Builders hate (dangerous) advertising and marketing, however they nonetheless want a method to discover helpful instruments and companies. That’s why you’ll discover a preponderance of builders on boards and websites like Hacker Information, Reddit and Stack Overflow discussing their dev kits and why some instruments are higher than others.
That purchasing intent is the sign that Israeli startup Onfire desires to assist software program distributors seize. The corporate screens public boards to study what instruments devs are discussing, after which makes use of AI to establish which firms these commenters work with and who the choice makers there are. The platform additionally layers in information on funds cycles, and places all of it collectively to assist B2B gross sales groups time and contextualize their outreach.
Onfire is now popping out of stealth with $20 million in funding, TechCrunch has discovered completely. This features a recent $14 million Sequence A co-led by Israeli VC companies, Grove Ventures and TLV Companions. IN Enterprise, the enterprise arm of Japan’s Sumitomo Company, additionally participated, as did LeumiTech77, a particular fund marking Israel’s 77th anniversary.
Like many different Israeli founders and VCs, Onfire’s CEO Tal Peretz, CTO Shahar Shavit and CPO Nitzan Hada are alumni of the Israel Protection Forces’ Unit 8200, an intelligence unit akin to the NSA that each received awards and sparked controversy for its alleged mass surveillance of civilians utilizing superior AI and information instruments.
After becoming a member of the personal tech sector, the trio (pictured above, from left to proper: Hada, Peretz and Shavit) noticed the chance to make use of their intelligence experience in SaaS. The startup estimates it has pushed “greater than $50 million in closed offers” for its purchasers since its beta launch 12 months in the past, and says its early customers embody ActiveFence, Aiven, Cyera, Port and Spectro Cloud, in addition to different firms promoting information, cybersecurity. FinOps and observability options to technical consumers.
Nonetheless, one can’t ignore the elephant within the room: Given the founders’ intelligence background, Onfire’s trawling of public information to establish commenters’ employers is certain to lift eyebrows. However Levkowitz frames the startup’s outcomes as a win-win. “Our clients are blissful, and by the way in which, even their prospects are blissful, as a result of folks pitch them with the best issues on the proper time,” he stated.
The corporate hopes its vertical, data-centric focus will give it an edge over opponents. Whereas different AI-enabled instruments promise to spice up enterprise gross sales, Peretz says one can’t do customized outreach with out one thing to base it off. “What set us aside is we began as a data-first firm, after which we added the AI engine on high of that,” he stated.
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In accordance with Grove managing companion Lotan Levkowitz, Onfire is filling a niche that the enterprise agency had recognized earlier than it met the founders: software program infrastructure firms aren’t leveraging AI of their go-to-market (GTM) technique. “The lacking piece there was the information,” he stated.
Onfire comes at a time when firms are dealing with challenges leveraging solely product-led progress for enterprise gross sales. Some within the trade assume a brand new information layer is now essential to help GTM groups, and Grove had already come to that conclusion when it linked with Onfire, Levkowitz stated. He helped Onfire join with firms his group had met whereas growing that thesis.
“Earlier than we wrote a single line of code, we interviewed round 275 income leaders within the IT house,” Peretz informed TechCrunch. The co-founders discovered that almost all firms had been nonetheless deriving the vast majority of their income from direct gross sales efforts, however the adoption of AI instruments was altering issues.
They discovered that consumers may gain advantage from utilizing AI-based contextual instruments to “do extra with much less.” However CISOs, CTOs and engineering groups, historically thought-about “powerful consumers,” now need to filter out extra noise than ever due to AI instruments that allow mass outreach, and context may assist salespeople right here.
Peretz pressured that Onfire’s resolution can also be about mapping alerts to the context of a buyer — for instance, you’d want a unique method to promote an information resolution to a big group in comparison with a cybersecurity resolution. Levkowitz says that is notably fascinating, because it signifies that “with each buyer Onfire has, the information set is definitely getting higher and higher.”
That compounding information layer is what Onfire considers its moat to defend in opposition to CRM incumbents like Salesforce and HubSpot. “This verticalized method allows them to have a really distinctive worth proposition for these go-to-market groups of software program infrastructure firms,” Levkowitz stated.
Peretz stated the startup plans to make use of its new funding to make hires in AI, R&D and gross sales. Its core AI system is inbuilt Israel, the place 60% of the group is predicated, however the “go-to-market machine” is predicated in New York, because the startup expects the U.S. to be certainly one of its major markets.
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