Former TV Anchor Launches Startup to Fight Tunnels Underground
Giladi Eden, a well-known former Israeli news anchor and editor who once ran Channel 10’s news company and edited its flagship Friday edition, has made an unexpected career shift at age 60 into defense tech. He is one of three founders of Tzrif, a year-old startup unveiled last week at a major industry conference in Detroit. The company says it is among the first in the world developing systems meant to operate below ground, to destroy tunnels and bunkers, breach the earth quickly, and protect critical infrastructure underground.
Tzrif has so far shown two systems. The first is a small autonomous, remotely controlled underground vehicle, described as a miniature D9, that can move inside tunnel networks such as those built by Hamas and Hezbollah, overcome sandbags, blast doors and mines, reach the end of a tunnel, and then dismantle it from the inside out. The second is a drilling system deployed from a command vehicle that can attack buried facilities without airstrikes. The company says it has about 20 additional early-stage developments in the pipeline.
The startup raised $25 million within its first year from leading venture firms at a valuation of more than $100 million. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, where cofounder and CEO Yadin Sofer handles fundraising and finance, while cofounder Asher Katz oversees R and D from the United States. Eden runs the Israeli subsidiary, leading strategy, marketing, sales, and ties with Israel’s Defense Ministry and the defense R and D directorate, MAFAT. Sofer is expected to move back to Israel with his family soon.
Eden said the idea emerged after October 7, when Sofer, his son-in-law, called from New York and began discussing a venture focused on Hamas tunnels with Katz, a reserve fighter who had worked for years in the IDF’s tunnel-detection unit in Gaza. Katz said the team has already tested the systems in facilities in Israel and in Hamas tunnels in Gaza with MAFAT, the Yahalom unit, and the Engineering Corps. The founders say the U.S. and Israel need underground capabilities quickly, and Katz wrote to employees that such a capability could change Western deterrence and the global order.
