---
title: "Huskeys’ $27M Series A: Blackstone’s First Early Cyber Lead"
description: "Blackstone Innovations Investments led Huskeys’ $27M Series A at a $100M+ valuation — five months after stealth — for Network Edge Security Management with TikTok, LEGOLAND, and Hugging Face among logos."
date: 2026-09-04T00:00:00.000Z
tags: ["2026-vc-news", "startup-funding", "venture-capital", "cybersecurity", "ai-security"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/2026-huskeys-27m-series-a-blackstone
---

# Huskeys’ $27M Series A: Blackstone’s First Early Cyber Lead

> Blackstone Innovations Investments led Huskeys’ $27M Series A at a $100M+ valuation — five months after stealth — for Network Edge Security Management with TikTok, LEGOLAND, and Hugging Face among logos.

**Blackstone Innovations Investments** led **Huskeys’ $27 million** Series A announced **September 2, 2026**, five months after stealth, bringing total funding to **$35 million** (Globes, TNW). TNW notes the **Wall Street Journal** first reported the round and a valuation above **$100 million**. Okta Ventures, Zscaler Ventures, Skinos Ventures (Shlomo Kramer), Merlin Ventures, Bright Pixel Capital, SV Angel, and a deep bench of cyber operators participated.

**Spine:** Blackstone’s first early-stage cyber lead is not a random check — its own CISO is on the record about AI-driven edge traffic breaking legacy application security management.

## Key facts

| Field | Detail |
| --- | --- |
| Company | [Huskeys](/startup/huskeys) (Israel) |
| Round | **$27M** Series A |
| Valuation | **$100M+** (WSJ reported) |
| Total | **$35M** (after **$8M** seed) |
| Lead | Blackstone Innovations Investments |
| Category claim | Network Edge Security Management (NESM) |
| Founders | Itai Gafni (CEO), Roy Weisfeld (CTO) — Unit 8200 alumni |
| Named logos | TikTok, LEGOLAND, Ro, Blackstone, Hugging Face (company) |

## Who uses the product — and for what job

**Users:** enterprises whose internet-facing apps see surging **AI-agent and bot traffic** across fragmented edge environments.

**Job:** manage and secure edge/web traffic **without ripping out** existing WAFs, identity, and network controls — Huskeys positions as a new management layer (NESM) rather than another point product.

Company claim: analyzing **>1 trillion** web requests and thousands of network configurations daily.

## Why now

- AI agents generate traffic patterns classic bot management never priced for.
- Strategic checks from **Okta** and **Zscaler** signal integration paths into identity and zero-trust stacks already sitting in enterprises.
- Five months post-stealth to a Blackstone-led A is the anomaly — enterprise logos + category narrative moved faster than typical cyber seed→A clocks.

## Why Blackstone — portfolio fit

Blackstone is primarily an alternatives giant; early cyber leads are rare. Here the fit is **operator-led**: CISO Adam Fletcher publicly framed AI-driven traffic and fragmented edges as a new management problem, and Blackstone itself appears as a customer logo in company materials.

**Likely founder rationale:** take a lead that brings Fortune-scale buyer credibility and board gravity, plus strategics that become distribution, rather than a pure cyber specialist fund alone.

Blackstone Innovations is **not** in our `/fund/` directory — editorial naming only.

| Dimension | Fit |
| --- | --- |
| Stage | Series A / category creation |
| Thesis | Edge security management for AI-era traffic |
| Risk | Category education cost; overlap with WAF/bot/CDN vendors |

## Competitive map

| Player | Lane |
| --- | --- |
| Cloudflare / Akamai / Fastly | Edge + bot/WAF suites |
| Classic WAF vendors | Rule-centric app security |
| Identity platforms (Okta) | Adjacent; now also investor |

## Takeaway

Huskeys is selling **category creation with customer proof**, not another AI-security slogan. The unresolved test: can NESM stay a must-have layer once CDN/WAF incumbents ship “AI traffic management” checkboxes?

### Sources

1. TNW: https://thenextweb.com/news/huskeys-raises-27m-series-a-led-by-blackstone
2. Globes: https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-security-management-co-huskeys-raises-27m-1001554225

**By:** [Venture Capital Tracker](https://venturecapitaltracker.com/editorial-policy)

**Editorial note:** AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.