Following media reports earlier this week that Cisco was in talks to acquire Israeli cybersecurity company Zafran Security for less than $200 million, CEO Sanaz Yashar has denied the reports in an interview with “Globes.” She said, “Zafran is not being sold to Cisco but is about to make an investment by participating in our financing round.”
The strategic investment in Zafran is for a few million dollars in the financing round, which could give it a valuation for as much as $1 billion. The investment is through a SAFE agreement – a cash injection in exchange for preferred shares.
Cisco Investments VP Janey Hoe said, “As the threat landscape grows increasingly complex in the AI era, the challenge for security teams has extended from identifying vulnerabilities to effectively orchestrating their remediation. We are excited to invest in Zafran to create a more unified, intelligence-driven security ecosystem that empowers our customers to better discover vulnerabilities and reduce risks in their infrastructure.”
Zafran is seeking a high valuation based on the accelerated growth it has experienced in the past two months since the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model, which is prompting many potential customers to locate products that protect against autonomous malicious code. The connection between Zafran and Cisco was formed through the business development team of Splunk, the Cisco division responsible for securing data created by AI and machine learning applications: the US company realized that many customers use both products at the same time – Splunk and Zafran – and are interested in mutual cooperation.
Significant increase in ARR
Since the launch of Anthropic’s Mythos in April, Zafran has recorded a significant increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR), which could rise to the range of $30-40 million by the end of the year compared with $20 million last year. Security managers in organizations understand that the launch of Mythos, as well as advanced open models in China, provide hackers with tools that allow them to bypass software patches that cover code vulnerabilities at lightning speed. Instead of developing software that will close these vulnerabilities for weeks, which is impractical in the AI era where hackers find weaknesses in seconds – companies like Zafran, Silk Security and Nagomi are able to detect intrusion attempts in seconds according to the organization’s existing database of protection rules, and block them.
Zafran has raised $130 million to date at a valuation of several hundred million dollars from investors such as Sequoia, CyberStarts, Menlo Ventures, Vintage and 01 Advisors. Basketball player Steph Curry is also an investor through his venture capital fund, Penny Jarre.
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Yashar is a former intelligence officer in the IDF 8200 unit and a cybersecurity researcher at companies like Mandiant. Yashar was born in Iran, immigrated to Israel after high school years, was recruited to the intelligence branch.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 22, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
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