Hex-Rays, the Belgian company behind the IDA Pro reverse-engineering tool, is acquiring HexAI, an Israeli startup that builds software for AI-driven security research, Calcalist's CTech reported on October 18, 2026.
The price was not officially disclosed. CTech put the deal at $30 million to $35 million, and VINnews, citing industry estimates, said it was more than $30 million. All six HexAI employees will join Hex-Rays, which plans to invest in expanding the team in Israel.
Hex-Rays had not announced the deal on its own blog as of October 19, according to a review of its site by the tech outlet Beri.
What HexAI built
HexAI, previously called Ventris, was founded in 2025 and stayed in stealth. It builds what CTech called an operating system for AI agents that do security research: the software examines source code and compiled programs for known vulnerabilities, previously unknown flaws, malware and backdoors.
Researchers can build their own agent workflows, run them, measure how well they perform and check the findings, and HexAI also ships prebuilt workflows tested against benchmarks. The platform is not tied to a single AI model and can run in air-gapped environments, meaning computers cut off from the internet, a requirement for some government and corporate users.
The company says its customers include government agencies and businesses in Israel and abroad, and that they can use cheaper AI models with its system. No customers were named and no benchmark results were published.
The pitch is about control. A general-purpose AI agent can be pointed at a program, but its results are hard to repeat and hard to check. HexAI aims to make the process measurable and its findings verifiable, CTech reported, so that a security team can trust an agent's result enough to act on it.
“Instead of relying on generic agents operating on their own, which are expensive and unreliable, our users can focus on what they want to research, measure performance and validate findings.”
The founder
HexAI was founded by Elon Gliksberg, 25, a veteran of the Israeli military's Unit 8200 intelligence corps. CTech reported that he started coding and building game cheats as a teenager, held project leadership roles in 8200 and then became the first employee at a startup; VINnews identified that startup as Elementary. He later published security research and was paid for reporting flaws in services run by large companies.
Or Gany co-founded the company with him but later left. Amit Schendel, another former 8200 colleague, joined as chief technology officer.
"Instead of relying on generic agents operating on their own, which are expensive and unreliable, our users can focus on what they want to research, measure performance and validate findings," Gliksberg told CTech.
Why Hex-Rays is buying
IDA Pro is a tool security researchers use to take apart compiled software and understand what it does. Hex-Rays has been in reverse engineering for about 35 years, according to VINnews, and was bought in 2022 by a group of investors led by the European venture firm Smartfin.
Hex-Rays has been adding AI around IDA without building it into the core product. Beri noted that IDA 9.5, released on October 6, added three decompilers but no built-in AI features, and that Hex-Rays released a free, open-source IDA MCP server on September 25 that lets outside AI models work with IDA. HexAI gives the company its own agent platform.
Beri reported that Hex-Rays says its new AI research tools are, for now, available only through HexAI. The company has not said whether HexAI will become an add-on to IDA or stay a separate product.
No outside money
The deal is unusual because HexAI never raised venture capital, so there are no outside investors to pay out of the proceeds, a little over a year after the company started.
It also adds to a run of Israeli AI startups bought within months of being founded. CTech reported the same week that a one-year-old Israeli AI startup with six employees had been acquired for an estimated $100 million.
