Hex-Rays buys Ventris for up to $35 million, Rocket buys Geniez AI, and Gauzy's CEO leads a rescue

Noa Belgian software company Hex-Rays, maker of the reverse-engineering tool IDA Pro, is buying Ventris, a six-person Israeli startup, in a deal CTech values at $30 million to $35 million.

Noa Its founder is 25 years old, and the company never raised outside money.

Noa Good morning, it's Sunday, the eighteenth of October. I'm Noa.

Eli And I'm Eli. From the weekend and the end of the week: Hex-Rays buys Ventris, Rocket Software buys mainframe AI startup Geniez, Gauzy's chief executive leads a $7 million rescue, and a $250 million gift for engineering at the Hebrew University.

Noa CTech reports that Hex-Rays is acquiring Ventris for $30 million to $35 million. Ventris was founded in 2025 by Elon Gliksberg, who is 25. It stayed in stealth, and the six-person company did not raise outside capital.

Eli What it built, according to CTech, is an operating system for AI agents that do security research. It analyzes source code and binary files to find known vulnerabilities, zero-days, malware and backdoors. Researchers build their own agent workflows, measure how accurate they are, and validate what they find.

Noa Gliksberg served in several roles in Unit 8200, where he led projects. His CTO, Amit Schendel, served alongside him there. The company says it works with government and commercial customers in Israel and abroad.

Eli Two details stand out. The system is not tied to one AI model, and it can run in air-gapped environments, cut off from outside networks. And the company says customers get results with open models, without the most advanced systems from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Noa All six employees will join Hex-Rays, which has 35 years of experience in reverse engineering. CTech says Hex-Rays plans to invest in expanding Ventris's operations in Israel.

Noa Another small Israeli team found a buyer this week. On Tuesday, Rocket Software, a private US company near Boston owned by Bain Capital, said it had acquired Geniez AI. The price was not disclosed. Calcalist estimates it at up to $100 million.

Eli Geniez builds AI agents that run directly on mainframes, the large computers many big companies still depend on, including in financial services. According to CTech, the agents monitor live systems, diagnose incidents and carry out workflows from plain-language instructions.

Noa Geniez had six employees. Its founders, Gil Peleg and Dan Shprung, are graduates of the army's computing unit, Mamram, and previously founded Model9, which BMC Software bought in 2023. Geniez raised a $6 million seed round in September 2025, co-led by StageOne Ventures and Canapi Ventures.

Eli The tech site Quasa argues the team may be the real prize, because people who understand both mainframes and AI agents are scarce. The team will build new capabilities for Rocket EVA, Rocket's AI agent platform. Rocket says it serves more than 13,500 customers.

Noa Now a rescue. Globes reports that investors led by Gauzy's co-founder and chief executive, Eyal Peso, will put $7 million into the smart glass company, as part of a debt arrangement approved by the Tel Aviv District Court.

Eli The numbers show how far it has fallen. Gauzy went public on Nasdaq less than two and a half years ago at a valuation of $319 million. Globes says it has lost 98 percent of its value and is now worth about $5 million.

Noa The investors will pay $2.94 a share, below the market price of $4.40. When the offering is done, Peso's group will hold half the company on a fully diluted basis, trustees appointed under the arrangement 20 percent, and other shareholders 30 percent.

Eli The company says the arrangement covers liabilities of about $61 million. Peso says the settlement is now fully financed, and Gauzy can turn to its backlog in architecture, automotive, aviation and rail.

Noa Hedge fund manager John Paulson is giving $250 million to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Post, citing Calcalist, says it is the largest gift in the university's history.

Eli Globes says the money will build a new Faculty of Engineering, advance the medical faculty and research into treating trauma, and set up a think tank on pressing public needs. The Mount Scopus campus will be renamed the Alina and John Paulson Campus.

Noa Paulson has backed engineering there before, with a building for computer science and engineering and another for electrical engineering. University president Tamir Sheafer says the gift bolsters its ability to recruit world-class faculty.

Noa Now the quick round-up.

Eli The Israel Innovation Authority and the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry will invest 25 million shekels, with matching private funds, in 15 programs to bring more women into senior tech roles, the Jerusalem Post reports. Their figures show women in tech earn about 23,000 shekels a month, against about 33,000 for men.

Noa Cellebrite, which sells phone data extraction tools to police and investigators, reportedly presented an exploit called LOKI at the Hexacon security conference in Paris. A post by International Cyber Digest, cited by tech writer Pasquale Pillitteri, says it targets the boot ROM of Apple chips from the iPod touch 2 to the iPhone 11, code no software update can fix.

Eli It needs physical access to the phone, and the conference slide reportedly says some early versions worked only once in 25 tries. No response from Cellebrite or Apple was reported.

Noa On Friday we told you Proofpoint is buying Varonis for about $6.3 billion. CTech's analysis now puts that at about 8.4 times Varonis's revenue for the past year, but below its peak: in 2021 Varonis was worth more than $10 billion.

Eli CTech expects Thoma Bravo, which controls Proofpoint, to integrate the two closely, possibly with job cuts where roles overlap. About 1,000 of Varonis's 2,800 employees work in Herzliya.

Eli One thing to watch: a commercial court in Lyon, France. Gauzy's rescue is financed, but the shares set aside for its trustees depend on that court approving a plan for Gauzy's French subsidiary.

Noa If it does not approve, Globes says, those shares are cancelled and the money returned.

Eli Follow Israel Tech Daily wherever you get your podcasts, and read more at startuptofollow.com.

Noa See you tomorrow morning.