NYC- and Tel Aviv-based Gem Security, which is building a cloud threat detection and response service, comes out of stealth with an $11M seed led by Team8
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Gem Security's $11M seed, led by Team8, landed in February 2023 — early in what the surrounding coverage shows became a sustained run of Tel Aviv cloud-security stealth exits. Sweet Security followed the same two-step path, going from a $12M seed to a $33M Series A for cloud runtime security, while Native paired an $11M seed with a $31M Series A for cross-cloud monitoring (Native's dual-round emergence).
The pattern has since escalated rather than cooled: Act Security came out of stealth with a combined $60M across seed and Series A for shrinking the cloud access surface (Act Security's $60M emergence), and NY-based A Security pulled $37M from Lightspeed with Wiz co-founder Assaf Rapaport among the backers. Gem's launch is the template case for how this wave starts.
First-order effects
- Gem gains $11M and Team8's backing to build out its cloud threat detection and response product while still pre-launch, buying time against rivals already shipping runtime and access-surface tools.
- Enterprise security buyers evaluating cloud detection get one more entrant in a field where Sweet Security, Native, and Act Security are all competing for the same budget line.
Second-order effects
- The $11-12M seed has become the entry price for Tel Aviv cloud security — Sweet Security's $12M seed and Native's $11M seed match Gem's almost exactly — pressuring later founders to either raise larger or arrive with sharper differentiation.
- Category overlap forces positioning battles: Gem's detection-and-response focus sits adjacent to Sweet Security's runtime tooling and Act Security's access-surface reduction, so each new entrant narrows the others' claimed territory.
Third-order effects
- Capital is recycling within a tight network — Team8 leading studio-style rounds and Wiz-linked angels like Rapaport backing the next generation — structurally reinforcing Tel Aviv as a self-funding cloud-security foundry.
- If the cadence holds, the detection-and-response category fragments faster than buyers can evaluate vendors, setting up consolidation pressure where the startups that scaled first absorb the ones still at seed stage.
The trend: Tel Aviv keeps minting cloud-security startups at steadily rising round sizes, with venture studios and Wiz-linked investors compressing the path from stealth to scale.