Senior managers of US defense company Anduril Industries made a twenty-four hour visit to Israel to promote deals with Elbit Systems, Rafael, and the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (MAFAT) at the Ministry of Defense. It turns out however that some of them invested privately in an Israeli startup.
The startup produces engineering components and digging machines for use against terrorist tunnels and underground military bases. The Israeli company, Traysar, which employs former employees of Elon Musk’s The Boring Company, announced that it had raised $25 million from founders of Anduril and Erebor, senior engineers at SpaceX, Lux Capital (which invests intensively in Israeli defense-tech), Ora Global, strategic angel investors including Steve Blank, NeverLift VC, Mana, Impatient Ventures, New Vista, Entree Capital, co-founded by Avi Eyal, and Craft Ventures, founded by David Sacks, chairperson of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The company valuation was not disclosed, but is estimated at $100 million.
Is Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey himself among the investors? The company refuses to confirm it, but from things that Luckey has said on several occasions he emerges as almost the only prominent voice in the US defense industry calling for investment in subterranean warfare. “I actually believe that the subterranean domain will be the defining space. But nobody agrees with me, and every time I talk about it, I sound insane to people,” he said last year. Besides Luckey, Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf, chairperson Trae Stephens chairperson, COO Matt Grimm, and Joseph Chen could be among the investors.
The Israeli company was unveiled last week at an industry conference in Detroit. It has developed a miniature mechanical digger designed to dismantle and destroy terrorist tunnels with a hydraulic drill and a mechanism for planting explosives in tunnel walls. The system has already been used against terrorist tunnels in the Gaza Strip, and is also intended for use against smuggling tunnels between Mexico and the US. The company also revealed a tunnel boring machine designed to reach bases deep underground such as in Iran.
Israeli-US company Traysar was founded in 2024 by Yadin Soffer, Asher Katz, and Gilad Adin. Soffer, who for the past decade has lived in Austin, Texas and serves as CEO of Traysar, is a serial entrepreneur who in the past sold fintech company Xperiti to Ipsos, and he was among the founders of the TED community in Israel. Katz served in a secret IDF tunnel finding unit, and Adin was an officer in the IDF 8200 signals intelligence unit but is better known as the former CEO of Channel 10 News, and is Soffer’s son-in-law.
The company already operates miniature engineering vehicles against tunnels on Israel’s borders, but the big potential for it is the US defense industry. “No-one will invest in Traysar because Israel suffers from tunnels. It has to come from a need to hit subterranean installations in Iran, and to win a campaign in Russia or North Korea or China, which declared three years ago that its defense strategy will include warfare deep underground.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 1, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
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