By AJ Vicens
(Reuters) - A U.S. investment group has acquired Israeli spyware vendor Paragon, a competitor to digital surveillance provider NSO Group, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday.
AE Industrial Partners, a Florida-based investment group focused on national security, aerospace and industrial services, closed the deal Dec. 13 for $500 million, according to the report.
Neither AE Industrial Partners nor Paragon’s U.S. subsidiary replied to requests seeking comment.
Paragon, founded in 2019 by a group of former Israeli intelligence officers and backed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, advertises “ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats,” on its website.
The deal could be worth as much as $900 million, financial news outlet Calcalist reported. AE Industrial Partners plans to merge Paragon with Red Lattice, a Virginia-based cybersecurity company, Calcalist said.
A person who answered the phone at Red Lattice was unable to provide comment.
Israeli media reported the deal was approved by both U.S. and Israeli officials. The White House and Israel’s defence ministry did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order curbing the malicious use of spyware. In 2021 Reuters reported that at least nine U.S. State Department employees’ phones had been targeted with NSO spyware.
The U.S. government added NSO to the U.S. Commerce Department’s trade blacklist in November 2021 over its links to surveillance abuses targeting civil activists and journalists, including in non-democratic states.
In job listings, Paragon says it “applies strict moral restrictions on itself,” limits the information it targets to conversations on messaging apps, and only works with government agencies that “meet the standards of an enlightened democracy".
This September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a one-year contract worth $2 million with Paragon’s U.S. subsidiary, according to a Wired report in October.
(Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit; Additional reporting by James Pearson in London and Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)