Copyright TechStartups.com
For decades, cybersecurity has been about building taller digital walls—encrypting data, hardening servers, and patching vulnerabilities faster than hackers can find them. But what if there were no walls to climb, nothing to steal, and no data left to decrypt? That’s the question driving CyberRidge, an Israeli deep-tech security startup that just came out of stealth with $26 million in total funding to change how data is protected at its most vulnerable point—while it’s in motion. The funding includes a $10 million seed round led by Canadian-Israeli investment group Awz, followed by a $16 million extension from Arkin Capital, Redseed VC, Elron Ventures, and the EU Horizon-EIC program. The company’s mission sounds like science fiction: making intercepted data disappear before attackers ever have the chance to store or decrypt it. This Startup Raised $26 Million to Protect Data in Subsea Cables from Hackers as Quantum Threats Rise At the center of CyberRidge’s approach is a new class of photonic encryption that turns every transmission into a burst of meaningless optical noise. The technology targets an invisible but growing threat—the interception and long-term storage of data moving through global fiber-optic cables. More than 95% of all international digital communication, from government records and medical data to banking transactions and AI workloads, travels through fiber networks, including subsea cables stretching across continents. Those cables have become one of the most vulnerable points in global infrastructure, as cyber adversaries quietly tap and record vast amounts of data for later use in what experts call “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. With the rise of quantum computing, those stored archives could soon be decrypted in seconds, rendering current encryption standards obsolete. CyberRidge’s founder and CEO, Professor Dan Sadot, believes it’s time for a different strategy. “We’ve spent decades building taller walls and stronger vaults to protect data, but what if we could make the vault itself disappear?” Sadot said. “Encryption assumes your data will be stolen and tries to slow attackers down. We’re taking a fundamentally different approach: eliminate the ability to record the data in the first place. If no raw data exists, there’s nothing to hack, today or years from now, no matter how powerful the computer.” CyberRidge’s flagship product is a plug-and-play photonic transmission system that integrates directly into existing fiber infrastructure. Instead of encoding data into readable light pulses, it transforms it into encrypted optical noise that can’t be captured, analyzed, or reconstructed. The only way to reassemble the data is with a proprietary photonic key that changes every fraction of a second and must be present exactly when the light signal arrives. Miss that window, and the data is gone forever. This approach sets CyberRidge apart from two major trends shaping the “post-quantum” cybersecurity race: PQC (post-quantum cryptography), which relies on complex math to resist quantum attacks, and QKD (quantum key distribution), which protects only the encryption key itself. CyberRidge aims to protect both the payload and the key by preventing the data from ever being stored or harvested in the first place. The company calls it a photonic shield that secures the physical transmission layer of fiber optics, where most of the world’s data traffic flows. The technology is already being deployed by major players in telecommunications, defense, and intelligence, with early pilots in Europe, Singapore, and Australia, including a rollout with Israel’s military intelligence unit. “As quantum decryption advances, truly secure solutions are increasingly rare,” said Yaron Ashkenazi, founder and CEO of Awz. “In a world racing toward quantum threats, CyberRidge’s photonic-layer encryption stands apart: turning data into unrecordable optical noise and eliminating the possibility of interception.” Yaniv Shnieder, CEO of Elron Ventures, added: “We’re proud to back CyberRidge, developing breakthrough deep tech solutions with a unique technological edge and strong growth potential. The founding team brings outstanding vision and execution, and we look forward to contributing our deep technological expertise and network of professionals to help accelerate the company’s development.” CyberRidge was founded by Professor Sadot, a world leader in optical communications with more than 35 patents and a background that bridges academia and intelligence operations. The company employs 30 people across Israel, Switzerland, and the U.S., and was recently awarded a flagship grant from the European Innovation Council, chosen from more than 1,400 applicants for its potential to redefine secure communications infrastructure. CyberRidge calls its technology “the end of recordable data.” By erasing the possibility of offline storage and post-hoc decryption, it’s positioning itself as a safeguard against the quantum future—one where no firewall, no matter how advanced, can match the security of data that never existed in the first place.
