Hi everyone,

The summer slowdown ended with a reminder that AI security is becoming a substantial category. Alice, formerly ActiveFence, raised $140 million at a reported valuation of up to $800 million, bringing its total funding to $280 million. The company is applying years of intelligence on malicious online behaviour to stress-test, monitor and protect AI models and agents.

Israeli companies were also active buyers. Nayax agreed to acquire US smart-parking company IPS Group for $350 million, CropX acquired agricultural spectroscopy startup SCiO, and Echo acquired the technology and customers of Minimus. Globally, Nvidia reportedly agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, potentially combining the dominant AI-compute provider with the leading platform for discovering and distributing open-source models.

Three themes stood out for me this week:

• AI security is becoming a major enterprise category. Giving agents access to data, tools and the authority to act creates new risks that require continuous testing, monitoring and protection.
• Israeli companies are becoming more ambitious acquirers. Nayax’s $350 million IPS deal and CropX’s eighth acquisition show Israeli technology companies using M&A to enter new markets and expand their platforms.
• Control of AI distribution is becoming as important as control of compute. Nvidia already dominates the chip layer. Acquiring Hugging Face would extend its reach into model discovery, open-source distribution and developer workflow.

Have a great weekend,

Eze

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