A Tel Aviv-based artificial intelligence and cyber defence company has closed one of the most significant government-technology funding rounds of 2026, signalling a structural shift in how institutional capital is pricing sovereign digital infrastructure.
Dream, the sovereign AI and cyber defence company for governments and critical infrastructure, announced on 18 June 2026 a $260 million funding round, bringing its valuation to $3 billion just three years after its founding. The round was co-led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with participation from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, and other global investors.
The investment follows significant commercial growth for the company. Dream said it has secured nearly $300 million in total contract value since launching commercial operations in late 2024. The company has generated more than $130 million in annual recurring revenue from government clients across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.
With the latest round lifting total capital raised to $412 million, this marks the fifth financing milestone for the company. The velocity of that capital formation, from zero to $3 billion in valuation inside thirty-six months, reflects a market that is moving from interest in sovereign AI to active institutional commitment.
The Architecture of Sovereign AI
Dream built three platforms to address the challenge of government AI ownership. Sphere helps governments and critical infrastructure operators defend against nation-state cyber threats, combining cyber intelligence, exposure management, attack path analysis, digital twin technology, and AI-powered detection and response into a unified national cyber defence system. Hero is an autonomous AI security researcher that discovers vulnerabilities, identifies attack paths, and reasons like an adversary at machine speed to prevent sophisticated cyber threats.
The third platform, Atlas, serves as Dream’s sovereign AI environment. Atlas enables governments to connect information stored across ministries, agencies, and critical infrastructure organisations, transform data into structured knowledge, and deploy mission-specific AI models and agents within secure, government-controlled environments.
The three-platform model is deliberate. It gives governments a complete stack: defence, threat intelligence, and national data intelligence, without dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure or third-party operators.
The Founders and the Capital
Dream was co-founded in 2023 by Shalev Hulio, who previously co-founded and led NSO Group, alongside Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s former chancellor, and Gil Dolev. The combination of a seasoned intelligence-technology operator and a senior European political figure in the same founding team is unusual, and speaks directly to Dream’s commercial thesis: that government AI procurement decisions are driven as much by trust and access as by technical capability.
Shu Nyatta, co-founder and managing partner of Bicycle Capital, described Dream as having built a unique platform at the intersection of AI, cybersecurity, and government technology.
Sebastian Kurz, president and co-founder of Dream, stated that the defining question for governments is no longer whether they will use AI, but whether they will own it.
Capital Signals a Broader Structural Shift
The new capital will accelerate deployment of Dream’s sovereign AI and national cyber defence platforms across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.
The financing lands at a moment when sovereign AI has moved from a policy concept into an active procurement category. Governments across multiple regions are now treating AI infrastructure with the same strategic weight previously reserved for energy grids, telecommunications networks, and defence hardware. For institutional investors, that shift creates a new and durable asset class, one where the buyer is the state and contract tenure is measured in years rather than quarters.
The concept of sovereign AI has become central to several national technology strategies, centred on ensuring that highly sensitive digital operations, including health care, financial systems, defence applications, and government data, remain governed by domestic laws rather than by foreign cloud providers.
Dream’s round does not simply represent a venture bet on a single company. It represents institutional capital’s earliest and clearest signal that government-owned AI infrastructure is the next generation of sovereign investment, one that will define national competitiveness as decisively as the physical infrastructure of the previous century.
