U.S. Investors Confirm Acquisition of NSO Group

The NSO Group, a developer of Israeli spyware, has confirmed its acquisition by a U.S. investment consortium, as reported by TechCrunch.

On Friday, NSO representative Oded Hershowitz announced to TechCrunch that “an American investment group has injected tens of millions of dollars into the company and now holds controlling ownership.”

This announcement followed a report from the Israeli tech news outlet Calcalist, which noted that a consortium led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds reached an agreement to acquire the surveillance technology firm for tens of millions.

Hershowitz did not disclose the precise investment amount or the identities of the investors.

“This investment does not signify a departure from Israeli regulatory or operational oversight,” Hershowitz clarified. “The company’s headquarters and primary operations remain in Israel, and it will continue to be thoroughly monitored and regulated by the relevant Israeli authorities, including the Ministry of Defense and applicable regulatory frameworks.”

(After providing this information, Hershowitz characterized his statements as “off the record,” which requires prior mutual agreement. TechCrunch has published these comments as no such agreement was reached.)

In 2023, The Guardian reported that Simonds and an associate considered a bid for control of NSO through their investment firm, although that deal did not materialize.

Calcalist disclosed that, under the new agreement with Simonds, Omri Lavie, NSO’s co-founder and executive chairman, will terminate his relationship with the spyware company.

Lavie did not respond immediately when contacted by TechCrunch, and neither Simonds nor his company STX Entertainment provided comments when approached.

From a U.S. Ban to U.S. Ownership

NSO Group has encountered controversy since its founding.

Digital rights advocates from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, and others have documented numerous cases where NSO’s governmental clients have targeted journalists, dissidents, and human rights advocates in countries like Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

NSO has claimed that its spyware is not intended to target U.S. phone numbers, likely to protect its interests in the U.S. market. However, in 2021, it was implicated in targeting several U.S. government officials abroad.

Consequently, the U.S. Commerce Department placed restrictions on American entities from engaging with NSO by including the spyware maker on the U.S. Entities List. Since then, NSO has attempted to remove itself from this blacklist, most recently in May 2025, with assistance from a lobbying firm connected to the Trump administration.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab who has been investigating NSO’s spyware abuses for a decade, expressed concerns regarding the acquisition.

“NSO is a company with a long history of undermining American interests and enabling the hacking of American officials. How can anyone trust Simonds to manage NSO Group effectively?” Scott-Railton remarked.

“Furthermore, I am worried that NSO has consistently sought to penetrate the U.S. market and supply their products to police departments in American cities. This technology, designed for authoritarian regimes, should not be introduced to Americans, nor should it infringe upon our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.”

NSO’s ownership has changed hands several times.

Initially established by Niv Karmi, Shalev Hulio, and Omri Lavie, NSO Group was acquired by the U.S. private equity firm Francisco Partners in 2014. Lavie and Hulio regained control of the company in 2019 with the backing of European private equity firm Novalpina. Subsequently, in 2021, the Berkeley Research Group from California took over the fund’s management. In 2023, Lavie once again became the majority owner of NSO.