Six of the 50 companies in the Israeli Defence-AI Deployment Index give a founding year of 2023 or 2024. None of the six holds an L3 grade. Three of them sit at L1, which means half the index's entire trial band is drawn from a cohort that makes up twelve per cent of the field. The Israeli defence tech startups 2024 wave is visible in the index, and it is visible almost entirely below the operational line.
That is not a judgement about the companies. It is a measurement of how long the public evidence chain takes.
Who the 2023–2024 cohort is in this index
Six entries state a founding date in those two years.
- Kela Technologies (2024, Tel Aviv), C2 and decision support, graded L2. Its entry cites a Calcalist report.
- Shifters AI (2023), autonomous ground and maritime, graded L2, also sourced to Calcalist.
- Airis Labs (2023, Tel Aviv with a second office in Washington DC), ISR and sensor fusion, graded L1.
- Althimis (2023, Tel Aviv), counter-UAS, graded L1, sourced to The Defense Post in July 2026.
- Skana Robotics (2024, Tel Aviv), autonomous ground and maritime, graded L1, sourced to TechCrunch in December 2025.
- Dream Security (2023, Tel Aviv, with offices listed in Vienna and Abu Dhabi), military cyber, graded L0. The Times of Israel reported the company at a $3 billion valuation.
The cohort distribution is two L2, three L1, one L0. The index as a whole runs 26 per cent L3, 44 per cent L2, 12 per cent L1 and 18 per cent L0. Against that baseline the young cohort is absent from the top band and heavily over-represented in the trial band. The grading definitions are published with the index.
No company founded after 2021 holds an L3 grade
Set the cohort against the thirteen companies the index grades L3. Their stated founding years run 1969 (TSG IT Advanced Systems), 1995 (Bagira Systems), 2003 (mPrest Systems), 2009 (Roboteam), 2010 (ThirdEye Systems), 2011 (SMARTSHOOTER), 2013 (Robotican), 2015 (eyesAtop), 2017 (Axon Vision), 2018 (Ottopia and XTEND) and 2021 (Combatica). UVision Air does not publicly state one.
The youngest company in the index with a reported operational deployment was founded in 2021. Every other L3 entry predates it, most by a decade or more.
An L3 grade requires four things to happen in sequence: a product is built, a military buys it, that military uses it in operations, and a named outlet publishes an account of the use. Each link takes time, and the last one is outside the company's control. A firm founded in 2024 that shipped in 2025 has had almost no opportunity to complete the chain, whatever its product does.
Two entries reached L2 quickly
The cohort is not uniformly early. Kela Technologies, founded in 2024, is graded L2. Shifters AI, founded in 2023, is also L2. Both grades rest on published reporting rather than company material, and both mean the same thing: a procurement contract or order has been announced publicly, with nothing published about operational use.
Kela's index source is the same Calcalist report cited for eyesAtop, a 2015 company graded L3. One article can support an operational reading for one firm and only a contract reading for another. That is a feature of how the grades are defined rather than an inconsistency, and it is set out in what moves a company from L0 to L3.
The cohort is under-counted, not over-counted
Startup Nation Central's defence-tech landscape map listed 312 companies when Calcalist reported on it, up from roughly 160 when the first version was published in July 2024. Calcalist has separately reported on the sector's post-2023 expansion. If the ecosystem roughly doubled and a large share of the new entrants were founded from late 2023 onward, then six entries out of fifty understates the cohort's real weight in Israeli defence AI.
Two mechanisms produce that undercount. The first is age itself: a company with no published contract and no published trial does not clear the index's inclusion test at any grade. The second is disclosure. Eight index entries — among them Aerodrome, AeroNous Solutions, Insight Intelligent Sensors, Skapion and Skyforce — do not publicly state a founding year at all, so cohort membership cannot be established for them either way.
What would change these grades
For the three L1 entries, the specific artefact needed is a published procurement contract or order. For the two L2 entries, it is a named source describing a military using the system in operations. For Dream Security at L0, it is any independent published account of a defence application; the Times of Israel valuation report establishes commercial scale and nothing about deployment, a distinction treated in funding stage is not deployment evidence.
Counter-UAS is the category where the cohort is likeliest to move first, because it is the category with the most published contract activity. Althimis sits there at L1 alongside ten other entries in the Israeli counter-UAS field. Kela sits in the much smaller military C2 and decision-support group.
Limits of this reading
Founding years are taken from public sources and are inconsistently reported. A company may date itself from incorporation, from a pivot into defence, or from a spin-out, and the index records what was published rather than reconciling the three.
The cohort is six entries. That is too small a sample to support a rate, a trend line or a forecast. It supports one observation: at the date of this index, no company founded in 2023 or 2024 has a public source reporting operational military use of its system. Classified programmes, undisclosed customers and Hebrew-only coverage would all produce exactly the same result for a company that had been fielded. The broader pattern is set out in the deployment evidence gap, and the full index lists every entry.
Frequently asked questions
How many companies in the index were founded in 2023 or 2024?
Six of the 50 entries state a founding year of 2023 or 2024: Kela Technologies, Shifters AI, Airis Labs, Althimis, Skana Robotics and Dream Security. Two are graded L2, three L1 and one L0. None is graded L3.
Why does no recent Israeli defence startup have an L3 grade?
An L3 grade requires a named public source reporting operational military use. That requires a product, a buyer, an operational deployment and published reporting of it. The youngest company in the index with such a source was founded in 2021.
Does a low grade mean a young company is unproven?
No. The grades measure published evidence, not capability or maturity. A 2024 company may hold a contract that its customer has not announced. The index records the absence of a public source and names the document that would change the grade.
Sources
- idf.ai, The Israeli Defense-AI Deployment Index v1.0, 24 August 2026
- Calcalist, Israel's defense tech map expands to 312 firms amid wartime innovation boom
- PR Newswire, Startup Nation Central launches Israel's first defense tech landscape map, July 2024
- The Defense Post, Althimis Guardian drone defences, 28 July 2026
- TechCrunch, Skana Robotics helps fleets of underwater robots communicate with each other, 17 December 2025
- The Times of Israel, Israeli cyber unicorn valued at $3 billion aims to help governments own and control their AI
Independent publication of idf.ai. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli Ministry of Defense, or any government body. Compiled entirely from publicly published sources. No classified, restricted or non-public information. Listed companies may dispute any entry: send the published source that contradicts it and the entry will be amended or removed.