Team8

Team8

Team8 was launched in 2014 by Nadav Zafrir, Israel Grimberg, and Liran Grinberg, veterans of Unit 8200, the Israeli Defense Forces' signals intelligence division. The firm's origin is inseparable from the operational discipline and deep technical networks forged inside that unit. Unlike conventional venture funds that react to inbound pitches, Team8 was designed as a proactive foundry — identifying systemic enterprise pain points and then recruiting founding teams to solve them, a process that typically involves a year of intensive research and validation before a CEO is even appointed. Team8's primary vehicle is a venture-creation studio that builds, funds, and scales cybersecurity startups. The firm has since broadened its strategy to include a dedicated venture capital arm that backs early-stage companies in cyber, fintech, enterprise AI, and data infrastructure. Its model often involves a deep go-to-market partnership with a consortium of global C-suite executives, who serve as design partners and initial customers. Notable companies built or backed by Team8 include Claroty, an industrial control system security firm which attained unicorn status, Illusive Networks, a deception-technology provider acquired by Proofpoint, and fintech platform RiseUp. The firm operates primarily across North America and Israel. Team8 manages a studio and a multi-fund venture capital platform. The firm closed its third fund in 2022, targeting $500 million in commitments (per CalSTRS meeting documents, 2022), which split roughly equally between the venture-creation studio and the venture capital arm. The firm's global footprint is anchored in Tel Aviv, the R&D center, and a business development and advisory hub in New York. The network of operating partners and advisors includes dozens of former CEOs and security chiefs from Wall Street and the Fortune 500. Most recently, in May 2024, Microsoft's enterprise security head joined Team8 as a strategic partner, signaling deepening ties between the firm's infrastructure-creation model and platform incumbents. Team8's structural differentiator is its hybrid architecture: a venture-creation foundry fused with a traditional venture capital fund under a single, unified partnership. This allows the firm to control origination, technical architecture, and executive selection during a company's most vulnerable earliest months, a level of operational control that is absent in standard seed-stage venture capital. The result is a portfolio insulated from competitive deal-making by an undisclosed, proprietary company-creation process that commences up to two years before a company formally enters the market.