Security startup Torq raises cash at $1.2 billion valuation

The Israeli cybersecurity startup Torq is planning to announce Sunday that it has closed a $140 million funding round, raising its valuation to $1.2 billion.

Torq, which is based in Tel Aviv, offers what it says is an autonomous security operations platform designed from the ground up with artificial intelligence. Torq can automate repetitive work using AI agents, like wading through huge volumes of security alerts. That allows employees to focus on more complex, and potentially dangerous, issues.

“You don’t want your team to have a huge backlog and using your team just to do the simple things while you can automate everything,” said Ofer Smadari, the company’s chief executive officer and co-founder.


The Israeli new outlet TheMarker previously reported that Torq had reached unicorn status with a new founding round without the specific amounts.

The company was started in 2020, but it shifted focus a few years back after the introduction of generative AI, Smadari said.

“By the end of 2022, ChatGPT came into our life, and we saw the opportunity to start building agents and AI functionality,” he said, adding that the company introduced an AI agent for security operations in the summer of 2023. Now, he said, “You can automate and remediate everything.”

The funding round is led by Merlin Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Evolution Equity Partners, Notable Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Venture Partners and Greenfield Partners.

The company has more than 300 employees, in Israel and the US, Smadari said. He and the other founders previously started a company called Luminate Security in 2017 and sold it to Symantec Corp. less than two years later for $250 million, he said. They started Torq in January 2020, just before the Covid-19 exploded into a pandemic.

“We said, ‘There is nothing like a big worldwide crisis to build another company,’” Smadari said.