Liberty, the private equity fund raised by Stephen Manuchin, acquired control of the Israeli-American cyber company Zimperium from entrepreneur Tzuk Avraham for $ 525 million. This is considered to be the former finance minister’s largest investment in the Trump administration since he set up the fund last year, having previously led later rounds in cyber companies such as Israeli Cyberizen and American BlueViant.
Among the investors in the Liberty Fund are, according to the pool of venture capital funds PitchBook, also the giant softbank fund and the Saudi wealth fund PIF, which indirectly makes the Arab kingdom a partner in the success of quite a few Israeli cyber companies. And yet, Liberty’s investments are made in Israeli companies active in the US that have extensive collaborations with the government. Zimprium, for example, has served for many years the US Department of Defense and its clients, as well as huge organizations such as JPMorgan.
Zimperium, which was founded by Israelis, is currently managed from Texas and has raised $ 100 million from Morburg Pincus, Abex, Samsung Next, and Softbank, which will continue to hold minority shares in the company. It was founded in 2010 and focused on cyber solutions for Apple or Android smartphones, and grew especially in the Corona years when many organizations sought to expand their cyber strategy to secure devices that help their employees work remotely. In 2021, the company’s revenues grew by 53%.
The company’s founder Avraham wrote on LinkedIn that from now on he will focus full time on another company that he founded and that became known to the Israeli public thanks to the NSO affair and the police. Tzuk is one of the founders of ZecOps, which performed free telephone tests for former government ministry directors Shai BaVad and the Turner Foundation, and identified that spyware that had been removed days before the test was implanted on their devices.