“Military superiority will be with whoever knows how to connect several autonomous systems under one roof. There is no longer room for an individual solution – just a radar or just a robot or just a drone. There is a need to create one central system that deals with several threats simultaneously. The various solutions need to connect to one system,” Kliner told the annual defense conference of held by the Amit Pollak Matalon (APM) law firm.
Among the speakers at the conference was also Mordi Ben Ami, the former CEO of rocket propulsion company Tomer and founder of the Vulcan Defense Fund; Lital Leshem, Founding Partner Protego Ventures Fund; Rotem Kakon, Founding Partner Stratos Ventures Fund; Aharon Applbaum, Managing Partner Kinetica Ventures Fund; General (res.) Yaacov Ayish, Former Israeli Military Attache in Washington D.C.; and Colonel (res.) Dr. Olga Polyakov, former Israeli Military Attache in Berlin.
Ben Ami, one of the founders of the Vulcan Defense Fund, spoke about the urgent need to create a supply chain in which Israelis are in every link. He said, “As the war continued, we had to produce in real time, and about 8-10 hours later, the product was already on a plane, at sea or on land. The embargo imposed on Israel only accentuated the need for an Israeli supply chain, and therefore, in the fund we have founded, we set ourselves the goal of taking care of the supply chain and focusing on ensuring that every link in the chain is in Israel. The production of raw materials, for example, was neglected in Israel, factories were closed, and the war made clear the need for Israeli-made production throughout the supply chain.”
As part of the panel of leading investors in the defense tech sector, moderated by Adv. Ran Cohen, a partner in the high-tech department at Amit Polak Matalon who represents companies and funds in the defense tech sector, the surge in investments in this field was discussed.
Lital Leshem, managing partner at the Protego Fund, which invests in mature companies in the defense tech sector, including Israeli company XTEND, a developer of drone operating systems that listed on Nasdaq at a valuation of $1.5 billion, spoke about the impact of AI on the defense sector. She said, “The next concern will be how to implement AI to make better decisions on the battlefield. In a decade, there is a chance that decisions on the battlefield will be completely autonomous.” She also spoke about the areas that are being introduced to defense and in which there is growing interest from defense tech investors: among them the quantum, space, and synthetic biology sectors.
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Aharon Applbaum, managing partner of the Kinetica Fund, which invests in defense tech, said, “We are seeing a return to the original principles on which venture capital investments were based. In the late 1960s and until the early 1980s, venture capital brought together the government, the private sector and universities, who together tried to find solutions for the country’s problems. This collaboration gave rise to solutions in areas such as telecommunications, hardware, satellites. The last decade of venture capital investments has focused more on investments in software or fintech – important things that improve everyday life, but less on solving ‘big’ problems. Now, with the surge in investments in defense tech, there is actually a return to the basics of what venture capital was intended to be in the first place.”
Rotem Yehuda Kakkon, founding partner at Stratos Ventures, referred to the factors that make a company attractive for investment. “First and foremost, it is the founders and the team,” he said. “We examine the quality of the people, the size of the problem they are trying to solve, and their ability to embark on the complex entrepreneurial journey that is required today. Together with this, we also value true validation from the market, a deep understanding of the need and the ability to build a company that addresses a significant market and not just solves a specific problem.”
The Amit Polak Matalon (APM) law firm, one of the leading firms in the field of defense tech, holds an annual conference that helps connect entrepreneurs in the defense sector with investors in the field and the defense industries.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 22, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
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