By Funded Work Editorial Desk · AI-assisted summary · sources linked below when available
Upwind Security's $300M Round Values Cloud Security Firm at $3.8B
Upwind was one of four companies — alongside Wonderful, HiBob and Lyte — that together accounted for more than $1.18 billion of the roughly $1.4 billion raised by Israeli and Israeli-founded startups in the first three days of September.
Upwind Security has raised $300 million at a $3.8 billion valuation, according to the Weekly Firgun newsletter published by VC Cafe on September 4, 2026. The company helps enterprises identify and prioritise the cloud threats that pose the greatest risk.
The round landed in one of the busiest funding weeks Israeli tech has seen. Israeli and Israeli-founded startups announced approximately $1.4 billion in funding in the first three days of September — more than twice the $577.5 million raised during the entire month of August, the newsletter reported.
Upwind sat at the centre of that surge. Four companies — Wonderful, Upwind, HiBob and Lyte — accounted for more than $1.18 billion of the roughly $1.4 billion total. Wonderful raised a $550 million Series C at a $5 billion valuation to build an AI operating system for enterprise agents; HiBob raised $166 million at a $3.2 billion valuation for its Bob people platform; and Lyte raised $165 million at a $1.6 billion valuation for perception technology aimed at autonomous machines.
The newsletter highlighted the breadth of activity beyond those headline rounds. Capital also flowed into AI security, defence technology, self-healing infrastructure, consumer cybersecurity, smart toys and executive productivity during the same stretch. Among the smaller raises listed: Air emerged from stealth with $50 million for a preventative security layer guarding enterprises against malicious tools and extensions connected to AI agents; AITAN raised $41 million for combat-tested autonomous drone systems; Guardio raised $40 million at a $1.1 billion valuation for consumer protection against online scams, identity theft and AI-powered cyber threats; and DataAgent came out of stealth with a $10 million pre-seed round for AI agents that detect and repair cloud infrastructure failures.
The security theme extended into M&A. VC Cafe pointed readers to a CB Insights AI security acquisition matrix mapping the companies currently on buyers' radar, and reported that Palo Alto Networks agreed to pay $500 million for Console while ServiceNow moved to acquire Israeli startup Sweep for hundreds of millions. In the broader market, the newsletter catalogued a wave of frontier-model releases from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Microsoft, alongside mega-rounds for Crusoe, Thinking Machines Lab, Cognition, Fluidstack and AfterQuery.
The Firgun newsletter, which has tracked Israeli startup wins weekly since March 2020, framed the week as a sharp reversal from a quiet August. It did not disclose a round type or name lead investors for Upwind's raise.