Former Israeli intelligence operatives just landed $20 million to weaponize their surveillance skills for enterprise sales. Onfire emerged from stealth today with fresh Series A funding to help B2B software companies identify when developers are ready to buy by monitoring their conversations across public forums like Reddit and Stack Overflow.
Onfire just proved that intelligence training translates perfectly to sales. The Israeli startup emerged from stealth today with $20 million in Series A funding, turning military surveillance expertise into a developer-focused sales intelligence platform that's already generating serious results.
The company's approach is deceptively simple but remarkably effective. While most sales tools focus on generic outreach, Onfire monitors public developer forums - think Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Hacker News - to identify real buying intent. When a developer posts about needing a specific tool or complaining about their current solution, Onfire's AI kicks in to identify their employer and map decision-makers within that organization.
Grove Ventures and TLV Partners co-led the $14 million Series A, with additional participation from IN Venture (Sumitomo Corporation's venture arm) and LeumiTech77. The funding validates what Grove managing partner Lotan Levkowitz calls a critical gap in the market - software infrastructure companies aren't leveraging AI effectively in their go-to-market strategies.
"The missing piece there was the data," Levkowitz told TechCrunch. That data advantage comes from Onfire's three co-founders - CEO Tal Peretz, CTO Shahar Shavit, and CPO Nitzan Hada - all alumni of the Israel Defense Forces' Unit 8200, the intelligence unit that's spawned countless tech unicorns.
Their intelligence background isn't just résumé padding. Unit 8200 specializes in advanced AI and data analysis for surveillance operations, skills that translate directly to parsing developer conversations for buying signals. The trio interviewed 275 revenue leaders before writing a single line of code, discovering that traditional product-led growth approaches were failing in enterprise sales.
The results speak volumes. Since launching in beta 12 months ago, Onfire claims to have driven "more than $50 million in closed deals" for clients including ActiveFence, Aiven, Cyera, Port, and Spectro Cloud. These aren't small wins - they're the kind of enterprise deals that can make or break a quarter.
But the elephant in the room is obvious: former intelligence operatives building tools to identify and track individuals based on their online activity. Levkowitz frames it as mutually beneficial - salespeople reach out with relevant solutions at the right time, rather than spray-and-pray outreach that wastes everyone's time.
