Robinhood, and Chime, reducing filing time from about nine hours to an average of 20 minutes.
Gaming, defense, and the next wave of autonomous agents
Sett, founded in 2023, transformed marketing production for the gaming industry using AI agents that shorten the ad creation process from weeks to just a few hours. With clients like Zynga, Playtika, and Papaya, the company generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue and just raised $30 million in its Series B round. Now, it is expanding beyond gaming, targeting fintech and e-commerce.
In the defense sector, Line5 — founded by Yiftach Shoolman, creator of the software unicorn Redis — is developing robotic systems to replace soldiers on the battlefield. The company raised $20 million in a Seed round immediately after its founding, and its advisory board includes Mike Pompeo, former CIA director.
Orca AI is bringing artificial intelligence to maritime navigation, connecting ships to the cloud to reduce accidents, prevent dangerous situations, and cut fuel consumption. Marine insurers have already started lowering premiums following a 50% drop in near-collision incidents on ships using the system. The company counts MSC and Maersk among its clients and was the first in the world to receive approval from Japanese regulators for autonomous maritime navigation systems.
Spotlight on the startups ranked 31 to 50
The second half of the list features names that deserve special attention. Brandlight is building a platform to ensure brand visibility in generative AI engines — the equivalent of SEO for the future, in a world where consumers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude which face cream to buy instead of searching Google. The company projects that $750 billion in purchases will flow through AI environments.
Factify raised an exceptional $73 million Seed round to replace the PDF format — practically unchanged since the 1990s — with an intelligent document infrastructure designed for the AI era. Majestic Labs is developing a chip that aims to serve up to 10 times more clients on the same infrastructure as Nvidia processors, while Tastewise uses billions of digital signals to predict food consumption trends, serving approximately 80% of the world’s largest food companies.
Among positions 33 to 50, cybersecurity dominates. Startups like Above Security (insider threats), Tenzai (AI-powered hacker simulation), Clover (security integrated into the developer workflow), Lumia (security for autonomous AI agents), and Onyx Security (controlling AI agents in enterprises) show that the Israeli ecosystem is attacking every possible layer of the new attack surface created by the massive adoption of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Blocks DIY, founded by former Monday.com executives, is betting on a no-code platform for building smart tools and AI agents accessible to any user.
What this list says about the future of technology
Looking at the 50 most promising startups of 2026 is, in a way, looking at where global technology will be in three to five years. The trends that show up here — AI embedded in critical processes, autonomous system security, quantum computing leaving the lab, intelligent hardware — will become mainstream much faster than most people imagine. And the companies building the infrastructure for that today will have an enormous competitive advantage when that moment arrives.
The most relevant movement this selection documents is the shift in the center of gravity of innovation toward technical depth. Having a good story to tell investors is no longer enough — you need a real product, paying customers, and a demonstrated ability to solve a specific problem better than any existing alternative. This more rigorous filter is producing stronger companies, and the Calcalist and CTech list is clear evidence of that.
This is the 17th edition of the ranking, assembled from consultations with prominent investors, advisors, and entrepreneurs in the Israeli market. Participants were asked to identify startups that are growing, generating revenue, with the most momentum and the best chance of taking a significant step in the coming year — with an emphasis on companies that are not part of their own portfolios. Contributors include names like Sequoia, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NFX, Cyberstarts, Team8, Viola, TLV Partners, and dozens of other leading funds and individual investors.
For anyone following the technology and artificial intelligence space, this selection works as a map of where the smart money is going, where the most qualified talent is concentrating, and which problems the market considers urgent enough to pay well for a solution. And if there is one lesson that runs through all 50 names on the list, it is that the future of technology will be built by companies that know exactly what they are doing — and for whom. 🎯
