Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, has significantly stepped up its activity in Israel in the past six months, particularly after the completion of the Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz. The firm has some $100 billion under management, and was one of the first investors in Instagram, SpaceX, Facebook, OpenAI and Airbnb. "Globes" has learned that it has moved up a gear in Israel by recruiting several key people in the country and outside of it.
The firm has brought in Granulate co-founder Asaf Ezra as a partner responsible for investment in young companies in cybersecurity and AI infrastructure, and it has doubled its local scouting network for identifying early-stage companies.
Andreessen Horowitz led the last funding round by Wiz before it was sold, amounting to $1 billion at a valuation of $12 billion, and subsequently sold its stake in the company for a return of between 2.5 and 3 times its investment.
Smaller venture capital firms, such as Index Ventures, Insight Partners, and Sequoia Capital, invested in Wiz at earlier stages and made larger gains. It may be that Andreessen Horowitz, which has had fairly minor activity in Israel so far in comparison with other major US firms, wants to make sure that promising younger Israeli companies will not escape the notice of its partners.
Ezra, who lives in New York, is the first Israeli to be appointed a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018, he founded Granulate, developer of a system that facilitates control over development processes on the cloud and in the past was ranked in "Globes’" list of Most Promising Startups.
In March 2022, Ezra sold Ganulate, of which he was CEO, to Intel for $650 million, in one of the biggest exits in Israel that year. Intel struggled to integrate Ganulate, and as its management crisis grew, it looked for a buyer for the company. When it failed to find one, the company shut down. Despite this, Ezra and his former partner Tal Sayag are remembered in the technology industry as people who made an exit at large multiples just before interest rates in the US began to rise and sources of finance for the industry began to dry up.
Ezra moved to New York late last year. In the past eighteen months he has maintained contact with one of the senior partners at Andreessen Horowitz, Zane Lackey, another serial entrepreneur, who founded and sold Signal Sciences before joining the firm. The two men decided to explore possible collaboration, which in the end led to Ezra’s appointment as a partner in May.
Ezra currently manages investment in young startup companies in cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and artificial intelligence, at the initial "seed" stage, and in the A and B rounds held at early stages, sometimes up to the start of sales. Ezra can also invest in companies unconnected to Israel, but he is expected to exploit his network of connections from his time in the IDF Talpiot program, in technology units in the army, and at Intel, to make most of his investments in Israeli companies and in companies with Israeli founders.
Not to miss out on potential
Besides the appointment of Ezra, Andreessen Horowitz has taken another strategic step, doubling its local scouting team. This network comprises serial entrepreneurs or former entrepreneurs, and angel investors, among them well-known names in the local industry such as Yoav Wilner, co-founder and CEO of Walnut; Yochay Ettun, co-founder and former CEO of cnvrg.io, which was sold to Intel; Guy Zipori, formerly vice president of R&D at Melio; and Michael (Mikey) Weiss, who has held CFO positions at startup companies.
An intriguing recent appointment as a scout by Andreessen Horowitz is that of Noa Zilberman, co-founder of Odo Security (sold to Check Point), who is prominent on social media. Besides these, four other scouts operate below the radar without mentioning it on their professional profits on social media. Some of them have been active for over a year.
Compared with the scouting activity of other venture capital firms, this is a large and senior group. By this means, Andreessen Horowitz seeks to ensure that it will not miss out on companies with the potential of becoming unicorns. While Ezra will invest millions of dollars in a small number of companies and bring them the benefit of the firm’s marketing and operating capabilities, the scouts are fairly free to invest small amounts, generally in the tens of thousands of dollars, in a company in exchange for a small stake.
Yoav Wilner, who has himself made several angel investments in companies such as Talon and NewCore, was appointed a scout by Andreessen Horowitz in May. "We’re looking for companies in growing fields such as data infrastructure and artificial intelligence, and we make small investments in a way that is reminiscent of angel investment," he says.
Learning lessons
Andreessen Horowitz is a latecomer to the Israeli market. Smaller firms such as Insight Partners, Sequoia, Greylock, and Lightspeed have each invested in dozens of Israeli companies, including at the seed stage, and have made handsome returns on their money. Like many of these firms, Andreessen Horowitz has no physical presence in Israel, but works through partners based in the US or elsewhere.
The firm maintains a new investment strategy that takes into account the required investment in purchasing graphics processors. Besides the investment in Wiz, it is invested in unicorns with looser connections to Israel, such as Deel, which was founded by US-Israeli entrepreneur Alex Bouaziz and has a development center in Israel, and in WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s real estate company Flow.
The firm is invested in several fairly young Israeli companies such as Neo Security, Limy, Pinecone and Argu AI.
No response was forthcoming from Andreessen Horowitz or Asaf Ezra.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 7, 2026.
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