Hex-Rays buys stealth AI security startup HexAI for up to $35M

Hex-Rays, the Belgian maker of the IDA Pro reverse-engineering tool, is acquiring HexAI, formerly called Ventris, in a deal valued at $30 million to $35 million according to CTech. The startup was founded in 2025 by 25-year-old Elon Gliksberg and stayed in stealth while building an operating system for AI agents that run security research. All six employees will move to Hex-Rays, which plans to expand the team's operations in Israel. The platform supports air-gapped environments and works across multiple models, covering source code and binaries. The company says customers improved their findings while cutting model costs, though the report gave no figures. The deal comes days after Rocket Software bought Geniez AI, another Israeli AI startup, in a transaction estimated near $100 million. For founders, the takeaway is that a bootstrapped team with a narrow agent workflow can attract a strategic buyer within a year of incorporation. Security tooling vendors are buying agent orchestration capability rather than building it, which rewards startups that can prove measurable results on model-independent stacks.