Ace Capital Partners: The Israeli Air Force Commander's Defense-Tech Venture Fund

Ace Capital Partners is the Tel Aviv-based aerospace, security, and defense-technology venture fund founded in 2024 through a partnership between Aerospace Spirit — the strategic-consulting firm led by former Israeli Air Force Commander MG (Ret.) Amikam Norkin and former IAF Technological Sector head BG (Ret.) Shimon Tsentsiper — and Key1 Capital, the Tel Aviv fund built by former Goldman Sachs partners Amit Pilowsky, Danny Ackerman, and Sarel Eldor. Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services Ltd (TASE: HARL), Israel's largest insurance group, serves as the anchor institutional investor, with Vice Chairman Ben Hamburger leading the 2025 LP-recruitment effort. The fund invests globally at Series A and B into defense, aerospace, and dual-use technology, with a structural focus on Israeli companies.

Founding structure — Aerospace Spirit and Key1 Capital

Ace Capital Partners was established in August 2024 as a two-firm partnership. On one side, Aerospace Spirit — the Israeli strategic-consulting company Norkin and Tsentsiper founded together after Norkin retired from the Israel Air Force in 2022 — contributes defense-domain expertise, senior IDF and international-defense relationships, and category access. On the other side, Key1 Capital contributes fund-management infrastructure, LP relationships, and diligence discipline. Under the founding structure disclosed at launch, Aerospace Spirit holds a 50 percent stake in the fund entity, alongside the Key1 partners.

Ace is headquartered in Tel Aviv and operates as a separate vehicle from Key1 Capital's core fund. The founding team is disclosed on the firm's public materials as five co-founders and partners: Norkin, Tsentsiper, Pilowsky, Ackerman, and Eldor. The fund targets aerospace, security, and defense-technology companies in Series A and B — deliberately post-seed, at the stage where technology risk is partly resolved and the questions in front of the company are commercialization, procurement-cycle timing, and international market access.

Norkin, Tsentsiper, and the IAF senior-officer transition pattern

MG (Ret.) Amikam Norkin served as the 20th Commander of the Israeli Air Force from 2017 to 2022. His command tenure covered a period of substantial operational activity across the northern and southern theatres and a program of digital and fifth-generation transformation inside the IAF. BG (Ret.) Shimon Tsentsiper served as the head of the IAF's Technological Sector — the internal directorate responsible for the Air Force's platforms, systems integration, and airworthiness architecture.

The Norkin and Tsentsiper founding profile is inside a broader Israeli pattern of senior-IDF-officer transitions into venture-fund leadership: Nadav Zafrir, the former Unit 8200 commander who co-founded Team8 and later took the CEO chair at Check Point; the founding teams at Team8 more broadly; and additional senior-officer-to-C-suite transitions across the Israeli venture and corporate landscape. Ace Capital Partners is one of the clearer cases of that pattern applied to a defense-specific investment vehicle at the venture stage.

Key1 Capital and the Harel anchor

Key1 Capital was founded by Amit Pilowsky, Danny Ackerman, and Sarel Eldor after their departure from Goldman Sachs in 2021. Their first fund closed at approximately $300 million with Harel Insurance as a principal LP. Reported Key1 investments include Weka (the AI infrastructure company that reached unicorn status), FundGuard, and SuperPlay. Eldor holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2002) and a B.Sc. from the Technion (1999). The Key1 partnership brings public-markets, growth-equity, and Israeli-tech diligence experience to a fund whose thesis is otherwise defense-domain-heavy.

Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services Ltd (TASE: HARL) — founded 1935 by Ernst and Margot Hamburger, controlled by the Hamburger family (roughly 49.9 percent of shares) and chaired by Yair Hamburger — is one of Israel's big-four insurance groups and, by health-insurance market share, the country's largest. Harel's anchor commitment to Ace Capital Partners is structurally significant: Israeli institutional insurance capital has historically preferred more conservative asset classes, and a domestic-insurer anchor into a venture-stage defense-tech fund represents a substantive expansion of the domestic institutional capital available to the Israeli venture cluster. Vice Chairman Ben Hamburger is publicly identified as the executive leading the fund's follow-on LP recruitment across 2025.

Investment thesis — Series A and B aerospace and defense

The Ace Capital Partners thesis is early-stage aerospace, security, and defense-technology, invested globally with an Israeli-founder focus. The declared category emphasis is autonomous systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, counter-UAS technology, aerospace platforms, sensor systems, and dual-use categories where commercial and defense applications overlap. Reporting at launch identified drones and UAVs as an area of near-term emphasis, on the reading that these systems pose a threat profile to both the Israeli home front and strategic targets while the underlying technology has become widespread and inexpensive.

The Series A and B stage focus is deliberate. It positions Ace after the earliest technology-risk stage (which Israeli defense-tech is well served on by seed and pre-seed operators) and before the growth-equity stage (which is served by international growth funds and defense-prime strategic capital). It is the stage at which most Israeli defense-tech companies are working through their first procurement contracts and their first international market-access decisions.

Post-October 7 category tailwind

The Ace founding coincides with the sharpest expansion of Israeli defense-technology demand in the modern venture cluster's history. Israeli defense exports reached $14.8 billion in 2024, per the Ministry of Defense's SIBAT export directorate. The combined order backlog held by Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems exceeded $65 billion across the same window. European governments have expanded their procurement of Israeli air-defense, precision-guided munitions, and unmanned systems substantially since 2023, and US allies and emerging-market operators have increased their procurement of Israeli defense platforms across the same window.

The Pentagon's establishment of a small-supplier innovation directorate and NATO's launch of a $1 billion technology-investment vehicle sit inside the same category. Between 2019 and 2023, approximately $33 billion was invested globally into defense and space-related technology venture. Ace Capital Partners is founded into that demand environment rather than in advance of it.

Position in the Israeli defense-tech venture layer

Ace Capital Partners sits inside a growing layer of Israeli defense-technology venture funds that has expanded across the post-October 7 window. That layer includes Awz Ventures (the Canadian-Israeli defense-tech and homeland-security VC founded by Yaron Ashkenazi) and selected vehicles inside the broader institutional platforms. The distinguishing features of Ace inside that layer are the domestic-insurer anchor (Harel), the IAF-senior-officer founder profile (Norkin/Tsentsiper), and the Series A/B stage focus. Ace is early in its operating history — deployment has not yet fully cycled and portfolio outcomes have not yet been marked — but the founding structure and category timing position it inside the small group of Israeli venture funds most institutionally exposed to the current defense-tech cycle.

Primary Sources

Calcalist / Ctech, "Former Israeli Air Force commander launches defense tech fund," August 22, 2024. Ace Capital Partners corporate materials (ace-capitalpartners.com). Key1 Capital corporate materials (key1capital.com/aerospace-defense). Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services Ltd — public filings, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE: HARL). Israel Ministry of Defense / SIBAT — 2024 defense export disclosure. Private Equity International, ACE Capital Partners institutional profile.

Related Olam coverage

Awz Ventures: The Canadian-Israeli Defense and Homeland Security VC (olam.business/awz-ventures). Yair Hamburger — Harel Insurance chairman (olam.business/yair-hamburger). Israeli VC: Pitango, Aleph, Vintage, Glilot, NFX, Team8 — Who's Leading What (olam.business/israeli-vc-pitango-aleph-vintage-glilot-nfx-team8-whos-leading-what). Team8: The Build-and-Invest Platform (olam.business/team8). Inside Israel's $14.8 Billion Defense Export Year (olam.business/inside-israels-14-8-billion-defense-export-year). Who Funds Israel: The Venture Capital Fund Map (olam.business/who-funds-israel-the-venture-capital-fund-map).