Who Owns Toka?

Toka was founded in Tel Aviv in 2018 by four figures drawn from the top of Israel's security and technology establishments: former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Brigadier General (ret.) Yaron Rosen, the former chief of the IDF Cyber Staff, Alon Kantor, and Kfir Waldman, formerly CEO of cyber company Kayhut and a Cisco engineering director. Andreessen Horowitz backed the seed round the same year, a notable early bet by the firm on an Israeli security startup.

The company's positioning differed from offensive cyber vendors of the NSO type. Toka described itself as a cyber capacity-building company: it designed, built, and managed tailored cyber capability ecosystems for allied governments, combining software products with advisory work on national cyber defense programs. Its technology focused on intelligence-gathering platforms that could operate across internet-of-things devices, including networked cameras and sensors.

An October 2020 Series B brought $25 million led by Eclipse Ventures, taking disclosed funding to $37.5 million, and the company hired Michael Anderson, a former Check Point sales executive, as head of global sales to push into government procurement channels. The round was cast publicly around cyber readiness for government organizations, a deliberate emphasis on the defensive and capacity-building side of the offering.

Staffing followed the customer base. Recruiting drew heavily on Israeli military intelligence and Unit 8200 alumni alongside former officials from the Prime Minister's Office and defense establishment, giving the company a talent pipeline unusual even by Israeli cyber standards.

Public scrutiny arrived in December 2022 when Haaretz published internal Toka pitch documents describing capabilities to access and alter security camera footage, slides headlined "Discover, Hack, Alter." The documents, which Toka did not dispute, described features that could leave no forensic trace on the target device, raising questions about how such tools would be governed once sold.

The company continued expanding its government customer base. In December 2024, TechCrunch reported that Toka was actively pursuing contracts with U.S. federal agencies, pitching the ability to access security cameras and other connected devices for lawful investigations.

By 2025 the company was reporting over 60% year-over-year growth and customers in 13 countries including the United States and allied nations. That year brought the structural changes described above: the headquarters move to Columbia, Maryland, near the U.S. federal customer base, and the appointment of Gregg Smith as global CEO in September 2025. LinkedIn data puts headcount around 100 to 110 employees, distributed across Israel, the United States, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.