Gigi Levy-Weiss and Redis co-founder Yiftach Shoolman launch defense tech startup Line 5, raising $20M Seed round
The stealth Israeli startup is the year’s biggest defense-tech Seed deal, as founders turn focus from gaming and cybersecurity to battlefield innovation.
The defense tech panic is gripping the industry. Calcalist has learned that a new startup, Line 5, has completed the largest Seed round in the defense tech sector so far this year. The company was founded just a few months ago by Gigi Levy-Weiss, founder of the NFX venture capital fund, and Yiftach Shoolman, co-founder of the cybersecurity unicorn Redis. They are joined by Sari Brosh Rechav, who serves as COO and formerly held the same position at SpaceIL, and Matan Melamed, the CTO and co-founder of Iron Drone, one of the IDF's key technologies for countering drone threats.
Full list of Israeli high-tech funding rounds in 2025
The unusually large round was led by the NFX fund and included defense tech fund Kinetica, Iron Nation, as well as prominent angel investors. The startup’s name, Line 5, honors the memory of Shoolman’s friend, Ayelet Langer-Alkobi, who was murdered in a terrorist attack on Bus Line 5 in October 1994.
As with many defense tech companies, the development at Line 5 remains confidential. However, CEO Shoolman, a former fighter in Sayeret Matkal, says his goal is to transform the battlefield in a way that reduces risk to soldiers. Gigi Levy, best known for his focus on the gaming sector and companies like Playtika, serves as the company’s chairman.
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Line 5’s successful funding comes on the back of a boom in the local defense tech sector. Just last week, Israeli defense tech startup Kela Technologies secured an additional $60 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $100 million since its founding in July 2024. The round was backed entirely by Kela’s existing investors, Sequoia Ventures, Lux Capital, and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA.
Kela’s rapid fundraising trajectory - an $11 million Seed round, a $28 million Series A, and now this latest infusion - places it among the most heavily capitalized early-stage defense startups.
Kela develops an open and modular software platform designed to help Western militaries integrate emerging commercial technologies, such as AI models, advanced sensors, and edge computing devices, into existing military systems without the delays or constraints of traditional defense procurement cycles. It is, in effect, a battlefield operating system aimed at unifying fragmented defense tech stacks.
