Israeli cloud security company Upwind has acquired AI security startup Aegis and launched a new research and development operation focused on emerging cyber threats involving artificial intelligence, the company announced Wednesday.
The acquisition will bring Aegis co-founders Omri Limor and Saar Ankonina into Upwind, where they will lead the newly established Upwind AI Security Labs. The operation will focus on detecting and defending against attacks involving AI agents, tools and plugins as companies increasingly incorporate autonomous AI systems into their operations. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by Upwind.
Upwind founders
(Photo: Upwind)
Aegis, founded in early 2026, emerged from stealth with the acquisition. Limor and Ankonina are veterans of the Israeli military's elite Unit 8200 intelligence unit, where they began their careers in offensive cybersecurity and at one point served in a commander-subordinate relationship. They later worked at Israeli cybersecurity companies before founding Aegis to address security risks associated with rapidly expanding AI infrastructure.
The startup focused on threats involving AI agents and other systems capable of independently interacting with applications, accessing information and executing tasks. Its work included defenses against AI-assisted attacks such as automated exploitation and large-scale credential harvesting.
Aegis initially approached Upwind about a strategic partnership and potential investment while developing its technology. After several months of collaboration, Upwind moved to acquire the startup and integrate its employees and technology into its existing cloud security platform.
“AI security is developing extremely quickly, and by acquiring Aegis and bringing Omri and Saar on board, we are building a team that can move just as quickly,” Upwind co-founder and CEO Amiram Shachar said.
“The Aegis team brings a deep understanding of the challenges around securing agents, skills and plugins, and by combining that expertise with Upwind’s existing platform, we can move from research to real-world security capabilities much faster,” he added.
Israeli business publications reported that the stock-based transaction was valued at tens of millions of dollars, with Globes citing market estimates of about $30 million. Upwind did not disclose a valuation for the deal.
AI changes the economics of cyberattacks
The acquisition comes as cybersecurity companies race to address the risks created by increasingly capable AI systems.
AI agents can perform tasks with limited human intervention, interact with software and process large quantities of information. While those capabilities can improve productivity, they can also introduce new points of vulnerability and give attackers tools to automate parts of cyber operations that previously required specialized expertise.
A September threat intelligence report from AI company Anthropic found that AI was narrowing the gap between sophisticated state-backed cyber operations and less experienced attackers. Anthropic said it had identified financially motivated criminals, suspected state-sponsored groups and individual operators using AI to automate tasks including reconnaissance, exploitation, malware development and processing stolen data. The company cautioned that the cases represented notable examples of misuse rather than typical activity on its systems.
In one case detailed by Anthropic, an operator used a distributed system to download 1.8 million Android applications and scan them for exposed credentials and other secrets. The report also documented criminal operations targeting API keys and authenticated session tokens, which could then be sold or used in additional cyberattacks.
Upwind said the new labs will focus on areas including scanning, attack detection and defenses for AI environments, with particular attention to identifying exposed credentials and other secrets both while data is moving and while it is stored.
“We initially built Aegis as a startup to tackle the missing security layer around AI agents, skills and plugins,” Limor said. “After spending several months working together with Upwind, it became clear that joining forces through an acquisition and establishing AI Security Labs inside Upwind would allow us to move much faster and combine our technology with the capabilities Upwind has already built.”
Ankonina said integrating the startup’s technology directly into Upwind would give the team “an immediate path to scale.”
“The establishment of AI Security Labs provides the ideal environment to accelerate research and protect enterprise AI workflows,” he said.
Upwind plans to more than double AI security team
The new labs currently employ 12 developers and researchers from Aegis and Upwind, according to the company. Upwind plans to increase that number to about 25 within three months and potentially to 35 as the operation expands.
The group will combine Aegis' research and technology with Upwind's existing runtime security platform, with the aim of shortening the time between identifying new AI-related attack techniques and deploying defenses that can be used by businesses.
“We built AI Security Labs on the foundation of the Aegis acquisition with the ambition to create a significant research and engineering capability within Upwind,” Shachar said.
The acquisition also represents a broader expansion by Upwind from conventional cloud infrastructure security into protecting AI systems and autonomous agents.
Upwind was founded in 2022 by Shachar and former colleagues from Spot.io, the Israeli cloud computing company acquired by NetApp for $450 million in 2020. The company has since raised more than $700 million, including a $300 million funding round announced this month at a valuation of about $3.8 billion.
“As AI transforms both the threat landscape and the speed of modern cyber operations, this is the ideal moment to build, innovate and lead in cloud and AI security,” Shachar said. “With AI Security Labs, Upwind is reinforcing its mission to protect modern enterprise infrastructure and ensure organizations can safely embrace the next era of AI innovation.”