Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz has been appointed as chairman of Fifth Dimension, an Israeli big data company working on "deep learning" artificial intelligence.
Fifth Dimension was founded in 2014 by CEO Guy Caspi and deputy chairman of the board Doron Cohen. The company already employs dozens of workers mainly senior mathematicians and big data experts. The firm received dozens of millions of dollars over three rounds of funding by private investors, most recently by US investment giant Columbus Nova.
Caspi worked through a series of senior roles at Comverse for a decade and was one of the founders of Tamares Telecom, where he was CEO. Tamares Telecom, owned by Poju Zabludowicz, operates in the network infrastructure sector it was responsible for laying the underwater cable connecting Israel to the internet, alongside the older MedNautilus cable.
According to previous reports, Tamares' client list includes Golan Telecom and the Palestinian Telecommunication Group.
In June 2012, Caspi left his role at Tamares for a position at BunkerSec alongside Lt. Col. (res.) Gonen Vardi. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan serves as one of BunkerSec's board members.
According to a "Globes" search of the IVC database, Caspi is mentioned as a founder-partner in Deep Instinct, which was founded this year and raised funds from Blumberg Capital. According to the Dun & Bradstreet database, Yoel Neeman an attorney at Tadmor & Co appears as a board member for both Deep Instinct and Fifth Dimension.
Cohen, Caspi's partner in Fifth Dimension, also appears as a director for Deep Instinct, whose description in the IVC database sounds similar to Fifth Dimension's. Nevertheless, Fifth Dimension said it was not the same firm.
Among the other board members for Fifth Dimension, according to Dun & Bradstreet, is Yaron Eitan formerly the founder of Geotec and DVTel.
Gantz responded to the report: "Fifth Dimension has developed extremely specialized systems to analyze immense amounts of data in real time, using advanced artificial intelligence technology.
"As someone who stood at the head of an organization which manages incredible amounts of data of different types, I know that the intelligence challenges have changed in the cyber arena we have passed from an age of collection to an era of fusing and processing information. It is an exciting field, and that is why I chose to join the group and lead Fifth Dimension together with the board to technological and financial success across the world."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 7, 2015
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