From Bonobo to June AI: Efrat Rapoport's Next Big Enterprise Startup
Tech entrepreneur Efrat Rapoport, whose Bonobo AI was acquired by Salesforce for $50M, has launched a new enterprise AI integration startup, June AI, alongside her original co-founders.
Efrat Rapoport is only 36 years old, but she already has a major exit under her belt. At age 29, the startup she founded, Bonobo AI, was acquired by software giant Salesforce in 2019 for a reported 50 million dollars. Following the acquisition, she spent five years at Salesforce, serving as the general manager of its R&D center in Israel and managing hundreds of employees.
Now, the entrepreneurial bug has brought her back to the startup scene. She has launched a new company, June AI, alongside her original co-founders from her first venture: Idan Cetiat as CTO, Barak Goldstein as President, and Ohad Chen as Chief Architect, with Rapoport serving as CEO. Among the investors in the company, which announced a 20 million dollar funding round last month and is developing a new model for enterprise software integration in the era of artificial intelligence, is Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff. Alongside her demanding career, Rapoport is a mother of four children aged five, four, two, and a four-month-old infant.
"As a group, this is our second startup together," Rapoport says. "The first, Bonobo AI, was a voice conversation analysis platform. It was an AI startup even before it was cool, before large language models, when there were only basic language models. In 2019, Salesforce acquired Bonobo because Salesforce wanted to be at every customer touchpoint, and we were what allowed them to enter the world of voice calls and later Zoom."
The four partners have known each other for over a decade. "While I was a student, I participated in the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students at Tel Aviv University, where I earned a master's degree in computational neurobiology alongside courses in computer science, archaeology, and history," Rapoport recalls. "During that time, I was exposed to the concept of fair trade and started producing fair trade clothing in the East and selling it in Israel. Someone connected me to Barak and told me, 'You have to meet him, he's an entrepreneur with a social side, he founded the Nova association' (unrelated to the festival). That's how I met him over a decade ago. He knew Idan and Ohad, who had served together in Unit 81 in the military—I served in 8200—and that's how the connection was formed."
The Shift to AI Integration
After the startup acquisition, Rapoport served at Salesforce for nearly five years, initially in AI product roles and later as the general manager of the Salesforce R&D center in Israel, which then numbered about 800 employees. "I left in 2024 along with Idan and Ohad, and Barak left shortly before us," she says.
The idea for the new company, June AI, stems from the artificial intelligence revolution. The product is designed for large enterprises working with systems such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and data platforms like Snowflake. According to Rapoport, after a company purchases such a platform, it is required to adapt it to its business processes—work that is often done manually, requires specific knowledge, and never truly ends as the organization constantly changes.
She notes that the shift to AI actually increases the need for integration work: "You built the best agent in the world right now, and it needs to use data residing in one of these systems. But there is a lot of data duplication there, and the agent needs to know where the correct information is. Just like a human gets confused, an agent gets confused too."
At June AI, the system connects to the organization, scans its systems, and maps the business processes: for example, how a discount is approved, when approval from a specific party is required, or how to determine if a lead is a relevant potential customer. In the next stage, the system highlights opportunities for AI integration, details the required system changes, and subsequently enables agents to perform the actual integration in the customer environment. At the end of the process, the company also assists with change management and embedding the new capabilities among employees.
The company's business model is based on SaaS subscriptions, because, according to Rapoport, integration is not a one-time action. "The business is constantly changing, and these adjustments constantly need to be made," she says, noting that the company already has active clients in healthcare, finance, telecommunications, technology, and energy.
Entrepreneurship and Motherhood
One of the company's investors, which currently employs about 20 people, is Marc Benioff, who invested personally and has known the team since the Bonobo days. "We are partners with Salesforce and work closely with them. In this case, there was no investor pitch deck," she says.
Regarding the decision to leave a senior corporate position and launch a new company, she states: "Entrepreneurship is a kind of bug that is hard to get rid of. I learned a lot and enjoyed the corporate world, but in the end, I felt the need to return to the entrepreneurial arena. We felt we had a good and relevant idea at the right timing, and we were all at a point in life that allowed us to do this together again. So we decided to get the band back together. We plan to expand in Israel and abroad, and many of our employees are folks who were with us back at Bonobo and Salesforce."
Beyond her career, Rapoport is a mother of four young children, with the youngest being a four-month-old infant. "I never took maternity leave," she shares. "Look, I was already skilled because he's the fourth child. He is fully breastfed and comes with me everywhere—he is in the office with me every day, travels with me on work trips abroad, and everyone here in the office has already put him to sleep at least once. There is a room here that we turned into a nursing room with all the facilities—a play mat, a bean bag, and change of clothes. It's truly like another home for him."
On balancing the demanding combination of motherhood and entrepreneurship, she says: "It's not simple and it's not breezy, but it was very important for me to stay close to him. There are two things I won't compromise on: work and time with the kids. I pick them up from school, spend the afternoons with them, put them to sleep, and return to work at night—sometimes until 4 AM, partly due to working with the United States. I gave up things like Netflix. Anything that isn't time with the kids or work—I outsourced, and I have a huge amount of help and support from my partner and family. It's a privilege to be able to do this."
Her partner, Ron Held, is a high-tech professional, mathematician, and author who published his debut novel After Seven Years with Am Oved. He has also served extensive reserve duty since October 7.
When asked if the 50 million dollar exit was a life-changing sum, she replies: "I can't go into the exact figures, but it was definitely a life-changing amount. I was still in my 20s, at age 29, so it was entirely a significant sum."
Addressing her position as the sole female founder alongside three men, she notes: "Relative to my regret, there still aren't a ton of women, although this is a trend that is changing. I've been in this field for many years and feel that today there are more female entrepreneurs, startup partners, investors, and senior executives in tech—but without a doubt, there is still a lot of work ahead of us."
