From Ultra-Orthodox Roots to Cyber Startup Founder, Yossi Torati Raises $37 Million

Yossi Torati, 38, cofounder and CEO of the cyber startup A Security, is preparing to move with his wife Aiden and their three-year-old son to New York in the coming weeks to build the company’s sales headquarters there. He says development will remain in Israel, but the company needs a stronger U.S. base to serve that market. A Security, founded about a year and a half ago, was long kept mostly secret while employing 80 people in Tel Aviv’s Sarona district.

The secrecy ended when the company announced a $37 million seed round backed by top names in the Israeli and U.S. venture world, including investors associated with Wiz, LightSpeed and Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport. The funding reflects unusual confidence in a very young company that aims to counter AI-driven cyberattacks. Torati says the firm gives defenders the same AI capabilities attackers now use, helping map complete intrusion paths, from initial entry into an organization to the final objective, rather than just finding isolated vulnerabilities.

Torati’s life story is far outside the usual Israeli tech mold. He was born in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood, grew up in Kiryat Malakhi in a חרדי immigrant family from Iran, studied in elite yeshivas in Bnei Brak without core studies, and later left Orthodoxy. He recalls that at around 16 or 17, a casual conversation about evolution opened a wider intellectual world, leading him to internet cafes, self-study, and contact with other former religious Jews.

With no matriculation diploma or academic degree, he taught himself technology, worked in a computer shop, became an ambulance volunteer, and enlisted in the army. He began in an IDF special framework for low initial qualifications, then fought his way into officers’ training, completed it with honors, and eventually served as an outstanding intelligence and information security officer in the Navy. After seven years in regular service, six years at Bynet, and another six years at Sygnia, where he handled major cyber incidents in roughly 40 countries, he set out to build his own company. Torati says A Security will hire for potential rather than degrees, and he remains personally tied to Jewish tradition while wanting his son to know his roots.