AI company Dream triples value to $3 billion in funding round

Dream, an Israeli artificial intelligence company that provides AI and cybersecurity services to governments and critical infrastructure operators, has raised $260 million at a $3 billion valuation.

Bicycle Capital and Group 11 led the round, which nearly tripled its valuation from $1 billion in February 2025, Dream co-founders Shalev Hulio and Sebastian Kurz said in an interview. Other investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Antler and Tru Arrow Partners.

Hulio rose to prominence as a co-founder and former chief executive officer of NSO Group, maker of the controversial spy software Pegasus. He founded Dream in 2023 alongside Gil Dolev and Kurz, a former chancellor of Austria.


After initially focusing on AI-based cyber defense for nation-states, the company is now rolling out a custom AI platform for governments and state-owned enterprises seeking more control over their data and infrastructure.

“As AI becomes central to national security, economy and public services, governments face a fundamental choice: depend on systems they do not control from the US or China, for example, or build capabilities they fully own. Dream was founded to eliminate that trade-off,” said Hulio.

The issue of tech sovereignty took on even greater significance last week, when the White House decided to withhold Anthropic PBC’s latest AI models from foreign nationals.

Hulio described the moment as “a wake-up call for all nations to understand that if they want to move to AI, they can’t rely on foreign model clouds or tools.”

While most private individuals or corporations can run systems on the cloud, Kurz notes that governments and other sensitive data holders “require on-premise solutions” which allow them to “fully own, control, and operate” the technology.

Kurz, who is currently being investigated for alleged corruption in Austria, and was cleared of perjury charges last year in court, singled out counterfraud as one of Atlas’s best use cases. Others, Hulio said, include procurement, streamlining corporate operations, and detecting theft in company supply chains.

Sales have totaled almost $300 million since Dream began commercial operations in late 2024. Last year, it launched a product called Hero, an autonomous AI agent that helps governments identify and patch up security vulnerabilities.

The new capital will allow the company to “accelerate deployment of the company’s sovereign AI and national cyber defense platforms across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas,” Kurz said. “Especially in Europe, there’s much need to prepare for these new threats.”