Tel Aviv-based startup Hunters, which helps enterprises defend and analyze hacker attacks, raises $15M Series A from M12 and US Venture Partners
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Hunters' $15M Series A is an early corporate-VC bet on what became one of Tel Aviv's busiest security categories: M12, Microsoft's venture arm, and US Venture Partners backed the threat-detection startup before the space it plays in got crowded. The follow-on came fast — within roughly a year Hunters closed a $30M Series B led by Bessemer, validating the detection-and-response thesis the Series A funded.
The round also fits M12's pattern of seeding the Tel Aviv security cluster: the same fund later led Valence Security's $25M Series A, while Grip Security, Adaptive Shield, Gem Security and most recently the AI-agent device-security startup Bold have all raised out of the city.
First-order effects
- Hunters gets the capital to build out its attack-defense and analysis product for enterprises, with M12 gaining an early position in a category it would keep buying into across subsequent rounds.
Second-order effects
- M12's Tel Aviv security portfolio — Hunters plus Valence — gives Microsoft's fund overlapping exposure to cloud and SaaS security startups, positioning it to benefit whichever consolidation or acquisition path those companies take.
Third-order effects
- Tel Aviv keeps compounding as a security-startup hub outside Silicon Valley: each funded company seeds founders, talent and investor familiarity, which is exactly the pipeline later rounds from Grip, Adaptive Shield, Gem and Bold drew on.
The trend: Corporate venture arms like Microsoft's M12 are anchoring early rounds in Tel Aviv's enterprise-security cluster, turning the city into a parallel center of gravity to Silicon Valley for threat-detection funding.