Canadian 1Password buys Israeli cyber startup Apono for an estimated $250 million to $300 million

Israeli cloud security startup Apono has been acquired by Canadian company 1Password. The companies did not disclose the price, but Calcalist reported that the deal is valued at $250 million to $300 million. All 80 Apono employees, including about 50 in Israel, will join the buyer, and Apono plans to keep expanding in Israel with additional hiring. This is 1Password’s first acquisition in Israel.

Apono, founded in 2022 by CEO Rom Carmel and CTO Ofir Stein, develops an AI-based platform for managing permissions and access to cloud infrastructure. Carmel previously held R&D management roles in the cyber division of the Prime Minister’s Office, while Stein served as an officer in the Israeli Air Force’s Opak unit, was one of Logz.io’s first developers, and helped lead development of one of the company’s core products.

The company said in December 2025 that it had completed a Series B round, bringing total funding since inception to $54 million. Meron Capital, which led Apono’s seed round and remained an investor in later rounds, is one of its largest shareholders. The Series B was led by USVP and 33N Ventures, and the Series A was led by New Era Capital. Other investors include Mindset Ventures, Redseed Ventures, Silvertech Ventures and Booster Ventures.

New Era Capital partner and Apono director Ziv Konen said, “What made this story special was their ability to extend the vision to the next front of cyber, securing access for AI agents.” Apono’s platform replaces standing privileges with real-time, just-in-time access based on business need and operating context, and automatically revokes access when the task is done. Its customers include Fortune 500 companies and technology and insurance firms in the US, Europe and Israel, among them Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Jasper.AI and Bloomreach. The platform integrates with more than 200 enterprise systems, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Slack, Jira and GitHub. 1Password, valued at $6.8 billion, said at the end of 2025 that it had more than $400 million in annual recurring revenue. The acquisition expands it beyond password and credential management into permissions and identity security, a market that also includes CyberArk and Wiz.