Israeli cyber entrepreneur won a prestigious innovation award in the US
Sagi Gidali, one of the founders of Perimeter 81, which was sold for half a billion, won a research innovation award in the US through Rafa’s Moonshot, the non-profit organization he founded to develop drugs for the rare disease STXBP1, which his son Raphael suffers from.
Israeli serial cyber entrepreneur Sagi Gidali, one of the founders of Perimeter 81, which was sold for half a billion dollars, won a research innovation award in the US through Rafa’s Moonshot, the non-profit organization he founded to develop drugs for the rare disease STXBP1, which his son Raphael suffers from.
The award was presented at the international conference for STXBP1 researchers for exceptional achievements in drug development, including the establishment of an international research network and leading a process that identified a potential drug treatment within just six months of starting the research.
Sagi Gidali is an Israeli technology entrepreneur who worked for over a decade in the cyber field and founded two successful companies – SaferVPN and Perimeter 81. Throughout his career, he focused on building global technology companies, the last of which, Perimeter 81, was sold to Check Point in 2023 in a deal worth approximately 500 million dollars.
After two successful exits in the cyber world, Gidali chose to give up the career he had built for over a decade and dedicate his entrepreneurial experience to one mission: to accelerate the development of drugs for rare diseases.
His life changed when his son Raphael was diagnosed with STXBP1 – a rare genetic neurological disease, with only about 1,500 diagnosed patients worldwide, and no approved treatment. Just one week after the diagnosis, Sagi and his wife, Dr. Ella Gordon, a neurologist, arrived at a university research lab and began, together with leading researchers, a scientific journey to find a treatment for the disease. Instead of waiting for a pharmaceutical company or a research body to lead the effort, they decided to take responsibility and lead it themselves.
Within just six months, they managed to identify the first drug with the potential to treat the disease. Subsequently, its effectiveness was proven in a number of pre-clinical models of STXBP1, and at the same time, significant clinical improvement was observed in Raphael following the treatment. Currently, a protocol for a clinical trial is being submitted in Israel to test the treatment in other children with STXBP1.
Later, the couple founded Rafa’s Moonshot – an organization for developing drugs for rare diseases. Unlike traditional non-profits that focus on funding research, Rafa’s Moonshot operates as an organization that leads and manages drug development programs from end to end. The organization applies the principles of building startups – speed, innovative thinking, global collaborations, data-driven decision-making, and the use of artificial intelligence – to significantly shorten the path from scientific research to patient treatment.
Today, the organization leads over ten research and development projects in collaboration with leading universities, hospitals, and biotechnology companies in the world. Among the programs promoted by the organization are gene therapy, RNA therapies, small molecule development, biomarker research, and the use of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and development.
For this innovative approach, Rafa’s Moonshot won the Research Innovation Award in 2026, presented at the international conference of the STXBP1 community in the United States, in recognition of its contribution to advancing research and the innovative model it developed to accelerate drug development for rare diseases.
