CyberRidge raises $16M Series A to launch photonic encryption that turns data into optical noise
The Israeli startup claims its hardware makes data impossible to intercept or decrypt, even in the quantum era.
CyberRidge, which has developed photonic encryption technology that renders data untraceable, has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Arkin, Redseed VC, Elron Ventures, and a European Innovation Council (EIC) grant under the European Union’s Horizon program. The company, which is currently undergoing a strategic revamp, had previously raised $10 million from the Canadian-Israeli investment group Awz.
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In a conversation with Calcalist, Professor Dan Sadot, the company’s CEO and one of its founders, said: “Our uniqueness lies in our multidisciplinary background, we combine expertise in communications, optical communications, cyber, and networks into a solution that is fundamentally different from anything in the cybersecurity industry. We don’t compete in cyber; we add a layer at the light level.”
CyberRidge’s flagship product is a plug-and-play photonic layer transmission system that integrates with existing fiber infrastructure and transforms data into encrypted optical noise, making it immune to traditional tapping tools, quantum analysis, or any attempt to capture and postprocess. The only way to recompose the data is with a proprietary photonic key that changes every fraction of a second and must be present at the exact moment the light signal arrives. Without it, the data is lost forever.
Sadot explained that CyberRidge has developed a hardware-based encryption product that replaces the existing transmitters used by traditional communications providers.
“Our system operates in an entirely new way, we manipulate light itself at the physical level. Anyone trying to intercept our encrypted information will receive only noise. The data becomes unrecoverable unless it is processed in real time on the other end,” he said.
“The fear that encrypted data could one day be decrypted using advanced computing is irrelevant in our case. We’ve made all existing cyberattack tools obsolete, the only way to access the data is with optical tools that reconstruct the signal in real time. If not, the information is lost forever.”
CyberRidge’s technology originated in academia eight years ago. The company was officially founded in February 2022 by Professor Dan Sadot, a leading researcher and serial entrepreneur in optical communications and photonic cryptography. Sadot is a senior professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, where he has led the Optical Communication Research Laboratory since 1996. His lab’s work formed the foundation for CyberRidge’s technology. Over his career, Sadot has published more than 200 scientific papers and registered 35 patents, several of which led to successful companies in photonics and communications, including Banias Labs (acquired by Alphawave), MultiPhy, XLight Photonics, and TeraCross.
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CyberRidge employs about 20 people in Israel, mostly graduates of Ben-Gurion University and elite IDF Intelligence units, and additional teams in the U.S. and Switzerland. Its technology is already being tested by leading organizations in communications, security, and intelligence across Europe, Singapore, and Australia, including an implementation within an elite unit of the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Recently, CyberRidge received a flagship grant from the EIC and was selected from over 1,400 companies to participate in the European Innovation Council’s program, recognizing its potential to transform the future of secure global communications.
Today, more than 95% of global digital communication, from banking transactions and government records to AI and medical data, travels through fiber-optic infrastructure, including undersea cables. In recent years, the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat has intensified, as hostile actors stockpile encrypted data in hopes of decoding it later using quantum computing. CyberRidge’s solution directly addresses this risk, making intercepted data impossible to recover even with future technologies.
