This startup raised $26 million to protect data in subsea cables from hackers. Read the pitch deck.

Israeli startup CyberRidge has raised $26 million to protect data in internet cables from hackers.
CyberRidge’s technology manipulates light to conceal data in “random noise.”
Business Insider got an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to secure the funding.

An Israeli startup that has developed technology to stop data being stolen from internet cables has emerged from stealth with a total of $26 million in funding.

CyberRidge says its technology manipulates light to conceal data as it travels through fiber-optic cables on the seabed or on land.

If an adversary — like a nation state — cuts the cables and tries to steal the data, they would only capture “random noise,” Dan Sadot, the CEO and founder of CyberRidge, told Business Insider.

“We are transmitting the data in a way that is unobservable,” added Sadot, a professor at Ben-Gurion University with nearly 30 years of experience in optical communication.

Subsea cables, which are typically about as thick as a garden hose, are the backbone of the internet and crucial to the world’s economy.

Data is already encrypted as it travels through sprawling fiber-optic cables around the world. However, it can be siphoned off and stored with the intention of decrypting it in the future with powerful quantum computers, which are expected to crack today’s encryption standards. CyberRidge’s technology is “complementary” to existing protections rather than competing with them, Sadot said.

The startup’s core product is a hardware box that sits at the end of each fiber cable. Customers can recompose the data at each end with a “photonic key” that “changes every fraction of a second,” Sadot said.

Sadot told Business Insider that he founded the company about three and a half years ago after an Israeli intelligence unit encouraged the commercialization of the concept.

CyberRidge’s potential customers include telecommunications companies, hyperscale cloud companies such as Amazon Web Services, and large banks, among others.

The startup has a flexible business model that includes the direct purchase, leasing, and subscription-as-a-service of its hardware, Sadot added.

Most of the funding comes from a $10 million seed investment led by Awz Ventures, followed by an additional $15 million extension from Arkin Capital, Redseed VC, and Elron Ventures.

The startup plans to use the capital to move from prototype to full production of its hardware by the end of March 2026, Sadot said.

Here’s an exclusive look at CyberRidge’s pitch deck.