NSO Group
NSO Group Technologies Limited is an Israeli cyber-intelligence firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones. It employed almost 500 people as of 2017.
NSO claims that it provides authorized governments with technology that helps them combat terror and crime. The company says that it deals with government clients only. Pegasus spyware is classified as a weapon by Israel and any export of the technology must be approved by the government.
According to several reports, NSO Group spyware has been used to target human rights activists and journalists in various countries, was used for state espionage against Pakistan, for warrantless domestic surveillance of Israeli citizens by Israeli police, and played a role in the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi government.
In 2019, instant messaging company WhatsApp and its parent company Meta Platforms sued NSO under the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 2021, Apple filed a lawsuit against NSO in the US, and the US included NSO Group in its Entity List for acting against US national security and foreign policy interests, effectively banning US companies from supplying NSO.
Corporate profile
Overview
NSO Group is a subsidiary of the Q Cyber Technologies group of companies. Q Cyber Technologies is the name the NSO Group uses in Israel, but the company goes by OSY Technologies in Luxembourg, and in North America, a subsidiary formerly known as Westbridge. It has operated through various other companies around the world.Founding
NSO Group was founded in 2010 by Niv Karmi, Shalev Hulio, and Omri Lavie. Hulio and Lavie were school friends who went into the technology start-up sector during the mid-2000s. The pair founded a company - CommuniTake - which offered a tool that let cellphone tech support workers access the customers' devices. After a European intelligence agency expressed interest in the product, the pair realised they could instead develop a tool that could gain access to phones without user authorisation, and market it to security and intelligence agencies. Karmi, who served in military intelligence and the Mossad, was brought on board to help market the tool with the help of his contacts. The first iteration of NSO's Pegasus spyware was finalised in 2011.Operations
NSO Group has come to employ over 700 personnel globally. Almost all of NSO's research team is made up of former Israeli military intelligence personnel, most of them having served in Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, and many of these in its Unit 8200. The company's most valuable staff are graduates of the military intelligence's highly selective advanced cyberweapons training programs. NSO seeks to uncover a surfeit of zero-day exploits in target devices to ensure smooth continuous access even as some of the security vulnerabilities exploited by NSO are inevitably discovered and patched, with labs in the company's Herzliya headquarters featuring racks stacked with phones being tested against new exploits.Relationship with the Israeli state
Pegasus spyware is classified as a military export by Israel and its sale is controlled by the government. According to The New York Times, "Israel's government has long seen Pegasus as a critical tool for its foreign policy." and that it " has treated NSO as a de facto arm of the state, granting licenses for Pegasus to numerous countries with which the Israeli government hoped to nurture stronger security and diplomatic ties." Israel has used the sale of NSO products as a diplomatic bargaining chip to advance its foreign policy interests as well as limiting its sale to or its use against certain states to maintain good relations with certain states. Israel has faced criticism for approving the sale of NSO technologies to countries with poor human rights records. U.S. intelligence officials have also said the Israeli state presumably has backdoor access to data obtained by Pegasus. NSO denies being "a tool of Israeli diplomacy", and denies the presence of a backdoor in its spyware tools.Israel, wary of angering the U.S. in the wake of the Snowden revelations, required NSO to prevent Pegasus from targeting American phone numbers. Israel has used Pegasus to advance its interests in the region, with Pegasus playing a role in negotiating the Abraham Accords. A New York Times investigation highlighted several instances in which the sale of Pegasus to a particular government coincided with that government's increased support of Israel. Israel has used Pegasus sales in its diplomatic efforts to forge a united front against Iran, thus clearing the sale of the spyware to Azerbaijan, Morocco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.
The Israeli government blocked the sale of Pegasus to Estonia and Ukraine for fear that Israel's relations with Russia would be damaged if the spyware was used against Russia. Israel initially authorised the export of Pegasus to Estonia, but after a senior Russian official approached Israeli security agencies and informed them that Russia had learned of Estonia's attempts to obtain Pegasus, the Israeli Ministry of Defense decided to disallow Estonia from using Pegasus against any Russian phone numbers following a heated debate on the issue among Israeli officials, and subsequently blocked the sale.
Corporate history
The company's start-up funding came from a group of investors headed by Eddy Shalev, a partner in venture capital fund Genesis Partners which invested a total of $1.8 million for a 30% stake.In 2013, NSO's annual revenues were around US$40 million.
In 2014, the U.S.-based private equity firm Francisco Partners bought the company for $130 million.
In 2014, the surveillance firm Circles was acquired by Francisco Partners for $130 million, and thus became a corporate affiliate of NSO's.
In 2015, Francisco was seeking to sell the company for up to $1 billion.
Annual revenues were around $150 million in 2015.
In June 2017, the company was put up for sale for more than $1 billion by Francisco Partners. At the time it was put up for sale, NSO had almost 500 employees.
On February 14, 2019, Francisco Partners sold a majority stake of NSO back to co-founders Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, who were supported in the purchase by European private equity fund Novalpina Capital which specialises in investments in controversial companies. Hulio and Lavie invested $100 million, with Novalpina acquiring the remaining portion of the majority stake, thus valuing the company at approximately $1 billion. The day after the acquisition, Novalpina attempted to address the concerns raised by Citizen Lab with a letter, stating their belief that NSO operates with sufficient integrity and caution.
In July 2021, investors in Novalpina Capital stripped Novalpina Capital of control over its assets after an unresolved personal dispute amongst the co-founders of Novalpina Capital. Berkeley Research Group, a California-based consultancy firm, was subsequently handed control over the assets.
By the time of BRG's takeover, NSO Group was in perilous financial straits, having gone months without a new sale and in risk of missing its debt payments and its November 2021 payroll payments. NSO CEO Shalev Hulio suggested to BRG that the company should improve its financial standing by starting to sell its products to high-risk customers previously deemed unacceptable, responding to objections by joking that missing debt payments was risky too. BRG was categorically opposed to the suggestion despite acknowledging that selling to high-risk customers was the only realistic way of maintaining NSO's business operations. Hulio proposed increasing sales to Israel's western allies, but the November 2021 U.S. blacklisting of NSO subsequently ended the company's prospects of breaking into the U.S. market. According to the Financial Times, NSO also seemed to have been abandoned by the previously doting Israeli government due to a proliferation of Israeli companies offering comparable technologies. In a court filing, BRG described NSO as "valueless" to its private equity backers; in December 2021, a group of NSO creditors described NSO as insolvent in a letter to NSO's majority shareholders.
Two of the ousted co-founders attempted to reclaim control over Novalpina Capital's assets by filing a lawsuit in Luxemburg, with a U.K. court allowing the case to proceed to trial in April 2022. In an April 2022 letter, BRG told an EU committee investigating abuse of NSO's products that NSO's management has not been forthcoming in providing information about its business operations, including on the issue of the company's blacklisting in the U.S.
In the months after the November 2021 blacklisting of NSO by the U.S. Department of Commerce that resulted in an U.S. export ban for the company, and amid a campaign by the Israeli government to find a way to prevent the floundering NSO from going under, the U.S. Commerce Department sent a list of questions to NSO about how its spyware products operate. In 2022, L3Harris Technologies, a U.S. military contractor with experience in the spyware technology sector, was conducting talks on the possibility of acquiring NSO. L3Harris sought to acquire NSO's technology and code with the acquisition of the company's employees discussed as well. L3Harris executives travelled to Israel to conduct the talks which were not disclosed to the public. L3Harris reportedly told their NSO counterparts that they had the blessing and backing of the U.S. government and U.S. intelligence in pursuing the acquisition as long as the Pegasus source code and the cache of zero-day vulnerabilities uncovered by NSO could be passed on to the other intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes. The Israeli authorities were reportedly willing to fulfill the latter and reluctant to comply with the former, and also insisted that Israel ultimately retain control over issuing export licences for NSO's products. The Israeli authorities were also opposed to allowing L3Harris' employees to join NSO's development team in NSO's Israeli headquarters. The talks were revealed to the public by the press in June 2022, resulting in a scramble by the parties involved, with White House officials publicly condemning the negotiation in harsh terms, and L3Harris reportedly notifying the U.S. government that they had abandoned the acquisition attempt. There were reportedly attempts to revive the negotiations in the weeks after the preceding negotiations were revealed by the press. An acquisition by a U.S.-based corporation could have lifted the blacklisting of NSO by the U.S. which had barred NSO from receiving exports from U.S. companies, hindering NSO's operations. Experts consulted by The Guardian said that due to the blacklisting of NSO Group, a new corporate entity would likely have had to be created before the U.S. government would allow the acquisition. A senior White House official commented anonymously for the article that made the secret acquisition negotiations public, stating that the White House had not been in any way involved in the deal, further stating that the U.S. government "opposes efforts by foreign companies to circumvent US export control measures or sanctions ".
In August 2022, Hulio stepped down from his post as CEO, with the company's COO Yaron Shohat temporarily assuming the role until a full-time replacement was to be named. Hulio's resignation from his post as CEO came amid a restructuring of the company as it attempted to focus on pursuing clients among NATO member countries. The reorganisation also entailed a downsizing NSO's workforce, with 100 employees being let go.
In March 2023, it was reported that Omri Lavie had emerged in control of the company after multiple legal fights between NSO and a US financial firm called Treo, which previously controlled the equity fund that held a majority stake in the Israeli firm.
In October 2025, NSO Group confirmed that a group of US-based investors, led by film producer Robert Simonds, had acquired a controlling interest in the company. It was also reported that as part of the deal, which was valued in the tens of millions of dollars, co-founder Omri Lavie would be ending his relationship with the company. In November 2025 ex-Trump ambassador to Israel David Friedman was named Executive Chairman, as part of the shift of the company to U.S. ownership.