Invest2 distinct publishers3 min readPublished
Huskeys closed $27m five months after leaving stealth, with Blackstone leading what Globes calls the firm's first early-stage cybersecurity round. The cheque is worth about 0.002% of its assets.
The Investor · Invest desk
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$27m set against more than $1.3 trillion of assets under management comes to about 0.002 percent, one part in roughly 48,000 [3] -- a scale at which the position could be written off entirely without moving Blackstone's own numbers. That is what makes it worth reading rather than dismissing. A cheque this size cannot buy returns at fund scale; it buys sightlines into a category early enough to matter when the growth vehicles are writing amounts that do move a balance sheet, and Globes calls this the firm's first early-stage cybersecurity investment [3], which is another way of saying someone decided deal sourcing is a line item worth funding.
Okta Ventures and Zscaler Ventures both came in with commercial partnerships attached [7], and the cap table reflects that: the product story is that Huskeys sits on top of the network and security tools an organisation already runs rather than replacing them [8]; Shlomo Kramer and Eran Reshef, two of the people credited with originating the web application firewall, are also in [18], and the firewall in question, per Calcalist, is a nearly 30-year-old Israeli technology that has changed relatively little since [14].
Then the arithmetic of the company. Total funding is $35m and this round is $27m of it [1], so everything raised before came to $8m [1] and 77 percent of the money Huskeys has ever taken arrived in one go [2], from a company founded in 2025 [5]. Neither announcement attaches a valuation, a revenue figure or a headcount to any of it [5]. What is disclosed instead is a customer roster (TikTok, Legoland, Ro, Cava and Hugging Face, per Globes [10]) and a category name of the company's own coinage, Network Edge Security Management [9].
Calcalist's version of that roster swaps Cava for Blackstone [11]. That detail changes what the money means: not simply a customer funding its supplier, but a customer buying optionality on infrastructure it has already decided to depend on. The demand case underneath rests on one estimate, that non-human traffic has already passed human traffic and reaches 70 percent of the internet by 2027 [12], leaving the human share at 30 [4]; Gafni's framing is that most identities online will soon be autonomous agents needing infrastructure that can identify and manage them [16].
This is probably wrong, but I read the $27m as a sourcing fee rather than an alternatives manager going into competition with seed funds. It could play out a few different ways. Blackstone repeats within a few quarters and puts a named team behind it, which makes it a programme. The Okta and Zscaler partnerships turn into real distribution and Huskeys gets bought before any growth round, which makes the strategic money the money that mattered. Or the agentic traffic estimate slips, and blocking exploitation at the edge within minutes [13] ends up a feature inside somebody else's platform. Two more early-stage cyber cheques would prove me wrong, and I would rather be shown that than be right about a one-off.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
Israeli startup Huskeys completed a Series A round raising $27 million, bringing total funding to $35 million.
The round was led by Blackstone, described as the world's largest alternative investment management firm, managing assets worth more than $1.3 trillion.
Globes states this is Blackstone's first early-stage investment in cybersecurity.
Huskeys emerged from stealth five months before the Series A announcement, having unveiled an approach for managing and securing internet traffic in organisations.
Huskeys was founded in 2025 by CEO Itai Gafni and CTO Roy Weisfeld, both graduates of the Israeli army's Unit 8200.
Also participating in the round: Skinos Ventures (the fund of Shlomo Kramer and Yishay Yoval), Zscaler Ventures, Okta Ventures, NextEra Energy, Bright Pixel, SV Angel and Merlin Ventures.
Distinct publishers with included, body-backed reporting in this cluster.
1 article · September 2, 2026
1 article · September 2, 2026
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Evidence-backed comparisons of source perspectives and observed adoption signals. Read the methodology
Which Builder, Operator, and Investor concerns the observed source mix emphasized—not a truth score.
Evidence, demonstrated adoption, hype gap, incentives, and confidence are assessed independently, each on its own current evidence. How these are measured.
Two bylines, one origin
Both accounts were published in the same minute and both read off the same announcement — Globes' version even keeps the 'Published by' sign-off of a press release. What looks like corroboration is transcription: where the two differ, it is in the direction of copying error, not independent checking. The only facts with a second witness are the round size, the lead investor and the stealth timeline, and the company is the original source of all three.
Logos without numbers
Five brand names and the phrase 'significant scale' are the entire adoption record — no traffic volumes, no contract sizes, no seat counts, no case study. The Okta and Zscaler tie-ups are announced intent, described in the future tense. And the single detail a buyer could have cross-checked does not survive the check: Globes has Cava on the customer list, Calcalist has Blackstone, the fund that just led the round.
Category named before it is proven
A company incorporated in 2025 is credited here with defining a category, redefining how enterprises manage network security, and shutting down exploitation 'within minutes' — and the load the argument rests on, 70% of internet traffic being non-human by 2027, arrives with no institution attached to it. Set against that: no valuation, no revenue, no headcount, one contested customer name, and a lead cheque worth about one part in 48,000 of the lead investor's assets. The vocabulary is running well ahead of what anyone has shown.
Everyone quoted owns a piece
Blackstone's chief information security officer praises a platform his firm has just funded and, on Calcalist's account, also buys. Okta and Zscaler invest and simultaneously sign integrations that make the pitch more true than it was the day before. Shlomo Kramer appears twice over — as a founding father of the technology being called obsolete and as a backer of the company calling it that. Both stories landed on the announcement's clock, not on a reporter's.
Skeleton firm, flesh soft
The bones — $27m, $35m lifetime, Blackstone leading, five months out of stealth, two Unit 8200 founders — are stated twice and would be cheap to correct if wrong, so treat them as settled. Past that the reporting thins quickly: the customer list and the investor list differ between tellings, Blackstone's 'first early-stage cybersecurity investment' has a single publisher behind it, and every product capability is the vendor describing itself.