Airis Labs emerges from stealth with $31M Series B for battlefield visual AI
Airis Labs, a secretive Israeli startup that builds AI infrastructure for analysing battlefield visual data, has emerged from stealth after raising $60 million across multiple rounds. The company was founded in April 2023 by three veterans of Israel's defence and intelligence establishment — Noam Friedman (chief executive officer), Amos Lahav (US operations), and Rotem Abeles (chief product officer) — shortly before the October 7 attacks.
The latest round, a $31 million Series B, was led by PSG Equity with participation from TLV Partners, Stepstone Group, Redseed Ventures, and angel investors including Eyal Waldman , founder of Mellanox Technologies. Before that, Airis raised $11 million in a Series A and closed a seed round in September 2023, both led by TLV Partners.
Airis connects and analyses streams of visual information — security cameras, drones, body cameras, media footage — and turns them into structured, searchable intelligence in real time.
The company was forged under extraordinary circumstances. "We started building the platform based on lessons from the war in Ukraine," Friedman told Calcalist . "But after the October 7 attack, we immediately began receiving requests to help extract intelligence from the huge amount of visual material that had been collected."
With only seven employees at the time, Airis brought in volunteers from intelligence units and deployed its system within days. "We didn't have the luxury of building the company slowly," Friedman said. "Everything was developed in a real operational environment under wartime pressure."
The platform has already been deployed by government organisations worldwide, including a US Army programme focused on integrating new technologies, as well as law enforcement and customs agencies. Airis plans to double its 50-person workforce, with an emphasis on its Tel Aviv development centre.
The defence-tech market is crowding fast. Friedman acknowledged that many companies are racing to position themselves as AI platforms for the battlefield, though he argued most still rely on generic models that leave analysts overwhelmed by data. The founders' intelligence backgrounds lend credibility, but scaling a product built under wartime conditions into a repeatable commercial offering is a different challenge entirely.
PSG Equity, traditionally a growth-equity firm focused on software businesses, leading a defence-tech Series B underscores how mainstream investors are increasingly comfortable backing military and intelligence platforms — a category that was largely the preserve of specialist funds just a few years ago. TLV Partners' continued backing across all three rounds also points to deepening conviction among Israeli VCs that locally built, operationally proven defence AI can scale into major international contracts.
Read more: Calcalist
