Israeli AI cybersecurity startup Dream is moving to expand in Latin America after securing $260 million in new funding, bringing its pitch for government-controlled AI defense systems into a region where public agencies and critical infrastructure operators are under pressure to improve cyber resilience.

The Tel Aviv-based company is planning to open a regional office in Latin America that could house research and development, sales and engineering teams, Bloomberg reported through Yahoo Finance, citing co-founder Shalev Hulio. The move follows Dream’s June announcement that it raised $260 million at a $3 billion valuation, with the company saying the capital will accelerate deployment of its sovereign AI and national cyber defense platforms across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.

Dream’s expansion plan is not a conventional enterprise cybersecurity rollout. The company markets its software to governments and critical infrastructure organizations, emphasizing “sovereign AI” — systems that can be run under a government’s own authority, inside controlled environments, without depending entirely on foreign cloud providers or external model operators. That framing has become more important as countries weigh how to secure sensitive public-sector data while adopting AI tools for defense, intelligence, healthcare, financial oversight and public administration.

The company said its latest round was co-led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with participation from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners and other global investors. Dream has said it has raised $412 million since its founding and has secured nearly $300 million in total contract value since beginning commercial operations in late 2024. It employs roughly 350 people across Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Vienna, according to company materials.

Dream was founded in 2023 by Hulio, who previously led the spyware firm NSO Group; Kurz, the former Austrian chancellor; and Gil Dolev, a cyber and intelligence technology executive. Hulio’s past at NSO is likely to remain part of the company’s public profile, particularly as Dream seeks contracts with governments. The company has positioned itself on the defensive side of the market, saying its products are designed to protect national systems, map exposure, detect attack paths and help governments analyze their own data inside secure environments.

The startup describes three core platforms. Sphere is aimed at national cyber defense and critical infrastructure protection, combining intelligence, exposure management, attack-path analysis, digital-twin technology and AI-assisted detection and response. Hero is an autonomous AI security researcher designed to find vulnerabilities and reason through attack paths before adversaries exploit them. Atlas is Dream’s sovereign AI platform for connecting fragmented national data, creating structured knowledge and deploying mission-specific AI agents in government-controlled systems.

Latin America offers a timely test for that model. A July 2026 Inter-American Development Bank release on the latest IDB-OAS cybersecurity report said countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made significant progress in strengthening cyber capacity, but persistent gaps in resources, workforce development and cross-sector coordination continue to leave the region exposed to evolving digital threats. The report also flagged lower maturity in areas including software quality, critical infrastructure protection and the cybersecurity marketplace, while warning that rapid AI adoption is reshaping the regional threat landscape.

Those findings help explain why a company built around government-owned AI systems may see an opening. Many Latin American governments are digitizing public services, tax systems, healthcare records, ports, utilities and financial rails faster than their cybersecurity workforces and procurement systems can mature. Cyberattacks in the region have repeatedly affected government services and critical sectors, and policymakers are increasingly treating cyber resilience as a development, security and economic competitiveness issue rather than a narrow IT function.

For U.S. technology companies and investors, Dream’s Latin America push is significant because the region is both a growth market and a strategic security zone. U.S. companies operate supply chains, energy assets, payment networks, telecom infrastructure and data services across the hemisphere. Cyber disruptions in Latin America can spill into U.S. markets through trade, banking, logistics and cross-border business operations. At the same time, Washington has encouraged stronger cyber cooperation with foreign partners because the infrastructure Americans rely on is globally interconnected.

The financing also underscores how AI cybersecurity is becoming a venture-backed national-security category. Dream’s round included U.S.-linked investors, including Bain Capital Ventures and New York-based Tru Arrow Partners, according to company and media reports. That puts the company in the same broad investment current that has benefited defense technology, secure cloud, AI infrastructure and critical-infrastructure software startups in the United States.

Dream’s “sovereign” pitch may resonate in Latin America for reasons that go beyond technical security. Governments in the region often balance relationships with U.S., Chinese, European and domestic technology providers, while trying to preserve control over sensitive state data. A platform marketed as government-owned and locally governed could appeal to officials who want advanced AI capability without routing high-value data through a foreign commercial system. It could also raise procurement questions about transparency, oversight, cost, vendor lock-in and how governments verify that sensitive data remains under national control.

The political backdrop is also complex. Bloomberg’s framing pointed to the company’s interest in a Latin America that includes leaders aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump. That may help the company identify governments open to deeper security ties with Israel and private-sector cyber providers. But cybersecurity procurement in the region is rarely just political signaling; it often involves lengthy budget processes, data-sovereignty rules, public-sector capacity constraints and scrutiny from civil society groups concerned about surveillance, privacy and abuse of cyber tools.

Dream’s challenge will be to prove that its defensive AI systems can be adopted in countries with uneven cyber maturity and limited specialist workforces. Its opportunity is that the need is clear: governments want faster threat detection, more secure public infrastructure and AI tools that do not expose sensitive national data to uncontrolled platforms. If Dream can turn its new capital into credible regional deployments, its Latin America office could become a beachhead for a wider Americas strategy, including closer competition with U.S. cyber and defense-tech companies.

The company has not publicly detailed which Latin American country would host the planned office, the size of the team, or which governments or critical-infrastructure operators it may target first. For now, the clearest signal is strategic: Dream is using a large funding round to move beyond its existing footprint in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and to test whether sovereign AI cyber defense can become a mainstream purchase for governments across the Western Hemisphere.