The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, was recorded in real time from almost every angle, including the killers’ body-worn cameras, security equipment, CCTV, dashcams, phones, and overhead drones. Israel’s security services faced a maze as teams sought to gather relevant information, including in hopes of finding hundreds of missing and abducted people. The answer is almost certainly out there, if someone can find it.
Obsessed with the footage, officials turned to local startups in the private sector that are developing artificial intelligence systems that help analyze and quickly extract relevant information from mountains of information.
One of those startups was Airis Labs, a startup specializing in AI-powered visual threat analysis.
“On the evening of October 7, several organizations contacted us and asked for our assistance in analyzing video from various visual sensors from Gaza,” Airis Labs co-founder Norm Friedman told The Times of Israel. “We had just founded our startup in early 2023 based on lessons learned from the Ukraine war, which revealed that while the world of information was rapidly moving from text to video, existing information platforms were not keeping up.”
“We have seen analysts drown in data to pull the needle out of the haystack while important signals and intelligence are missed,” Friedman said.
Starting April 2023, Startup Founder — Friedman. Rotem Abeles, former strategist at Palantir Technologies. and Amos Rahab – have been working behind the scenes to develop an idea for an AI platform designed to connect and analyze large amounts of raw visual data from multiple sources and various formats, turning it into actionable intelligence for national security and law enforcement.
“We are focused on turning video from a variety of sources into intelligence for operational insights that allow national security analysts to act with the speed needed to prevent the next devastating terrorist attack,” Friedman said. “We couldn’t afford to spend years building technology in the lab.”
“Rather than being based on synthetic data or generic models, we developed our AI platform in a real-time wartime operational environment and under the real pressures and exigencies of a war zone. This is what differentiates us from our competitors,” Friedman added.
Friedman said the platform uses AI models to narrow down and extract relevant information within minutes, rather than days or months.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the introduction of the startup’s AI intelligence platform when contacted by The Times of Israel.
Airis Labs has already been deployed in several government agencies around the world. Friedman noted that the company last year participated in the U.S. Army Accelerator Program, which aims to integrate new technologies, while also working with law enforcement, national security and intelligence agencies.
The company announced Wednesday that it has come out of stealth and has so far secured $60 million in funding from investors including PSQ Equity, TLV Partners, Stepstone Group, and Redseed Ventures. Angel investors include Mellanox Technologies founder Eyal Waldman, whose daughter was killed by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border on October 7, and Jeff Holling, co-founder of New York-based venture capital firm Insight Partners.
Airis Labs said it will use the funding to hire more staff and expand its U.S. operations. The startup employs 50 people, most of whom work out of its research and development center in Tel Aviv, and also has an office in Washington, DC.
“Airis Labs is a rare company born from a deep understanding of this problem,” Waldman said. “Our founders understand the mission because they’ve lived it. It’s not something anyone can imitate.”
