Many headlines in the blazing world of AI often tell a story of fatigue. Enterprises grumble about uneven ROI from their AI pilots, regulators press harder on compliance and even startup founders whisper about inflated valuations. Yet behind the gloom, the money hasn’t stopped flowing. In the first half of 2025 alone, Reuters reported the global startup funding climbed to $162.8 billion — and 64% of that value was driven by AI deals. From Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv, investors are writing bigger checks than ever, not because they expect quick wins, but because they’re betting long.
That tension — between delayed payoff and accelerated capital — is where Glilot Capital Partners has staked its ground. The Israeli venture firm, long ranked among the world’s best performers, just announced a $500 million raise across its Seed and Plus funds. According to the VC, the move brings its assets under management to more than $1 billion, even as many other venture funds struggle to close new rounds. For co-founders Kobi Samboursky and Arik Kleinstein, the raise isn’t just about market timing. It’s about conviction that AI and cybersecurity are far from finished stories.
Capital Keeps Flowing Into AI And Cybersecurity
When asked why Glilot chose this moment to raise such a large pool of capital, Samboursky acknowledged the overheated chatter but pushed back on the idea of retreat. “Some segments of AI might be overheated, but our strategy is purposefully targeted. Cybersecurity is a durable, mission-critical category where breakthrough technology continues to create outsized returns,” he said. “The new $500 million fund gives us the dry powder to back the right founders.”
That discipline matters in a funding climate where capital is both concentrated and unforgiving. According to Reuters, “AI investments drive 64.1% of total deal value in H1 2025,” with U.S. startup funding hitting $162.8 billion in just six months. “I think it’s downstream of the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic continue to grow at unbelievable rates,” Davis Treybig, partner at Innovation Endeavors, told Reuters.
Glilot’s bet aligns with that gravitational pull. Where others see froth, the firm sees long cycles of value creation, especially at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity — fields where institutional investors still expect consistent growth.
Playing The Long Game On Returns
Samboursky is blunt about horizons. “This fund is designed for a longer time horizon. While we’re active in today’s cybersecurity and AI momentum, our core thesis is long-term company-building,” he explained. “Israel has proven to be a consistent source of global winners in these fields, and we intend to continue and back the next major players — supporting them from inception through scale, with disciplined capital and deep operating help.”
This echoes a wider shift across the venture ecosystem. Analysts at FTI Consulting note that “in 2025, the more robust AI-native companies will develop strong ARR, and investors will balance portfolio risk by focusing investment in those companies with clear mid-term revenue and profitability potential versus those companies with more long-term prospects.”
The pattern is clear: Investors are not pulling back from AI, but they are being more selective, favoring startups with visible paths to durable returns. For Glilot, that means filtering for founders with deep domain expertise and proof of real customer ROI. As Kleinstein put it, “We look for clear customer ROI, real moats, strong security/compliance from day one and a go-to-market that actually scales.”
Israel’s Enduring Role As A Tech Powerhouse
The geographic context matters as much as the capital. Despite ongoing regional tensions, Israel continues to attract global investors seeking AI and cybersecurity and AI. “We deeply believe in the Israeli ecosystem and will continue to lead investments in the best local and global talent,” Samboursky emphasized.
Kleinstein framed the resilience more directly: “The ecosystem today is exceptionally strong — repeat founders and operators with the vision, network and grit to build global companies. Regional headwinds are there, and we are positive that the tensions subside soon; in the meantime, teams are resilient and pragmatic: distributed hiring, multi-geo operations, and strong global customer ties. Net-net, Israel remains one of the best places in the world to start category-leading companies in cybersecurity and AI.”
That conviction is backed by data. Israeli startups accounted for nearly 20% of global cybersecurity unicorns as of last year, and the trend has only accelerated with AI-native approaches to defense. In this context, Glilot’s $500M raise is less an outlier than a bellwether: Global capital is still confident that Israel’s ecosystem can produce the next generation of AI and security giants.
Where Investors Expect The Real Winners To Emerge
The billion-dollar question, of course, is where the real value will concentrate. For Kleinstein, the answer lies in cybersecurity and infrastructure. “Cyber Security and AI (infrastructure and applications) are our core. These days we are witnessing how AI creates major opportunities, broadly around the following three buckets: Protecting AI; AI vs AI; and recreating existing cyber domains with AI native approaches. Each one of the above categories will create big companies. This is where our focus will be.”
He extends the logic further: “AI is a big revolution and as such, it will likely create multiple winners in different layers of the technology stack. In our case we believe that we will see the winners in the cybersecurity/infrastructure layer. This aligns perfectly with our expertise and the unmatchable skill set of the Israeli eco-system.”
That perspective dovetails with broader investor sentiment. As Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights told Reuters in a recent interview, “As companies like Alphabet and Meta race to deliver on the promise of AI, capital expenditures are shockingly high and will remain elevated for the foreseeable future. It will buy them more time with investors and provide confidence that the billions being spent on infrastructure, talent and other tech-related expenses will be worthwhile.”
In other words, the capital bet is not on fast consumer wins but on the infrastructure and defense layers that keep the AI economy running.
The gap between what investors expect and what they get has been the defining feature of AI investing over the past three years. But for firms like Glilot Capital, that gap isn’t a warning sign; it’s an opportunity. By focusing on cybersecurity and enterprise infrastructure, they’re p putting themselves in a position where the delayed returns may ultimately be the most durable. As Samboursky put it, “This new capital not only validates our past performance but also empowers us to continue and grow our cyber and AI philosophy.”
The billions pouring into AI may not deliver instant wins. But they do reveal something critical: Investors are no longer betting short. They’re building for the long term.
