Twenty-two of the 50 companies in the Israeli Defence-AI Deployment Index hold an L2 grade, meaning a procurement contract or order has been publicly announced. In a large share of those announcements the buyer is not named. An undisclosed defence contract is a fact a reader can date and cite and still cannot use, and that limitation shapes the biggest band in the index.
The pattern is consistent enough to quote. Sentrycs announced "multimillion dollar deals to protect military bases in Europe." Odysight.ai announced a purchase order from "an international defense contractor." Cyabra announced a multi-year contract with an "APAC intelligence agency." Each statement is true as published, dated, and attributable. None identifies who is buying.
What a redacted announcement leaves standing
Strip an announcement of its customer and four things survive. Money changed hands or is contracted to. A region or a customer type is indicated. A product line is named. And a date exists.
That is enough to establish commercial traction, which is what L2 is defined to mean under the index grading rules: a publicly announced procurement contract or order exists, with no reported operational use.
Five things do not survive. The identity of the buyer. The quantity. The configuration or variant. Whether the order was fulfilled. And whether anything was subsequently fielded. A procurement officer comparing suppliers needs at least three of those five, so the announcement that satisfies the index's L2 test still fails the buyer's test. This is the practical meaning of the observation that an L2 grade often amounts to "a defence ministry somewhere signed something."
Three announcements, read closely
Sentrycs, a counter-UAS company founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv, announced through PR Newswire that it had secured multimillion-dollar deals to protect military bases in Europe. Europe contains more than thirty potential state customers with materially different procurement standards. The announcement narrows the field to a continent. Sentrycs is one of eleven entries in Israeli counter-UAS companies, the index's densest category.
Odysight.ai, founded 2013 in Omer, announced through a Nasdaq press release a purchase order from an international defence contractor. Here the customer is not even a government but an unnamed intermediary, which means the end user is two steps removed from the published record. Odysight is the single entry in military logistics and sustainment AI.
Cyabra, founded 2018 in Tel Aviv, announced via GlobeNewswire a multi-year six-figure contract with an APAC intelligence agency. The disclosed value is the smallest of the three and the customer description the vaguest, covering a region that spans several dozen states.
ImageSat International and SpearUAV sit in similar positions, with contract reporting that identifies a region or a customer category rather than a named buyer.
Why the customer goes unnamed
The omission is usually not evasion. Non-disclosure obligations are standard in defence contracting, and the restriction typically originates with the buyer rather than the seller. Governments have their own reasons for not publicising which counter-drone system protects which base, and a supplier that breaches a disclosure clause loses the contract.
Export licensing adds a second layer. A supplier operating under national export controls may be permitted to announce a sale in general terms and prohibited from specifying the recipient state. A third factor is competitive: naming a customer tells rivals exactly where to pitch a replacement.
None of this is unique to Israel or to AI. What differs by jurisdiction is whether the buyer publishes independently. The US Department of Defense announces contracts valued at $7.5 million or more each business day, naming the contractor, the value and the awarding component, which gives a researcher a buyer-side record to cross-check against a vendor's press release. For export sales to most other states, no equivalent public register exists, so the vendor's announcement is the only account there will ever be.
The named-customer minority
Not every L2 entry is opaque, and the contrast is instructive. Janes reported the US Air Force awarding Edgybees a contract for its augmented-reality software. SpaceNews reported Tomorrow.io winning an Air Force contract. Unmanned Systems Technology reported D-Fend Solutions' counter-drone system being used by the US Army during a named exercise. The Times of Israel reported Magos Systems securing a deal for a drone-attack warning system with the Israeli army, and separately reported the Israeli defence ministry engaging Cognata for autonomous-driving simulation. Naval Today reported the Israeli Navy selecting Steadicopter's unmanned helicopter.
What these have in common is a buyer that publishes, or a reporter with access to a buyer that does. Where the customer is a US service or an Israeli government body, the identity tends to surface. Where the customer is an export state, it usually does not. The L2 band is therefore not one population but two, and the split runs along the buyer's disclosure practice rather than anything about the supplier.
What this does to the index
The undisclosed-customer problem is one of the main reasons the index tops out where it does. An announcement that omits the buyer can never support an L3 grade, because L3 requires a named public source reporting operational military use, and an unnamed buyer cannot be reported using anything. Companies with genuine, active, export-heavy order books are structurally capped at L2 by their customers' confidentiality preferences.
That is a limit of public sourcing rather than a finding about those companies, and it compounds the broader distribution described in the deployment evidence gap. For buyers, the workaround is to request the disclosure directly under NDA, which is one of the steps set out in how to verify a vendor's deployment claims.
Limits of this reading
The index cannot determine whether an unnamed customer is a state, a subcontractor or a distributor, nor whether the contract was performed. It records that an announcement was published and by whom.
It also cannot rule out that some named-customer announcements overstate the relationship, or that a "multi-year contract" was later cancelled without a follow-up release. Announcements are published at signature; cancellations are usually not published at all. Every L2 entry across the 50 companies should be read as a claim about a moment in time.
Frequently asked questions
Why do defence companies announce contracts without naming the customer?
Non-disclosure obligations in defence contracts usually originate with the buyer, and export licensing can prohibit identifying a recipient state. Companies are often permitted to announce that a sale occurred while being barred from specifying who bought it or in what quantity.
Can a company reach the index's top grade with an undisclosed customer?
No. The operational grade requires a named public source reporting that a military used the system in operations. An announcement that withholds the buyer cannot support that, so export-heavy suppliers are effectively capped at the contract grade regardless of their real order book.
Is there a public register of defence contracts to check announcements against?
The US Department of Defense publishes contracts of $7.5 million or more each business day, naming contractor and awarding component. Most other states publish no equivalent, so for export sales the vendor's own announcement is frequently the only public record.
Sources
- idf.ai, The Israeli Defense-AI Deployment Index v1.0, 24 August 2026
- PR Newswire, Sentrycs secures multimillion dollar deals to protect military bases in Europe
- Nasdaq, Odysight.ai announces purchase order from an international defense contractor
- GlobeNewswire, Cyabra secures multi-year six-figure contract with APAC intelligence agency, 3 August 2026
- US Department of Defense, daily contract announcements
- Janes, US Air Force awards Edgybees contract for Argus augmented reality software
- The Times of Israel, Radar tech AI startup clinches deal for drone attack warning system to Israeli army
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.