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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-298023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}