State of Mind Ventures

State of Mind Ventures is an Israeli venture capital firm that invests in early-stage Israeli startups across cybersecurity, AI, and enterprise software.

IOF intelligence connections

State of Mind Ventures' general partner Pinhas Buchris, Brigadier General, served as "Head of 8200 Unit, the Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the IDF responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption", "led the 81 Unit – responsible for building cutting-edge technologies", founded "the Cybersecurity capabilities within the Israeli intelligence", and served as Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Buchris was awarded the Israel Security Award.

Unit 8200 developed the AI targeting systems "Lavender", "Gospel", and "Where's Daddy?", which generated automated kill lists of up to 37,000 Palestinians, with operators spending approximately 20 seconds approving each target.

Defending war crimes

On October 13, 2023, the CEO of Web Summit, Europe's largest technology conference, posted on social media criticizing Western leaders for failing to condemn Israel's war crimes in Gaza and the genocide carried out by Israeli Occupation Forces. In response, State of Mind Ventures joined a coalition of Israeli venture capital firms issuing a joint statement announcing their boycott of the conference.

We, members of the Israeli high tech community, have made the decision to cancel sponsorship and will not attend the upcoming Web Summit. We cannot, in good conscience, participate in a conference whose leadership blames Israel for war crimes while Hamas terrorists committed one of the worst terror attacks in modern history,

Despite the CEO of Web Summit's statement presenting factual observations within the context of the atrocities (later confirmed by the UN) Israeli venture capitalists demanded unwavering support for their state, which was already engaged in the mass killing of civilians at the time.

Sources:

• State of Mind Ventures Team
• +972 Magazine 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza
• Calcalist Google Withdraws from Web Summit; Israeli VCs Unite in Joint Conference Boycott
• UN OHCHR UN Commission finds war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israeli attacks
• X Paddy Cosgrave

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