In relative silence, a wave of companies has emerged in recent years seeking to crack one of the toughest challenges of the AI revolution: how to make artificial intelligence, particularly autonomous agents, operate effectively within a real organization, with all the complexity that entails: rules, permissions, intricate procedures, and processes built over years of manual work. Port offers the answer to this question.
The Israeli startup, founded in 2022 by Zohar Einy and Yonatan Boguslavsky, both formerly of Unit 8200, is developing a platform designed to enable AI agents to manage entire development processes within an organization, without losing control on the way.
"The world is moving from a situation where AI only helps developers write code, to one where agents begin performing tasks on their own," Einy tells "Globes". "But as soon as hundreds of agents work simultaneously within an organization, you need a system that knows how to control it."
The idea was born out of frustration
He says that the idea was born out of everyday frustration. During their military service, Einy and Boguslavsky experienced firsthand the clumsiness of a system dependent on manual labor. "Every time there was a malfunction or if I had to ask a question, I would open a 'ticket' and wait for weeks for an answer," Einy says. "It created a bottleneck between the small infrastructure team and the large development team."
The solution came about when Boguslavsky was tasked with solving the problem; he set up an internal department for this purpose, which he called "America." "Instead of opening a service call and waiting for things to be handled manually, developers could go into one interface and get everything they needed automatically."
Einy says that the model was successful and was expanded for use by the entire intelligence community, including the Mossad and military intelligence units. " And then, we thought to ourselves there must be other organizations suffering from this problem," he says. "Every technological organization in the world is dealing with the same operational chaos."
From developers to AI agents
At first, Port was built as an internal platform for development teams, but then the company discovered that its system built for human developers was almost perfectly suited for AI agents as well.
"Everyone wants agents to be able to perform complex tasks on their own. But once you connect AI to dozens of internal systems, without control and without context, everything becomes chaotic. We're actually building the layer of control that makes it possible to do it in a safe and orderly manner," Einy explains.
Port's growth has also been rapid relative to the already hot AI market. Last December, the company announced a $100 million funding round at a valuation of $800 million after the money. In total, the company has raised about $175 million since its founding.
The company says it expects to cross the $100 million mark in annual revenues soon, and the amount of its multi-year deals recently increased by about 70%. While most of its R&D activity remains in Israel, its customers include Visa, British Telecom, PwC and other international firms.
According to Einy, Port itself makes intensive use of the system it developed, allowing it to move at a particularly fast pace. "This gives us a big advantage, because we can sense the changes in the market in real time."
"In the end," Einy concludes, "organizations will not work only with humans and not only with AI. They will work with a combination of both. And we want to be the company that allows all of this to work in an orderly manner."
Year founded: 2022
Capital raised: $175 million
Employees: 250
Investors: General Atlantic, Accel, Bessemer, TLV Partners, Team8