Glilot Capital Partners Research
Investment Thesis
Glilot Capital Partners is the world's first VC fund dedicated to cybersecurity, founded in Israel in 2011 by Kobi Samboursky and Arik Kleinstein. The firm has since broadened its mandate to cybersecurity, AI, and enterprise software, investing from first institutional round through early growth. Glilot's stated philosophy is founder-first: "the identity of the founders is the most important part of any investment." The firm looks for founding teams with first-hand technical, operational, or industry knowledge of the problem (often ex-intelligence-unit or ex-security-vendor operators), a problem large and urgent enough to support a category, technology with defensible depth (not a thin wrapper), evidence that enterprise buyers will change existing process/priority to adopt the product, and the ambition to build a durable global company.
Glilot pairs capital with a structured go-to-market program: it maintains a network of CISOs and enterprise security leaders who pressure-test whether a problem is truly urgent and how enterprise buying actually happens, feeding real market signal into diligence and into portfolio support after the check is written.
Stage Focus
Glilot invests across two dedicated vehicles:
- Glilot Seed — leads first institutional (seed) rounds
- Glilot+ — invests after Series A/B in companies with established early traction, backing growth rounds
The firm explicitly avoids treating stage mechanically; it evaluates readiness (founder quality, buyer urgency, technical depth) rather than a fixed checklist.
Check Size
Public deal data points to typical seed checks in the roughly $500K–$3M range, with Glilot+ growth checks and follow-on participation scaling meaningfully higher (e.g., participation in ScaleOps's $130M Series C). Approximately half of each new fund is reserved for follow-on investment into existing portfolio companies.
Lead Tendency
Glilot frequently leads or co-leads. Recent examples: led Niv-AI's $12M seed (March 2026), led Rein Security's $8M seed (January 2026), led/co-led CopilotKit's $27M Series A alongside NFX and SignalFire (May 2026), and co-led Way Security's $20M seed alongside Insight Partners (July 2026).
Recent Activity
Glilot announced a $500M raise in September 2025 across a fifth seed fund (Glilot Seed V) and a second growth fund (Glilot+ II), bringing total AUM to roughly $1.3B; about half of each fund is earmarked for follow-ons. The firm has been actively deploying since:
- January 2026: Led Rein Security's $8M seed (AI-era application security)
- March 2026: Led Niv-AI's $12M seed (AI infrastructure power/GPU management)
- March 2026: Participated in ScaleOps's $130M Series C (autonomous cloud/AI infrastructure management)
- May 2026: Led/co-led CopilotKit's $27M Series A (AI agent UI infrastructure)
- July 2026: Co-led Way Security's $20M seed (with Insight Partners)
On the exit side, portfolio company LayerX Security was acquired by Akamai for $205M (May 2026) and CardinalOps was acquired by Cribl for approximately $100M (July 2026).
Portfolio Highlights
Glilot has completed 27 exits since 2011, including all eight investments from its first fund. Notable disclosed exits:
- Aorato — acquired by Microsoft (~$200M, November 2014)
- IntSights — acquired by Rapid7 ($335M, July 2021)
- Cider Security — acquired by Palo Alto Networks (undisclosed, December 2022)
- Ermetic — acquired by Tenable ($265M, September 2023)
- Entitle — acquired by BeyondTrust ($100M–$150M, April 2024)
- LayerX Security — acquired by Akamai ($205M, May 2026)
- CardinalOps — acquired by Cribl (~$100M, July 2026)
Active portfolio spans identity, cloud security, application security, data security, and AI-native security, plus a growing set of AI-infrastructure bets (CopilotKit, Niv-AI, ScaleOps) reflecting the firm's expanding AI thesis. Fund II (2015, $77M) was ranked the world's top-performing fund by Preqin (2017); Fund IV (2022, $220M) was ranked #4 fund worldwide by PitchBook.
Team
- Kobi Samboursky — Co-Founder & Managing Partner
- Arik Kleinstein — Co-Founder & Managing Partner
- Nofar Amikam — Managing Partner, Glilot Seed
- Rinat Remler — Operating Partner
- Sarit Sharabi — Chief Financial Officer
- Amit Spitzer — Chief Technology Officer & Chief Information Security Officer
- Tomer Assa — VP Marketing
- Elisha Levy — VP Value Creation
- Galit Farkash — Director of Investor Relations
- Daniel Ziv — Principal
- Karen Greenfield — Head of Marketing
- Aaron Shmidman — Senior Associate
- Sahar Sazgar — Investor
- Shelly Lev Schulberg — Sr. Controller
- Miri Cohen — Executive Assistant
Decision Process
Glilot operates as a partnership led by two co-founding Managing Partners plus a dedicated Managing Partner for the seed vehicle and an Operating Partner; investment decisions draw on the partnership plus the firm's CISO/enterprise-leader advisory network for market validation rather than a formal outside investment committee.
Founder Preferences
Glilot explicitly prioritizes founders with deep, first-hand domain expertise — frequently veterans of elite intelligence units, security roles, or leading vendors — who combine technical depth with persistence through market cycles. The firm says it passes when a team targets a crowded category without a sharp reason to lead it, when vision and market size are mismatched, when the team is incomplete (e.g., strong tech without a business leader or vice versa), or when a founder cannot clearly articulate problem and solution.
Geographic Focus
Heavily rooted in the Israeli cybersecurity ecosystem (HQ: Herzliya Pituach, Israel), which the firm frames as an unusually deep talent and R&D base for security. The portfolio also includes non-Israeli companies (e.g., Seattle-based CopilotKit), reflecting an expanding US/global aperture alongside the core Israel focus.