{"id":305930,"date":"2026-02-23T12:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/305930\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T12:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:08:08","slug":"former-unit-8200-commander-yossi-sariel-joins-ai-unicorn-decart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/305930\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Unit 8200 commander Yossi Sariel joins AI unicorn Decart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the former commander of Israel\u2019s elite intelligence Unit 8200 who resigned after the October 7 Hamas attack, has joined the management of Israeli artificial intelligence company Decart, a fast-growing unicorn founded by two of his former subordinates.<\/p>\n<p>Decart confirmed that Sariel has taken a management seat. Both of the company\u2019s founders previously served under him in Unit 8200. Moshe Shalev, Decart\u2019s co-founder and chief product officer, spent 13 years in the unit, ultimately becoming the right-hand man to Sariel when he commanded it.<\/p>\n<p>The move is striking not only for the personal ties involved but also for its symbolism. Sariel stepped down in December 2024, accepting responsibility for what he described as a profound intelligence failure.<\/p>\n<p>In his resignation letter to subordinates, he wrote: \u201cDespite the information regarding Hamas\u2019s plans, we were unable to break through our basic conceptions.\u201d He added, \u201cThe failure of Unit 8200 is entirely on me, and I am deeply sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Unit 8200, long regarded as one of the world\u2019s most sophisticated signals intelligence organizations, had been criticized for allegedly relying too heavily on advanced technology while neglecting traditional intelligence-gathering methods. The October 7 attack exposed those vulnerabilities in devastating fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Now Sariel is re-entering the public arena through a company that embodies the very technological frontier critics say Israel\u2019s intelligence community leaned on too heavily.<\/p>\n<p>Decart was founded in late 2023 by Dr. Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, both veterans of Unit 8200. In less than a year, the company has become one of Israel\u2019s most closely watched AI startups.<\/p>\n<p>Last August, Decart raised $100 million at a valuation of $3.1 billion, its third funding round in 11 months, bringing total capital raised to $153 million. In its previous round, the company had been valued at less than $1 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the fundraising, Decart said it had used less than $10 million of investor capital. The company finances its tens of millions of dollars in GPU compute costs through revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Decart has generated revenue from day one, signing multi-million dollar contracts to license its proprietary GPU optimization stack to cloud providers and AI laboratories. That same stack underpins its real-time video generation models.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the former commander of Israel\u2019s elite intelligence Unit 8200 who resigned after the October&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-305930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}