Pinhas Buchris

Pinhas "Pini" Barel Buchris is a Brigadier General (Ret.) who spent roughly 27 years in the Israel Defense Forces before moving into private-sector technology investing. His military career ran through the country's most technology-intensive intelligence units: he served as an officer in an elite commando unit, was deputy commander of Sayeret Matkal, commanded Unit 81 (the technological unit of the Intelligence Corps), and headed Unit 8200 — Israel's signals-intelligence branch, the rough equivalent of the U.S. NSA — from around 1997 to 2001. He is credited with founding the IDF's early cyber initiative and was awarded the Israel Security Award, the country's highest national-security honor.

After the military, Buchris moved between senior public- and private-sector roles. He served as Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense (roughly 2007–2010), the ministry's top civil-service position, and earlier ran the Bazan Group (Oil Refineries Ltd.) as CEO. He also entered venture investing as an independent partner at Apex Partners, where he was part of the team behind its investment in the telecom operator Bezeq.

In 2014 Buchris co-founded State of Mind Ventures (SOMV) in Herzliya alongside Yuval Baharav and Nir Adler. The three general partners make investment decisions collectively, with Buchris contributing deep ties to Israel's defense and intelligence technology ecosystem. SOMV backs early-stage, deep-tech Israeli companies and has raised on the order of $140M+ across its funds (Fund I ~$75M; Fund II targeting ~$100M). He is a frequent speaker in the cybersecurity community, appearing at events such as Cybertech.

• Invests at seed and Series A, aiming to "partner early with innovative teams" — SOMV describes itself as "a seed stage venture capital fund, focusing on the people that drive our world forward."
• Backs founders who are "daring, hungry and have big ambitions."
• Concentrates on companies "driven by powerful, differentiated technologies" in cyber, semiconductors, communications, cloud, big data, computer vision, sensors, robotics, and aerospace/space.
• Personal check profile skews to seed sweet spots (cited ~$750K, roughly $100K–$1.5M range for his individual deals); the firm as a whole writes ~$500K–$2M and follows on into later rounds.
• Strong Israel / Israel-connected geographic bias, leveraging his defense-establishment and 8200/Unit 81 network for deep-tech deal flow.