But this is not an isolated incident. 'Recruitment fraud' has become an international phenomenon, mimicking glamorous jobs at well-known companies, using professional logos, persuasive texts, and even fake LinkedIn profiles. The attempt to lower the victim's suspicion level to zero is deliberate and precise, made easier with advancing technology. The attack is no longer just a technological question but also a societal one, shaped by labor market conditions and culture. Many will do almost anything to land the dream job suddenly offered to them. And when they fall into the trap, most are too embarrassed to admit it, this silence is exactly what allows attackers to continue refining their methods.

For this very reason, our responsibility as a community and as individuals is not only to be cautious but also to speak up. Share the experience, admit mistakes, and turn shame into awareness. Here, a few simple yet effective tools come into play: for example, checking whether the sender's email address really matches the company's official domain. It's also worth checking for 'doubles'—often, you'll find another version with just one letter altered. Another technique is to copy a sentence from a suspicious message and search it on Google. In most cases, you'll discover it was sent to dozens of others. Language itself can also be a clue: Hebrew or English that looks overly polished and completely error-free is sometimes a sign of a sophisticated fake, written with the help of artificial intelligence.

There are also more advanced checks that can become part of a daily routine. For instance, uploading the sender's photo into a reverse image search may reveal it appearing elsewhere under different names. Or, verify if the recruiter's LinkedIn profile is genuine—very few connections, no activity, or strange links to countries with no logical relation are all red flags. Even something small, like checking whether the offer includes a direct link to download a file instead of pointing to the company's official website, can prevent disaster.

Ultimately, we cannot rely solely on security software when attackers exploit human vulnerabilities. The responsibility here is both personal and collective: to ask questions, think twice, and report every suspicious attempt so others don't fall victim as well. In an era where the dream offer can turn into a nightmare, our most valuable asset as job candidates is no longer just a glittering résumé line, but rather the ability to build a muscle of healthy skepticism, translating into small but life-saving actions.

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Sutskever, who gained prominence as chief scientist at OpenAI where he helped develop the technology behind ChatGPT, departed the company last year following a significant conflict with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, according to Wall Street Journal. His new venture operates with extreme secrecy from offices in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv.

Unlike competitors such as Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, SSI has stated it won't release any products until it develops superintelligence – an industry term for AI that can outperform experts across nearly all fields, Wall Street Journal reported. While other companies release consumer chatbots and business applications to generate revenue, Sutskever is pursuing a different approach entirely.

Sutskever has informed associates that he isn't developing advanced AI using the same methods employed at OpenAI, telling them he has identified a "different mountain to climb" that shows early signs of promise, according to people close to the company cited by Wall Street Journal.

"Everyone is curious about exactly what he's pushing and exactly what the insight is," said James Cham, a partner at venture firm Bloomberg Beta, which hasn't invested in SSI. "It's super-high risk, and if it works out, maybe you have the potential to be part of someone who is changing the world."

While most AI startups aggressively seek publicity to attract talent and investment, SSI operates with extraordinary secrecy. Its minimal website contains barely more than a 223-word mission statement. The company's approximately 20 employees – far fewer than OpenAI's and Anthropic's 1,000-plus workforces – are discouraged from mentioning SSI on their LinkedIn profiles, knowledgeable sources told Wall Street Journal.

Job candidates who secure in-person interviews must place their phones in a Faraday cage, which blocks cellular and Wi-Fi signals, before entering SSI's offices, according to one knowledgeable person cited by Wall Street Journal.

Despite this secrecy, top Silicon Valley investors including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have invested heavily in the company. The latest financing round, led by Greenoaks Capital, represents a sixfold increase from SSI's $5 billion valuation in September.

Born in the former Soviet Union and raised in Israel, Sutskever established his reputation as a graduate student in Canada after co-authoring a seminal paper on deep-learning AI algorithms. He later worked at Google before joining OpenAI in 2015, attracted by Altman and fellow co-founder Elon Musk's vision of a nonprofit dedicated to developing artificial general intelligence for public benefit.

At OpenAI, colleagues reportedly referred to Sutskever as a prophet who often contemplated what a world with AGI might look like and how to prevent catastrophic outcomes. "Our goal is to make a mankind-loving AGI," he stated at OpenAI's 2022 holiday party.

Following ChatGPT's worldwide success after its late 2022 release, OpenAI shifted from being primarily a research lab toward becoming a product and revenue-focused company. This transition reportedly left Sutskever and his team with fewer resources for studying advanced AI safety risks.

His relationship with Altman deteriorated significantly. In November 2023, Sutskever informed Altman that OpenAI's board was firing him for allegedly not being consistently candid with them. This decision backfired dramatically when hundreds of employees threatened to quit and Microsoft offered to hire them along with Altman. Sutskever later expressed regret over "my participation in the board's actions."

Altman was reinstated within a week. Though Sutskever remained officially employed, he stopped working and resigned in May 2024. He subsequently founded SSI with former OpenAI researcher Daniel Levy and investor Daniel Gross. By focusing exclusively on creating safe superintelligence, the new company aims to avoid the tension between products and research that characterized OpenAI.

After securing initial seed funding, SSI raised $1 billion in September before this latest investment round. In a rare public appearance at the NeurIPS AI conference in December, Sutskever discussed his vision for superintelligence, telling thousands of researchers that such systems could eventually become unpredictable, self-aware, and potentially desire rights for themselves.

"It's not a bad end result if you have AIs and all they want is to coexist with us," he stated during the conference.

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Matia, a Miami-based data operations platform, announced Tuesday that it has raised $10.5 million in seed funding to help enterprises better manage their increasingly complex data operations. The funding round was led by Leaders Fund and Secret Chord Ventures, with participation from Cerca Partners and Caffeinated Capital.

The company, founded in 2023 by brothers Benjamin and Geva Segal, is launching out of stealth mode with a platform that combines data ingestion, reverse ETL, observability, and cataloging capabilities into a unified solution. The launch comes at a time when organizations are struggling with fragmented data management tools, according to research cited by the company.

A survey from Enterprise Strategy Group found that nearly half of organizations use 26 or more vendors to execute their data operations strategy, highlighting the challenge Matia aims to address. This fragmentation has become particularly acute as artificial intelligence adoption accelerates across industries.

"Our goal with Matia is not only to eliminate the friction that organizations encounter when dealing with disparate data tools, but to create a more powerful data operations experience," Benjamin Segal, CEO and co-founder of Matia, told the company in a statement. He explained that after scaling a data team and consulting industry leaders, they identified several gaps in existing data stack solutions.

The brothers' previous experiences informed the platform's development. Benjamin Segal served as chief of staff and head of data at Pangaea, a consumer goods company with over $100 million in revenue, while Geva Segal worked as a cybersecurity engineering leader at global media company Synamedia.

Early adopters of the platform include data and AI teams at Ramp, Honeybook, and Obligo. Ryan Delgado, director of engineering at Ramp, reported significant improvements after implementing Matia's solution. "We've seen significant improvements in reliability, fault tolerance, and product velocity compared to the alternative and reduced our sync time by more than 80%," Delgado said in the announcement.

"We heard from data leaders that they are tired of having to deal with so many vendors to build their data stack. They want a reliable, all-in-one platform to manage their data operations," said Gideon Hayden, co-founder and managing partner at Leaders Fund. "We see Matia as not only an essential part of every team's tech stack, but a category defining product."

The company plans to use the funding to expand its engineering and product teams, enhance platform capabilities, and support go-to-market initiatives.

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Gartner forecasts that security and risk management spending will reach over $200 billion globally in 2024, representing a 14.3% year-over-year growth. This trend demonstrates the growing importance of cybersecurity, a sector where Israel, home to over 500 cybersecurity companies, is regarded as a global leader.

"The gap between real-time cyber solutions and evolving cyber threats is a critical challenge," said Lisya Bahar-Manoah, Managing Partner at Arieli EL. "In 2023, there were more than 300 million victims of cybercrime globally, with data breaches rising by 78% in the US alone. Israeli cybersecurity exits in 2023 grew by 65% totalling $7.1 billion, and we see this trajectory only gathering pace in 2024 as demonstrated by reports of Google's acquisition of Wiz for $23 billion. We are excited to be partnering with Elron's team as well as Elron's joint venture with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems (Rafael) to further contribute to this sector and continue building innovative solutions for sustained growth."

Elron Ventures has over $250 million in assets under management (AUM) and its portfolio includes over 19 companies across the cybersecurity, B2B Software, and health-tech spaces. Since 2010, Elron's portfolio has had 15 exits, totaling $2.2B. Notable portfolio companies include: Cynerio, a healthcare cybersecurity company, ensures patient safety and data protection by securing the connected medical device ecosystem; Cybersixgill, developing automated threat intelligence solutions across the clear, deep, and dark web; Cyvers, offering a real-time platform for detecting and mitigating cyber attacks on cryptocurrency and digital assets; IRONSCALES, an automated phishing prevention, detection & response platform; Sayata, automating insurance company processes; Red Access, providing the first agentless platform to secure all browsing activities of corporate employees on any browser, web app or cloud service and Scribe Security, providing a comprehensive solution to secure software supply chains.

"We are excited to have the opportunity to combine our joint experience and know-how in nurturing Israeli tech ventures throughout all stages of growth with Arieli's vast global network to provide the platform for our portfolio's success," said Dan Hoz, Chairman of the Elron Venture's board.

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Magnus Metal, a company pioneering digital metal casting technology, raised $74 million in Series B funding. This funding will accelerate the industrialization of their Digital Casting technology, which combines additive manufacturing for metal alloys with the ability to produce 1 ton of parts per day.

According to the company, the process innovates the centuries-old metal casting industry by providing a fully automated Industry 4.0 solution that is faster, safer, more environmentally friendly, while improving quality and reducing costs. It blends benefits of additive manufacturing and traditional casting while avoiding drawbacks, enabling a streamlined supply chain, digital inventory, and remote manufacturing without traditional foundry infrastructure.

The data-driven Digital Casting process requires 40-60% less raw material, produces 10-20% stronger parts, and saves 6-18 weeks by removing tooling needs. It enables more efficient, sustainable casting by shortening design-to-manufacturing cycles, efficiently using materials, and elevating quality control.

"Magnus Metal's technology is at the forefront of the digital casting revolution in metal production, forging transformations in sustainability, flexibility of design processes and massively reducing the time spent in development", Boaz Vinogradov, CEO of Magnus Metal, said. "We remain faithful to the industry's 4000 years of tradition, while reimagining and refashioning how metals parts are produced for modern purposes. We are excited to bring our unique capital equipment, industry 4.0 environmentally friendly, advanced processes and digital knowhow and apply them to the metal casting process, driving it into a new digital era."

"We co-led this investment based on customers' demand for Magnus Metal's solution in order to on-shore production lines to overcome supply chain and quality issues. Digital Casting is the only technology that allows reduction of production cost, meeting environmental regulation, meeting and surpassing quality standards and increase business agility with shortened delivery time and increase customization," Ran Achituv from Entrée Capital said. "It is the only solution that doesn't require new engineering and design as it digitally casts parts using the current customer's raw materials."

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Morphisec, a leading cybersecurity provider, announced the Anti-Ransomware Assurance Suite, an innovative offering to help organizations reduce cyber risk exposure, prevent advanced threats, and ensure optimal anti-ransomware defense. Powered by Automated Moving Target Defense (AMTD), the solution provides a tri-layered guard against ransomware.

With a rapidly expanding attack surface and security control gaps, organizations face increased risk from advanced and evasive attacks like ransomware. Exposure management, identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, is crucial, but challenging for IT teams.

The suite seamlessly integrates with existing endpoint protection, delivering comprehensive adaptive exposure management through three layers: Adaptive Exposure Management, Infiltration Protection, and Impact Protection, enhancing security posture and proactively defending against attacks at multiple phases.

"Current exposure management tools and technologies lack the proactive and preventative capabilities that teams need to effectively prioritize vulnerability remediation," Ron Reinfeld, CEO at Morphisec, said. "Optimized exposure management is key to achieving resiliency. Created with the support and input of customers, industry analysts,the Anti-Ransomware Assurance Suite seamlessly integrates with an organization's current endpoint protection array, enhancing existing protection capabilities to deliver comprehensive and holistic adaptive exposure management."

"Many dedicated security controls are available to solve the ransomware problem, yet attacks continue," Michael Gorelik, CTO at Morphisec, said. "Specific point in time solutions don't deliver the holistic approach teams need for cyber defense assurance. Much like an earthquake event, damage severity radiates from a breach's hypocenter. The Anti-Ransomware Assurance Suite helps organizations improve their overall security posture, get better visibility to threat exposure, and ensure operational readiness for rapid response and recovery, all of which ensure blast radius resiliency."

"Ransomware has become a global economy and big business – all organizations are at increased risk of attack," said Brad LaPorte, former Gartner Analyst and CMO at Morphisec. "Exposure is the attack surface. With the Anti-Ransomware Assurance Suite, organizations get a clear understanding of their attack surface, identify the unique factors that affect it, and gain the ability to address those factors before impact."

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Incitement on the internet has become a hot topic in the wake of Oct. 7, but as we all know, violence doesn't always stay online – extremist activists in Europe and the US, mostly of Muslim descent, are likely actively hatching plots to target Israeli and Jewish sites around the world, posing a clear and immediate threat.

But how do you find them? Is it possible to identify these "ticking time bombs" in advance and warn security authorities about them? Well, it turns out that here, too, Israeli technology is at the forefront, meeting the challenge.

The startup RealEye has developed two systems, "Masad" and "Fortress", that seek to do that by identifying and building as accurate a profile as possible of these dangerous activists and entities, essentially raising a "red flag" whose actions must not be overlooked.

The Israeli business raised a total of $1.1 million "to provide data-based insights to correctional and immigration authorities, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the military," the company said. The company also became a provider of an Israeli security agency as part of its effort to help law enforcement through the insight and intelligence it gleans.

The path to radicalization online is not linear. Some individuals, often termed "first-generation radicals," are indoctrinated in extremist ideologies abroad and then utilize digital platforms to propagate these views in their new environments, the company says. These new places could be mosques.

As has often been the case, extremism does not stay confined to social networks. The challenge is to find the needle in the haystack by identifying the individuals who are so radicalized that they pose a real, physical threat.

However, the challenge is further compounded by the emergence of "second-generation radicals," the company said. These individuals often come from stable backgrounds, and their radicalization stems from exposure to extremist narratives online. A tragic example of this was the 2019 shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey. The perpetrators were two individuals with no prior history of violence who had been reportedly radicalized to violence through online extremist content.

"Our objective," explains Kevin Cohen, founder of RealEye, "is to address the distinctive online experiences that play a role in radicalization and eliminate the formation of dangerous behaviors."

But identifying online threats is not enough. Effective prevention of violence must include figuring out the paths that lead to it and developing sophisticated technological tools for this purpose. This is where the technology that has changed our lives in the last two years – AI – comes into play.

Advanced AI models can differentiate between benign online behaviors and those harboring malicious intent. By exposing these hidden structures, companies like RealEye can empower governments and civil society organizations to detect potential dangers preemptively.

"Our technology analyzes a vast amount of digital footprints to identify signs of potential risk, distinguishing us from conventional, more general OSINT [open source intelligence] methods," Roy Zinman, the chief product officer at RealEye, says. 

Along with the desire to prevent online and social media incitement and violence from turning into actual violence, the fight against online hate requires balanced and delicate action, incorporating an ethical framework and preserving privacy and freedom of expression, RealEye argues.

"Fostering partnerships between governments, civil society organizations, and technology experts, can provide better security for those in peril of online-to-physical attacks," Cohen says. 

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Riskified, a fraud prevention and risk intelligence leader, unveiled this week a report titled "Chargeback Challenges and What You Can Do About Them: Global Insights 2024."

The survey of over 300 ecommerce chargeback managers worldwide reveals significant revenue losses due to uncontested chargebacks, even when merchants believe many chargebacks stem from first-party fraud.

Key findings include a rise in chargebacks, with 76% of managers seeing as many or more year-over-year, and nearly 60% leaving at least two in five chargebacks undisputed. Over 55% find chargeback management too time-consuming and manual, and over 65% want AI and automation to streamline the process.

The report highlights the need for merchants to adopt advanced technologies like Riskified's Dispute Resolve to automate disputes and recover more revenue.

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The Israeli cyber sector achieved a record-breaking $7.1 billion in exits in 2023, despite a 35% drop in the number of transactions compared to 2021. However, funding rounds hit a five-year low of $2.38 billion.

The Cybertech Global Tel Aviv 2024 conference, opening on April 8th, will showcase these trends and feature prominent speakers like the Israeli President, cybersecurity leaders, and executives from major companies and funds.

With over 60 countries represented, the event will explore emerging threats, AI in cybersecurity, deep fakes, IoT, fintech, and more. Despite ongoing conflicts, the conference highlights the resilience of Israeli cyber innovation and its role in addressing global cyber challenges.

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Belgian startup VoxelSensors has acquired the intellectual and industrial property of Israeli company EyeWay Vision, along with their expertise in gaze-tracking and projection technology for XR. By integrating EyeWay's innovations with their own Single Photon Active Event Sensor (SPAES), VoxelSensors aims to strengthen its position in spatial and empathic computing for mobile and XR devices.

"Integrating our technologies brings the promise of wearable XR closer and enables powerful use cases," said Boris Greenberg, VoxelSensors' VP of XR Solutions. EyeWay's gaze-contingent projection architecture includes a dynamic exit pupil shifter, varifocal foveated projection, laser gaze tracker, and efficient graphics pipeline.

This addresses critical XR requirements like power efficiency, daylight visibility, vergence-accommodation conflict solution, continuous varifocal interaction, low latency, high perceived resolution, and situational awareness. "This acquisition marks a key milestone, positioning us as a major spatial and empathic computing player for mobile and XR," stated VoxelSensors CEO Johannes Peeters.

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