The Israel Innovation Authority, the government’s tech investment arm, has been allotted an additional budget of NIS 390 million ($115 million) to increase government investment in small and medium high-tech companies, amid the coronavirus crisis.
The funding enables the authority to extend the application deadline for fast track grants until November 19, 2020.
In April, the IIA launched a channel for fast track grants, a total sum of NIS 500 million to small and medium high-tech companies affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. A funding deposit of up to 50 percent or the approved grant would be provided to supplement complementary funding secure by the company, the IIA said at the time.
The Fast Track program aims to help expedite the recovery of the high-tech sector, IIA CEO Aharon Aharon said in a statement.
“The Authority is therefore supporting high-functioning companies which have a good chance of transcending the crisis but are currently facing difficulties in raising funds or making sales. We have substantially expanded the support mechanism for companies so that they can utilize our grants in order to maintain operations, and have taken it upon ourselves to guarantee that we complete the evaluation and decision-making process within four weeks,” he added.
Through the Fast Track program, the Israel Innovation Authority supports companies which are developing innovative products with significant value and a high probability of long-term success, but which currently have limited funding resources (short runway) and are in need of immediate support, he said.
Aharon noted that the IIA modified its criteria for the program following increased demand in order to allow additional companies to submit their application. They also extended the application deadline.
“The incentive program’s grants will help these companies successfully traverse the current crisis and become part of the growth engine stimulating the Israeli economy as it overcomes this difficult period,” Aharon said.
This is the second fund announced by the Israel Innovation Authority to help support the local high-tech industry as it moves to recover from the effects of the global pandemic in recent months. The other focuses on “current challenges” by providing grants for new programs and models to broaden recruitment and to bolster skilled human capital in R&D. A budget of some NIS 20 million ($5.87 million) was allocated for the first year
Israeli-founded transit data company Moovit announced on Thursday that it will incorporate local vehicle sharing services into its public transit app, CTech reported. As part of this expansion, app users will have access to Tel Aviv’s shared car service Auto-Tel, bicycle sharing service Mobike, developed by Beijing Mobike Technology, and US electric scooter sharing service Bird.
The Moovit app provides real-time information on the fastest public transportation routes (buses, trains and underground). The app, which has been commonly referred to as the “Waze for public transport,” is available in 44 languages and has 300 million users in 85 countries.
Moovit also sells transit data analytics to municipalities and public transport operators through its Smart Transit Suite, a platform that provides real-time information on people’s movement, optimal routes, wait times, locations of buses and trains and other data for network managing. Moovit says it generates more than a billion movement data points a day with crowdsourcing from users and 450,000 local editors spread across the world.
The company recently announced a partnership with Microsoft that aims to integrate Moovit’s transportation platform into Microsoft’s Azure Maps, allowing developers who use Azure Maps to hook into Moovit’s transit data.
Innoviz Technologies, a leading Israel-based provider of solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software, announced its newest strategic partnership this week with Harman International, a Samsung subsidiary that focuses on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets.
Harman will leverage Innoviz’s solutions and make them available to OEMs globally, while using the LiDAR software to enhance its existing ADAS and automated driving initiatives, Innoviz said in a statement.
This newly founded partnership, said Innoviz CEO and co-founder Omer Keilaf, “marks a significant milestone for Innoviz. HARMAN serves as a strategic gateway to OEMs pursuing ADAS and autonomous driving technologies that are in desperate need of a sensing solution that delivers unrivaled performance in a low-cost device that is available now. Innoviz has long served as a lighthouse in the LiDAR space, leading the pack with OEM design wins and Tier 1 supplier partnerships – and Harman helps strengthen that lead by offering Innoviz’s LiDAR solutions.”
InnovizOne, which Harman will make available to OEMs through this partnership, is a solid-state LiDAR sensor that is designed specifically for automotive deployments and automaker’s mass-production needs.
Mike Peters, President, Connected Car, HARMAN International, underlined that the partnership: “reflects the company’s leadership in providing high-quality perception solutions now, and dedication to collaboratively pushing the automotive industry forward in the short-term, meeting automakers’ ambitious goals of autonomous vehicles in the next few years. Together, we’ll be able to effect change on a global scale, benefitting our customers and supporting the industry’s unstoppable move towards semi- to fully-autonomous vehicles.”
Innoviz is joining nearly three dozen startups in Las Vegas to take part in the annual CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) conference, running January 8-11.
The company announced in December the opening of new offices across the world, including the US, China, Japan, and Germany, and the launch of a new headquarters in the central Israeli city of Rosh Ha’ayin.
In June, Innoviz partnered with Chinese automotive Tier 1 solution provider HiRain Technologies, to bring Innoviz’s LiDAR (light detection and ranging) and computer vision technology to Chinese automakers through HiRain’s sales channels in the country.
Innoviz was founded in January 2016 by Keilaf, Oren Rosenzweig, Oren Buskila, and Amit Steinberg. The company has raised $82 million to date, including a $73 million Series B funding round in 2017, which included participation from Delphi Automotive and Magna International.
Global equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has signed an investment and partnership MOU with South Korea’s KEB Hana Bank (“KEB Hana”), a subsidiary of the Hana Financial Group.
As part of the inked agreement, KEB Hana will become OurCrowd’s latest institutional investor in Asia and will be granted an equity stake in a cross-section of current and future OurCrowd portfolio investments. The MOU agreement also seeks to create strategic relationships for Korean corporations that are looking for innovative technological solutions.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said: “The high tech cooperation between Israel and South Korea is quickly evolving into an economic powerhouse.”
“We are delighted to welcome KEB Hana to a front row seat at the table, as we provide diversification of venture capital opportunities across the globe to the bank, and ultimately to a wide audience of impressive corporations and accredited investors in South Korea. This latest step forward, in addition to the partnerships we have established in Korea, will help leverage incredible commercial potential as we deepen the interface between the two countries’ industrial collaborations in various hi-tech fields,” he added.
Last year, OurCrowd and its seed stage incubator Labs/02 signed a collaboration agreement with DTNI and Yozma Group Korea, two of South Korea’s leading venture capital firms, which looked to strengthen the strategical bilateral collaboration between the two countries and support tech partnerships.
OurCrowd indicated that startups from South Korea will be part of a special pavilion at the Global Investor Summit, set to take place on March 7th, 2019, at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem.
Since entering the Asian market in 2015, the company has been offering valuable investment opportunities to regional investors, while delivering global capital into several startups from Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, according to a company statement.
Founded in 2013 by Jon Medved, OurCrowd has 10 offices around the world including in the US, the UK, Spain, and Hong Kong. To date, it has funded companies in Israel, the USA, India, Canada, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, and expects to announce investments in additional locations in the near future.
Israeli venture capital firm Magenta Venture Partners announced the launch of a new $100 million fund destined for early-stage startups. The fund’s first closing was made in October 2018, while the second one is scheduled for 2019.
The fund specializes in early-stage investments in Israeli and Israeli-related technology startups in sectors such as automotive, mobility, AI, smart cities, and fintech. The fund was launched by Hiroshi Takeuchi of Japanese trading and investment company Mitsui & Co. Ltd., and venture capital professionals Ori Israely and Ran Levitzky.
Magenta Venture Partners is an equal partnership between Israely, Levitzky, and Mitsui & Co.
“Our name Magenta, is a blend of blue and red – the colors of the Israeli and Japanese flags” and “it signifies the strengths of Israel and Japan,” Israely said in a statement
Regarding the new fund, he stresses that this is “financially focused, but we look to invest in startups that not only look for capital but also seek value driven by the team’s experience in Japan, EU, and the US. We also leverage our investors to analyze and validate investments, assist the portfolio, and help all the startups we engage during this process.”
Hiroshi Takeuchi, Managing General Partner of the fund, said: “Investors in Magenta Venture Partners include Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd. who are looking to work with the fund to identify innovative technologies in Israel.”
“Magenta will also work on introducing benefits of cooperation with such LPs to maximize return on investments, expose LPs to innovation generated by our portfolio companies and also from our deal flow,” he added.
Levitzky said “Magenta offers unique added value in Israel’s venture capital scene. Israeli entrepreneurs have a clear understanding that building a significant company requires a variety of products that are marketed not only in the west but globally including the east and Japan in particular.”
The new fund is adding Ron Shvili, former head of the technology center for the IDF’s 8200 unit, to its advisory board. Shvili is currently the CTO & VP of Technology and Information Systems of Cellcom.
AgTech intelligence company SeeTree recently exited stealth mode and announced a $15 million Series A funding round led by Hanaco Ventures, with additional participation from seed round investors, including Canaan Partners Israel, Uri Levine, iAngel, and Mindset.
Founded in 2017 by former intelligence officers and serial entrepreneurs, SeeTree provides farmers with an end-to-end service to manage and optimize the health and productivity of their trees. The startup extracts data using high-resolution, multi-dimensional sensing imagery obtained from drones, paired with ground sensors and rangers with boots-on-the-ground who acquire samples for further analysis, the company says.
SeeTree is headquartered in Tel Aviv, with offices in California and Brazil.
The latest funding will be used to scale the business, refine the technology, and add additional components to its service, the startup said in a statement.
“Over the past 12-18 months, we focused our resources on perfecting the combination of artificial intelligence, machine-learning technology, and agronomic intelligence to provide growers with the data needed on a macro and micro level for optimized farming. Our existing customer base has expressed that SeeTree answers their longtime need for true precision farming and we are excited to be partnering with some of the leading companies in the field, as well as our investment partners,” said SeeTree co-founder and CEO Israel Talpaz.
Pasha Romanovski, who led the investment for Hanaco Ventures and has joined SeeTree’s Board of Directors, adds that “SeeTree’s rare combination of agronomy expertise and AI prowess poise the company for success. SeeTree’s focus on creating the largest collection of labeled data of permanent crops will enable them to build multiple products to help farmers succeed.”
Levine, a co-founder of Waze, says, “Disruption in the agriculture industry was long overdue, and SeeTree is proving to be the solution that growers have long awaited. The fast market conversion from trial to paying customers is a clear indication of the value that SeeTree brings.”
Israeli cybersecurity companies and startups raised over $1 billion equity investment in 117 funding rounds in 2018, setting a new record and marking a 47 percent increase from 2017, according to a new report on Israel’s cyber sector by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC).
The total sum of $1.19 billion in investments constitutes nearly 20 percent of the overall cyber investments made worldwide in 2018, second only to the US, according to the report.
The year saw more early and late-stage investment deals, a trend that is evident across the general Israeli tech sector, with the median size of investment at $6 million, compared to $3.5 million in 2017. “Like the rest of early-stage Israeli tech, …[fewer] cybersecurity startups are being established every year as the industry matures and companies stay private for longer periods before exiting.”
Notable exits for 2018 included the acquisition of Dome9 Security by Check Point for a reported $179 million, and that of SECDO by Palo Alto Networks for a reported $100 million.
There was also increased participation of non-Israeli investors in the cyber sphere in 2018. Foreign investors, a majority American, were dominant players in the industry, participating in 65 percent of the investment deals, SNC said.
By the end of 2018, according to the report, there were 450 active cybersecurity companies in Israel, 60 of them founded in the past year (compared to 75 in 2017 and 82 in 2016).
The data protection and privacy subsector was the fastest growing subsector in cybsersecurity, according to the report which indicated that “the growing demand for privacy, plus a vocal public debate and the need for GDPR compliance, are attracting entrepreneurs and investors to next-generation solutions including AI-based data governance solutions, and advanced cryptography.”
There were also significant initiatives and collaborations in the cybersecurity industry, including the establishment of a new $85 million fund by cybersecurity think tank and foundry Team8, backed by Walmart, Softbank, Scotiabank, Barclays, and Airbus, among others; and the partnership between the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), Tel Aviv startup network SOSA, and Israeli VC Jerusalem Venture Partners to launch cybersecurity hubs in New York City.
The report comes as Israel’s largest cybersecurity event, Cybertech 2019, opens in Tel Aviv this week, gathering thousands of industry leaders, top executives, venture capitalists, and government officials from across the world. The event will run over three days, January 28-30, at the Expo Tel Aviv, and is expected to draw some 15,000 attendees from over 80 countries.
Hundreds of startups, companies, and organizations will take part in the exhibition pavilion including the Israeli Mossad, the IDF’s elite 8200 Unit, the Israel Police’s anti-fraud Lahav 433 Unit, IBM, Microsoft, Dell-EMC, Deloitte, among many others.
Tel Aviv-based streaming startup StreamElements announced the closing of an $11.3 million Series A funding round led by Pitango Venture Capital and previous investors State of Mind Ventures, Rainfall VC, Samsung Next, alongside other investors.
StreamElements developed an end-to-end platform for live stream production, monetization, audience engagement and brand partnerships, which offers full production-technology and business solutions.
StreamElements says its user base has grown by more than 600 percent in 2018. The platform supports over 200,000 channels on streamer production platform Twitch and YouTube, reaching more than 15 million viewers who watch over 12 billion minutes each month, the company says.
The new funding round will be used to grow the company’s global brand partnership team. New developments also include the hiring of Scott Clark as SVP, Head of Brand Partnership. He most recently led North American sales and brand partnerships at video ad technology company Innovid.
Doron Nir, CEO of StreamElements, said in a statement: “Since our launch 18 months ago we proved that a full stack production and revenue generation platform is what live-streaming and e-sports really needs. This new funding round shows what people in our industry already know – this is the next frontier for online media. Its growing faster than anything we’ve seen, and the level of passion of the audience is unparalleled to anything else video entertainment has to offer.”
Or Perry, co-founder and chief streamer officer, added: “Live video content creators are some of the hardest working people in showbiz. They have massive audiences, huge followings, yet they make less than 20% of their true revenue potential. We are here to close this gap and help these talented creators materialize their full potential with our extraordinary level of service and the best production tools on the market.”
StreamElements was founded in 2017 by Perry, Nir, and Gil Hirsch, and has offices in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv.
The device, dubbed the “Genny,” is a water generator capable of producing between 25-30 liters (6.6-7.9 gallons) of water per day using the company’s GENius technology.
It is the company’s first appliance for the home and office. Watergen already has a number of applications and its generators are used in disaster relief and humanitarian aid operations as well as community development across the world.
Founded in 2009 by Israeli entrepreneur and former combat reconnaissance commander Arye Kohavi and a team of engineers, Watergen was originally conceived to provide easily accessible water to militaries around the world. Following the company’s acquisition by Michael Mirilashvili, a Russian-Israeli billionaire and vice president of the World Jewish Congress, the company shifted its focus tackling water scarcity and answering the needs of civilians following natural disasters.
In November 2018, Watergen provided its atmospheric mobile water generator known as a GEN-350, to rescue responders in California during the devastating Camp Fire in Butte County. The GEN-350 can produce up to 600 liters (156 gallons) of water per day and is designed to assist people in locations that are not readily accessible, the company says.
In 2017, Watergen sent four water generators to Texas and Florida in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, respectively, working with the American Red Cross and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to provide clean and safe drinking water. Watergen has also signed a cooperative R&D agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said to be facilitated by casino magnate and top Republican backer Sheldon Adelson, to test the company’s technology as a way to improve “access to potable water during shortages or contamination events.”
In addition to the GEN-350, Watergen’s products include the large-scale Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG), and the Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV), which transports Watergen units in emergency situations and natural disasters.
Watergen. Courtesy
Now, Watergen wants to tackle the personal water consumption industry while working to reduce plastic waste, and tackling one of humanity’s greatest challenges – access to clean, accessible water, which some 2.1 billion people across the world lack.
At some 69 kilograms (154 pounds) and measuring 1.3 meters (52 inches) in height, the Genny looks similar to standing water coolers, and requires access to electrical infrastructure, which may work great for homes and offices but is likely not an easy feat for those in the developing world or in remote rural areas.
The Genny works similarly to Watergen’s other systems and operates in three ways: first, air is drawn into the machine, where dust and dirt are removed; clean air is then directed through the Genius heat exchange, which is then cooled and condensed; the resulting water is ultimately channeled through a multi-stage filtering system to remove impurities, add minerals, resulting in fresh drinking water that is then stored in a built-in reservoir, according to the company.
When the water reaches premium quality, it is stored in a built-in reservoir where it is kept fresh through continuous circulation until it’s ready to be poured, Watergen explains.
The Genny, set to roll out by mid-2019, “is cost effective and has the potential to drastically change the industry,” Yehuda Kaploun, president at Watergen USA, tells NoCamels.
The size and weight of Genny make for a home appliance that can be easily placed in indoor spaces, while at the same time eliminating the reliance on plastic, as well as “the need to carry water coolers and heavy gallon water jugs,” Kaploun explains.
Watergen President Mirilashvili, says: “There was once a time in our not so distant history, when smoke alarms and color TVs were considered extra bells and whistles in households. This is how we envision our atmospheric water generator and its application for at-home use.”
“We have cracked the code on solving a real ecological issue, economic issue and functional issue, for real people using the best engineering and science, not fiction,” he added.
The Genny was recognized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) as the Best of Innovation Honoree in the “Tech For a Better World” category as well as an honoree in the category of “Home Appliances,” at a CES Unveiled New York event in November 2018, according to a Watergen statement. The Genny also generated a buzz at the annual CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) conference, run by the CTA, in Las Vegas this month, one of dozens of Israeli startups and companies at the confab.
Curbing plastic waste
“From an environmental perspective, we are one of the few companies in the world that can have a drastic impact on the use of plastic around the world. We want to roll out a program in the United States that will bring WaterGen units to college campuses that are seeking to become more plastic free and environmentally aware,” Kaploun tells NoCamels.
“Imagine being on a college campus and receiving a bottle that you can fill up anywhere on campus for free. You no longer face the issue of selling and disposing of plastic bottles. This endeavor has the potential to educate young generations while reducing reliance on plastic,” he adds.
A commitment to humanitarian relief
In addition to its work in California, Texas, and Florida, Watergen says it has been deploying its technology in countries like Vietnam, India, China, Mexico, as well as a number of African countries.
“We have a clear philosophy of bringing clean water to as many countries as possible. We collaborate with African countries, as well as several places in the United States that lack water. We are there to help when people face disasters,” Kaploun says.
After the company donated an Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) and a Gen-350 to the American Red Cross and FEMA to assist in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Watergen says it is now working alongside these organizations to develop a specifically designed emergency response vehicle (ERV) for their purposes.
Watergen ERV. Courtesy
“The Watergen technology has the potential to contribute to wide-ranging global frameworks, from crop irrigation and animals that are dying from lack of water to hospitals and hard-to-reach villages,” Kaploun says. “We have the ability to solve the global water crisis. To do so, though, we require corporate leaders to recognize the problem and contribute to its eradication.
Untapped markets
Kaploun says there are a number of untapped sectors Watergen is looking to expand into, one of them being the automotive industry. The company recently announced a new automotive division focused on developing solutions for water in vehicles.
Watergen technology creating water inside vehicle. Via PR Newswire
At CES earlier this month, Watergen unveiled a vehicle that featured an embedded water generator that produces fresh, drinkable water. The company says that among other benefits, the generator cools the air and removes toxins and humidity, causing the car to run more efficiently.
The technology, for autonomous and non-autonomous cars, increases battery strength and mileage and improves control of the climate in the vehicle, according to Watergen.
Watergen is also looking to partner and expand into the motorhome industry, Kaploun says. “We are looking to collaborate with RV companies in the US. People on road trips require water during their extensive travels across the country and we want to make this possible for them.”
The company’s planned collaborations come on the heels of existing agreements, such as the 2017 memorandum of understanding with the India solar engineering firm Vikram Solar. Estimated to be worth at least $100 million, this agreement helped the company expand into the Indian market.
South Korean tech giant Samsung has signed a deal to acquire Israeli tech firm Corephotonics for $155 million on Sunday, CTech reported Tuesday. Advanced talks have been under way since early January.
Corephotonics has developed dual camera technologies for mobile devices. The company aims to provide superior image quality by combining novel optics, mechanics and computational photography technologies. Its end-to-end multi-aperture solutions support a wide range of photography capabilities, such as optical zoom, low-light performance, Bokeh and depth features, and optical image stabilization, the company says.
Corephotonics was founded in 2012 by CEO David Mendlovic, VP R&D Dr. Gal Shabtay, Mr. Eran Kali, Dr. Noy Cohen, and Ephraim Goldenberg, and is headquartered in Ramat HaHayal.
To date, the company has raised over $50 million from investors including Samsung Ventures, a Samsung investment arm, Foxconn, Horizon Ventures, OurCrowd, SanDisk, Magma VC, Amiti Ventures and OurCrowd.
In late 2017, Corephotonics filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the US tech giant copied its patented camera technology and incorporated it into one of its most popular products, the iPhone. The suit, filed in November 2017 in federal court in California, said Apple used the Israeli company’s dual camera tech in the iPhone 7 and iPhone8 Plus without Corephotonics’s permission.
Israeli company Verbit announced the closing of a $23 million Series A funding round led by Viola Ventures, with participation from Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, Oryzn Capital, Vintage Venture Partners, and Clal-Tech. The latest round brings the total amount raised to date to $34 million.
Verbit uses artificial and human intelligence to provide a smart transcription and captioning solution. The company’s technology, built on adaptive algorithms, seeks to generate accurate speech-to-text files and help organizations maximize the potential of their audio and video files.
The latest funding will be used to enhance the company’s global growth initiatives, scale its sales, marketing and product-related efforts, as well as its expansion into the US market, the company says.
Tom Livne, CEO and co-founder of Verbit, said in a statement: “I am lucky to work with such a talented team that is devoted to customer experience, company growth, and product innovation. It’s been only eight months since our last round of funding and this latest infusion of capital is a testament to the strong demand for an AI solution in such a manual and traditional space.”
Ronen Nir from Viola Ventures, who led the round and will join Verbit’s board of director, adds: “We have been closely following Verbit for the past two years. The disruption it brings to the market, both in its technological superiority, as well as market traction, are really exceptional. We believe that using human assisted AI services is the strongest trend in the technology world today, and Verbit perfectly fits our investment thesis in the area.”
Founded in 2017 by Eric Shellef, Kobi Ben Tzvi and Tom Livne, Verbit has offices in New York and Tel Aviv.
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) announced on Wednesday the close of its latest fund, JVP VIII, with $220 million in commitments from international investors.
The fund will focus on investments in early through mid-stage technologies that are set to transform key industries and markets, “such as computer vision meets wellness, cybersecurity meets fintech and insurtech, artificial intelligence meets retail and media, big data meets healthcare IT,” JVP said in a statement.
JVP said the new fund drew investors from the US, France, Germany, Austria, Italy the UK, and Japan, including US and European government sovereign funds, international insurance companies, endowments from universities and major global corporations.
“I am delighted to see young, as well as second time, entrepreneurs partner with business leaders from North America, Europe and the world over to advance new ideas and companies that are changing every category of business as we know it,” said Dr. Erel N. Margalit, founder and executive chairman of JVP. “Over the next decade, we’re going to see up to fifty percent of the most well-known brands be surpassed and eventually displaced by a wave of disruptive companies –- many of whom are being launched today and in the near future.”
JVP operates investment hubs in Jerusalem, Beersheba, and most recently, New York, where it is launching a new cybersecurity investment hub, HUB.NYC by JVP, alongside other public-private partnerships to support growth-stage cyber startups by providing access to clients, business support, and investment.
Founded in 1993, JVP has raised $1.4 billion across nine funds to date.
International Airlines Group (IAG), one of the largest airline groups in the world, is teaming up with the UK Israel Tech Hub, based in the British Embassy in Israel, to host a pitch day for tech startups in Tel Aviv.
The event, set for March 18, is part of IAG’s ongoing accelerator program, Hangar 51, for disruptive startups.
IAG is the parent company of British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, LEVEL and Vueling. It is the third largest group in Europe and the sixth largest in the world, based on revenue.
The Israeli startups will pitch innovative products or services before a panel of senior executives from IAG and British Airways, and may also receive potential investment from IAG’s multi-million-pound digital fund to scale their business.
The proposals will be focused on logistics automation, identity management and biometrics, the UK Israel Tech Hub said in a statement.
Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG, said: “Israel’s entrepreneurial culture and technical expertise make it an obvious place for IAG to scout the best automation technologies to provide customers with a seamless, smooth but secure travel experience.”
Yael Katan, British Airways’ regional commercial manager in Israel, said: “Israel is known as a unique and global leader in the high-tech industry. We are excited about the opportunity to engage with Israeli startups and track the best innovative ideas, which will strengthen our commitment to Israeli businesses, as well as demonstrating support for innovation and excellence in the Israeli market.”
OurCrowd, Israel’s leading global investment platform, announced that since its founding in 2013, it raised a total of $1 billion for 170 companies – 29 of which achieved exits – and 18 funds.
The announcement came as OurCrowd hosted its annual Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem on Thursday, releasing key figures on the company’s activity over the past year.
OurCrowd also opened three new offices in Israel in 2018, including in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Jerusalem, bringing its operations to 11 offices worldwide from London, Madrid, Toronto, New York, San Diego, Singapore, Sydney, and Hong Kong. The company also won a number of recognitions last year, including being named the most active venture investor in Israel by PitchBook Data, and being listed as one of Fintech 100’s Leading Global Fintech Innovators for the fifth consecutive year.
OurCrowd says its network consists of 30,000 registered investors from over 150 countries with a primary investor base in the United States, followed by Asia. The average number of investments made by individuals was seven, with an average portfolio size of over $350,000.
“We’ve built a model for the investor community that democratizes access to incredible companies, and it’s working—to the tune of $1 billion in just six short years,” said OurCrowd founder and CEO Jon Medved. “The synergy we’ve created between investors, companies and venture funds has allowed us to play an instrumental role in building Israel’s reputation as a global leader in innovation and technology.”
“While we are excited about the growth we experienced in 2018, the summit kicks off the further challenge of building yet another year of hypergrowth for OurCrowd. On our marathon journey, each time we reach a summit, we catch our breath and look up and realize the further peaks yet to scale,” he added.
The Israel Innovation Authority and the Mayo Clinic announced Tuesday they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to cooperate on health tech innovation, with a focus on new medical devices, diagnostics, software solutions and therapies.
The authority, the Israeli government’s support arm for the country’s innovation and R&D said through the collaboration Israeli companies can co-develop, test, and pilot technologies, with services and expertise provided by the Mayo Clinic.
The Mayo Clinic is the prestigious nonprofit academic medical center based in Minnesota which focuses on integrated clinical practice, education, and research.
The signing took place at MIXiii-Biomed, Israel’s three-day life sciences and biomed conference now in its 18th year.
The program was developed by Mayo Clinic and the IIA’s American operations division.
“The health market and especially pharma are among the fastest growing industries in the world. There is no doubt that the agreement signed between a global healthcare brand such as Mayo Clinic and the Israel Innovation Authority constitutes a vote of confidence in Israel’s startup industry and innovations, further highlighting Israel’s key position in shaping the health landscape of the future,” said Israel’s Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen.
“This collaboration with Mayo Clinic provides amazing opportunities for Israeli companies to work with a world renowned academic medical center with multidisciplinary expertise,” Israel Innovation Authority CEO Aharon Aharon added, “The combination of Israeli innovation and Mayo Clinic’s world-class clinical experience, expertise and facilities, will enable the creation and development of cutting-edge solutions that could prove instrumental in laying the groundwork for the future of global healthcare.”
The Mayo Clinic launched their Israeli Startup Initiative in 2016 to promote collaboration between Israeli startups and employees of the Mayo Clinic. The goal was to accelerate availability of medical innovations to the public, introduce Israeli healthcare technology to the US and promote the development of new discoveries for the benefit of patients, a statement from the authority said.
Israeli startups are invited to apply for funding. They will receive it directly from the Israel Innovation Authority with extra services and mentorship from the Mayo Clinic. A call for proposals will focus on health technologies with two tracks — both collaborative R&D projects between Israeli companies and the Mayo Clinic as well as pilot and validation-stage projects for Israeli companies facilitated by the Mayo Clinic.
“We are excited for the opportunity to expand our outreach to Israeli innovators through this initiative, as they are a part of one of the most vibrant innovation ecosystems in the world,” said Amir Lerman, M.D., Medical Director of the Mayo Clinic Israeli Startup Initiative and a Mayo Cliniccardiologist.
Six Israeli startups were awarded prizes for transformational solutions in health, environment, disability, and disruptive tech last week at the 2019 FT/IFC Transformational Business Awards in London, the prestigious impact-driven awards program set up by the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank Group, and the Financial Times.
A record 270 entries were considered from across the world. Thirty-five of those companies became finalists, among them 10 Israelis, according to Start-Up Nation Central.
Israel’s MobileODT, a firm that provides smart colposcopy and visual assessment solutions for women’s health clinicians, won first place for Transformational Solutions in Health. Israeli medical tech startup Healthy.io was named a Special Commendee.
Tipa Corp, which develops biodegradable packages for the food and drink industry, took first place in the Transformational Solution in Food, Water, & Land category.
TuneFork, the Israeli company that developed software audio personalization tech that optimizes a user’s mobile sound system and guides users through a test to characterize their hearing, won second place in a category titled Special Award: Innovation for Disability.
N-Drip, a developer of a gravity micro-irrigation system, received the Overall Award Excellence in Disruptive Solution prize. And Anima, a young company that offers software designed to detect and monitor changes in a child’s behavior based on their freehand drawings done on a touchscreen, received a special commendation in the area of health.
“Israel’s innovation ecosystem has some 1,900 companies whose solutions fit the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),” said Prof. Eugene Kandel, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central. “Start-Up Nation Central, an independent organization whose goal is to maximize the positive impact of Israeli innovation, was proud to partner with the IFC and FT to surface Israeli impact technologies on to a world stage.”
The awards were presented at a special dinner in London attended by around 200 senior professionals in business, finance, and development. The event followed a half-day Transformational Business Conference organized by the FT and IFC
Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), the Israeli non-profit organization that tracks Israel’s tech ecosystem and publishes comprehensive reports on its industries, was the FT/IFC partner in Israel, helping to source relevant companies.
“The awards pinpoint the crucial role of private sector ingenuity and capital in efforts to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and address climate change,” SNC said. These impact-related initiatives were created to “generate profitability from technological developments designed to enhance society and life on earth, and help weakened populations.”
The 2019 Awards also included a special category on harnessing technology for people with disabilities, supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
This year marked 14 years of collaboration between the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation on awards that have had an impact on the way financial and non-financial organizations approach sustainable investment. This is the first time six Israeli companies were featured in the award program.
This article was first published by The Times of Israel and is re-posted with permission.
Over 50 cutting-edge Israeli tech companies are featured in the first season of a new series released on Amazon Prime Video on October 18 called “TechTalk.” Season two features startups in New York, and season three hits Los Angeles.
The show’s creator is co-founder of Tech Talk Media, Jonny Caplan. He’s a British-born entrepreneur who moved from England to Israel in 2013 to explore the Startup Nation’s “multipotential” tech scene.
Urban Aeronautics’ Cormorant. Courtesy
Caplan believes that multipotentiality — a concept first coined by Emilie Wapnick, TED speaker and author of “How to Be Everything” — is the driving force behind the burgeoning success of the startup industry. According to Wapnick, “Instead of picking one thing and denying all of our other interests, we can find ways to integrate our many passions into our lives.”
Intel kicked off the launch of its new accelerator program in Israel on Tuesday for early-stage startups, announcing the nine data-centric companies that will be participating in the 16-week initiative.
The program, called “Ignite,” was first announced in June. Its aim is to “leverage Intel’s global market access, business, and technology leadership to provide early-stage startups [with a] unique advantage on their path to disrupt the future,” the tech giant said at the time.
“Intel has always worked in concert with open ecosystems to scale new technologies so they can be transformational for our customers, business and society,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan in June during a trip to Israel for the announcement.
“Israel has the deep skill base in AI, autonomous systems and the underlying technologies critical to these inflections that make it a natural choice to launch our Ignite program,” Swan said.
From left: Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld, new head of Intel’s Ignite program, Avner Goren, VP, Intel Architecture, Graphics and Software Group, Intel CEO Bob Swan, and Yaniv Garty, general manager of Intel Israel. Photo by Ezra Levy
Intel said on Tuesday that the nine startups were selected out of 160 companies that applied to participate, followed by a round of 15 finalists. The winners were selected “based on their entrepreneurial spirit and groundbreaking ideas in technology,” Intel said in a statement.
They are:
Cloudwize – a startup that enables organizations to maximize the value of their cloud architecture.
Addionics– an Israeli startup with offices in the UK founded in 2017 that accelerates smart electrification by redesigning battery architecture.
GleanLabs – a Tel Aviv-based startup founded in 2017 that offers an automatic employee competency mapping and management platform for large R&D organizations.
Deci AI – a startup that provides acceleration of deep learning models, substantially reducing latency and cost-to-serve.
Hi Auto – a startup that helps OEMs reinvent how customers spend their time in the car by offering a whitelabel voice platform that converses naturally with customers and works under any noise conditions.
Granulate – a startup that developed software to reduce compute costs by up to 60 percent while maximizing performance.
Mine– a startup that developed a platform to empower individuals and businesses to discover their digital footprint in order to reduce redundant risk.
HourOne– a company with offices in NYC and Vancouver that developed a synthetic video creation platform powered by artificial intelligence.
NOVOS – an Israeli startup founded in 2017 that developed a training platform for gamers who want to improve their skills.
As part of the program, Ignite will provide the startups with mentorship, knowledge, resources, and opportunities to connect with prominent investors in Israel and abroad.
The program has recruited leading mentors in various fields to deliver workshops and training focused on technology and entrepreneurship, including Gil Hirsch, founder of Face.com, Roni Zahavi CEO and co-founder of Hibob, and Ron Yekutiel, founder and chairman of Kaltura, Intel said. The participating companies will also receive financial advice from Deloitte, legal guidance from Pearl Cohen, and IT services from Intel.
“Ignite will supply these selected startups with the tools for success,” said Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld, head of Ignite, in a statement.
Weisfeld, a former global head of Microsoft for Startups added: “Intel is responsible for much of the world’s technological infrastructure and aims to be twenty steps ahead of the game. The participants have the opportunity to take part in our vision, and can have an enormous impact on their fields through leading innovation globally.”
“For the startups to succeed is for Intel to succeed — it goes both ways,” Weisfeld said.
He tells NoCamels in a phone interview that Ignite is not just another accelerator. “It’s a high-intensity program that’s very thorough with a dedicated team and strong mentorship backing,” he explains.
Weisfeld says the startups will benefit from four types of mentors: industry mentors where they’ll be “matched” with committed, serial entrepreneurs in a managed process; Intel tech mentors where startups will be partnered with experts who will help drive the technical aspects; industry experts based on the needs of the individual startups; and workshop leaders who will help with the development of processes like product development and go-to-market strategies.
“These connections that they build can be invaluable and can last a lifetime,” Weisfeld says.
Intel will take no equity from the startups but the program will demand their time and energy. Weisfeld himself will meet weekly with each startup to assess progress and help guide them through any challenges, he says.
“This program’s KPIs [key performance indicators] are the business success of startups, their traction, and any follow-up funding,” Weisfeld explains.
Like the program, the selection process was also rigorous, he says. The startups were evaluated by two teams of between six to seven judges made up of industry experts and Intel executives. “We wanted to see a tech-based big idea that seeks to provide a solution to something, a good team, a good CEO, good energy, and coachability,” Weisfeld says, describing the whole process “more like a VC than an accelerator.”
“As Israel’s largest high tech company, we want to support the major technological changes emerging across our startup community,” Yaniv Garty, general manager of Intel Israel, said back in June.
“Ignite is an important step in this direction, focused on our efforts to transform the world through working on innovations in AI, autonomous, cyber and next-generation computing. With our advances in these areas, Intel is positioned to help companies charge forward. I’m confident that Intel’s unique expertise in hardware, software, and manufacturing will help the startups grow and succeed,” he added.
Intel employs about 11,000 people in Israel and another 1,000 from the Jerusalem-based autonomous systems company Mobileye which it acquired in 2017 for $15.3 billion. It is considered the largest employer in the high-tech sector.
Since it began operations in Israel in 1974, Intel indicated that its investment in the Israeli economy has totaled $35 billion so far.
The semiconductor giant has several sites across Israel, including a manufacturing site in Kiryat Gat, a development center in Haifa, a center in Petach Tikva for the development of components and software in the cellular communications market, and a design and development center in Yakum in central Israel which provides chipsets for mobile platforms.
A new venture capital firm backed by Randi Zuckerberg, founder of Zuckerberg Media and sibling of Mark Zuckerberg, is raising a $35 million fund to invest in Israeli startups aiming to disrupt the media, entertainment, sports, and commerce industries.
The new firm called Sababa Ventures, was co-founded by Jared Kash, a tech entrepreneur and investor, and Yaron Kniajer, also a tech investor with a background in investment banking, who both serve as managing partners. They are joined by Zuckerberg, who will serve as a general partner and will “leverage her insider expertise,” according to a company statement, to “work directly with portfolio companies to help scale their ventures.” Robert Friedman, a former senior executive at Time Warner and New Line Cinema who currently serves as CEO of Bungalow Media, joins Sababa Ventures as a venture partner.
The fund’s first investment is in IMGN Media, a Tel Aviv-based startup with offices in New York that developed an AI-powered technology platform that enables social content publishing at scale. The amount invested was not disclosed.
Sababa Ventures said that with an expanding $2 trillion media and entertainment industry that demands innovation to fuel growth, “the global appetite for Israel-based technologies continues to surge,” pointing to recent acquisitions of Israeli startups by massive global companies such as Facebook (which bought Redkix), Walmart (acquired Aspectiva), McDonald’s (bought Dynamic Yield and Apprente) and other deals.
“We formed Sababa Ventures to build a bridge between Israeli innovators and the American market,” said Zuckerberg in a statement. “Similar to Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv is a unique source for technology innovation. Harnessing Israeli ingenuity will be key to shaping the entire media landscape on a global scale.”
Sababa Ventures has offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Los Angeles and says these locations position the firm “to bring these ecosystems together for the mutual benefit of Israeli entrepreneurs, investors, and the global market.”
Kash indicated that “by combining Israeli know-how with globally recognized industry leaders, we have positioned Sababa Ventures to become the ‘go-to’ VC in media, entertainment, sports, and commerce.”
“We are bringing unparalleled access and connections to serve the portfolio, and are creating an innovative venture firm that will be associated with working side-by-side with the most promising startups coming out of Israel,” he added.
Kniajer, a former partner at Rhodium, an early-stage fund with investments in Outbrain and Yotpo, for example, said: “Israeli entrepreneurs are disrupting all business sectors, and targeting value-add capital. There is a unique opportunity within our focus on media and entertainment. Our investors bring strong industry experience, which will help our startups to build and scale their technologies globally.”
A significant increase in later-stage funding is allowing more Israeli tech companies and startups to grow and expand without going down the road of acquisition or having to raise money on the public markets, according to Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), the Israeli non-profit organization that tracks Israel’s tech ecosystem.
In a new report published this month, SNC said the biggest trend in Israel’s tech industry in 2019 is firms raising money in growth stages. Late-stage funding this year climbed to $5.24 billion, up from $3.45 billion in 2018, according to the organization’s findings. This marks an increase of over 50 percent, coming on the heels of relative stagnation over the previous three years, wrote Meir Valdman, senior research analyst at SNC.
Growth-stage funding rounds are on the rise, according to Start-Up Nation Central.
In 2019 alone, there were at least 15 rounds of $100 million or more raised by Israeli companies, compared to just four rounds in 2018, the report stated. Of these 15 rounds, six were for financial tech (fintech) companies including insurance tech firms Lemonade and Next insurance, which raised two of this year’s largest rounds – $300 million in Series E and $250 million in Series C, respectively. Another two large investments went to cybersecurity companies Cybereason ($200 million) and SentinelOne ($120 million). Three investments went into industrial technologies companies -Vayyar with $109 million, Innoviz with $132 million, and Fabric with $110 million). And another two for software applications companies, as well as one for media and telecommunications.
Investors in these large rounds were dominated by foreign VCs, with General Catalyst participating in three of the 15 rounds, followed by Softbank, Bessemer Partners, Insight Partners and HarbourVest with two each. Israeli investors ClalTech, Vintage Investment Partners and Ion Crossover Partners also invested in two each.
The prevalence of foreign investors is a global trend, wrote Valdman. In 2019, there were some 442 VC-led rounds globally of $100m and over – the highest number ever – according to Pitchbook.
In Israel, there’s also a noted increase in later stage round size more generally. The median round size at later stages increased from $18.25 million in 2018 to $26 million in 2019 – an increase of over 40 percent, SNC said. Series C rounds and beyond saw an increase of 56 percent, from a median of $25 million in 2018 to $39 million this year.
This signals that startups based in Israel can raise substantial growth rounds (C and above) “and are not forced to sell or move locations after their B round or earlier as frequently occurred in the past,” according to the SNC report.
Significant growth rounds explain in part why the value of exits has declined in recent years “despite the continued boom in the sector.” M&As, wrote Valdman, “have declined from a peak of $7 billion in 2017 to $4.3 billion in 2019 as companies opt to raise more capital, grow and stay private rather than look to be bought.”
The IVC Research Center released a report this month noting that the increase in later-stage funding has contributed to a decline in newly established companies.
“The prolonging uptrend in Israeli high-tech capital raising boosted the local ecosystem with a steady stream of capital that flew mainly to mature and growing companies,” wrote IVC.
According to its findings, IVC said that in the first three quarters of 2019, only 83 seed deals were recorded, raising a total of $118 million. The number of deals lower than $1 million is sharply declining – from 394 deals in 2014 to 332 deals in 2018, and down to 158 deals under $1 million in Q1-Q3/2019.
A slide from the IVC’s 2019 report on the decline of newly established companies.
This trend may slowly be “eroding early-stage startup activity,” IVC suggested, as the number of newly established companies is declining.
In 2018, only 707 new companies were formed, down from 1,383 in 2014, just four years prior. IVC did not yet disclose the figures for 2019 but said they were “low” and suggested that the Israeli high-tech industry “will witness a negative record in the number of newly established companies and their capital raising results.”
Exits fall
Early this year, PwC Israel released a report on the Israeli high-tech ecosystem scene, noting that, the number of high-tech exits – merger and acquisition deals and initial public offerings — declined sharply over the course of 2018, decreasing by 33 percent compared to 2017.
In 2018, there were 61 exit deals accounting for a total of $4.9 billion (a figure that excludes high-profile but non-tech deals such as the acquisition of SodaStream, and Frutarom), compared to 70 for a value of $7.4 billion in 2017. The average deal size in 2018 was around $81 million, compared to $106 million in the previous year.
The report suggested that the decline in exits in 2018 is directly related to a more cautious and long-term approach whereby Israeli companies and entrepreneurs are halting their exit process in favor of a potentially greater, more profitable acquisition in the future. Some of the concerns involved also relate to the ongoing US-China trade feud, the relative instability of global markets and rising interest rates.
PwC Israel partner, head of advisory services, and transaction services leader Liat Enzel-Aviel was quoted as saying: “It appears that the decline in the number of high-tech deals is due to continued development by companies in the sector and growth possibilities that are postponing the sale of companies.”
This article was first published by The Times of Israel and is re-posted with permission.
The last 10 years have seen the so-called Startup Nation flourishing, with increasing numbers of multinationals taking notice, snapping up Israeli companies and technologies and setting up local R&D centers.
Startup entrepreneurs, once eager to sell their firms to the highest bidder as soon as they could, are now holding out longer and raising more money from venture capital or private equity funds to grow their companies on their own.
A look at the figures shows that in the past decade, Israel saw 587 exit deals — defined as initial public offerings of shares, or merger and acquisitions of Israeli startups — for a total of $70 billion, according to data compiled by PwC Israel. The deal of the decade was the acquisition by US tech giant Intel Corp. of Israel’s Mobileye, a Jerusalem-based maker of self-driving technologies, for a whopping $15.3 billion.
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), the international venture capital firm led by one of Israel’s leading social and tech entrepreneurs Dr. Erel Margalit, marked the grand opening of the International Cyber Center in New York City’s SOHO neighborhood in Manhattan on Monday night, positioning the city as the next global cybersecurity capital.
The event drew guests from across the world, including officials, entrepreneurs, executives, and celebrities – actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow sat down for a fireside chat with Margalit – and came more than a year after JVP was selected by the City of New York and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) to establish its first international cybersecurity investment and innovation hub. The center is part of the Cyber NYC initiative, a $100 million public-private investment to transform the city into a global leader in cyber innovation and create thousands of jobs, in partnership with leading academic institutions such as Columbia University, New York University, CUNY, and Cornell-Tech.
New York City, Margalit said as he took the stage to welcome attendees, “is the financial and cultural center of the world, the hub of media and information – it can also become the technology hub of the world.”
Actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow with Dr. Erel Margalit at the opening of the International Cyber Center in New York City on February 3, 2020. Photo: Shahar Azran
The JVP International Cyber Center, he added, “is a launching pad for innovative technologies, for a new era of cyber, moving from protecting countries and enterprises to defending democracies and individuals, creating companies that will change the world of tomorrow. This is the start of the next chapter in the success story that is New York City.”
JVP’s Cyber Center in New York, housed in a 165,000 square-foot space on Grand Street, will focus on supporting growth-stage startups, serving as their base, and providing them with access to clients, top investors, executives from leading multinational companies and experts in the cybersecurity industry with hopes of “creating the next billion-dollar companies” in the field. It is also set to play a major role in protecting cities, banks, utilities, and healthcare systems, as well as democracies, information integrity and the freedom of the individual, according to JVP.
The grand opening of JVP’s International Cyber Center in New York on February 3, 2020. Photo: Shahar Azran
“Our vision to transform the city into the cyber capital of the world, combined with JVP’s experience in driving change through innovation, creates a formidable partnership that gives rise to the next wave of cybersecurity startup success stories,” said NYCEDC President and CEO James Patchett in a press statement. “The opening of the new Cyber Center will link global cities and companies with New York City’s thriving cyber ecosystem and promises to create good jobs and innovative solutions in this booming field.”
During the on-stage discussion at the event, Margalit and Paltrow delved into a range of topics including the developing role of women in tech, the importance of cybersecurity technologies protecting societies and individuals, and even the MeToo movement in which the actress played a vital role.
Paltrow said that when it comes to advanced technologies, some new products and opportunities presented a “double-edged sword”.
“How would we all live if we knew that everything we did and said was public to the world. This raises a very interesting philosophical point. I do believe in privacy, and we are entering a strange point in time when people know far more about us than we feel comfortable, so we must work to ensure that protection of privacy as well.”
Israel’s edge in cybersecurity
“Financial institutions and banks are often the first to be attacked,” Margalit told NoCamels in a phone interview ahead of the big launch. “They need extensive protection, as do healthcare systems, critical infrastructure, and smart city infrastructures. But there’s also a need for protection for individuals – their rights, their identities, their privacy – and democratic systems.”
The cyber field, he said, is a “type of war” and “what Israel has to offer in this field is priceless,” Margalit said. Indeed, Israel has proven capabilities in cybersecurity and is widely recognized globally as a cybersecurity powerhouse with over 400 active companies and startups in the field as of 2019. Israel is also home to the second-largest number of cybersecurity deals globally in recent years, second only to the US.
Between 2013 and 2019, the value of Israeli cybersecurity exits totaled $11.3 billion. And last month, in the biggest deal for an Israeli cybersecurity company, IoT security firm Armis announced that it was to be acquired by NY-based Insight Partners at a valuation of $1.1 billion.
In addition, no small number of founders and leaders of Israeli cybersecurity companies served in elite intelligence units and thereafter developed protection concepts for civilian purposes.
Margalit cited companies like CyberArk, which offers a critical layer of IT security to protect data, infrastructure, and assets across enterprises, and ThetaRay, an Israeli startup that offers solutions for crime prevention, operational efficiency, and threat detection, as examples.
ThetaRay is a JVP portfolio company and one of the 28 Israeli and American startups currently based at the International Cyber Center (half of which are also JVP portfolio companies). Some of the Israeli companies already have a presence in the US and bring in revenue “and are looking to scale or expand and others were looking for that US presence,” Margalit noted.
Among the 28 companies are also Nanit, an Israeli-founded company that developed a baby monitor for the IoT era, Loom Systems, the developer of an AI-powered log analysis software platform which recently announced that it agreed to be acquired by US cloud computing company ServiceNow for an undisclosed amount, and Israeli predictive cyber threat provider Vicarius, which recently announced a $5 million seed funding round (led by JVP).
Controversial tech and moral code
In addition to the much-needed protection of industries and individuals, Israeli companies have also produced more controversial, even dark, cyber capabilities.
A stark example is Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group, best known for developing a powerful, invasive piece of spyware called Pegasus that can access private data including passwords, web history, phone logs, contact lists, and text messages, and can monitor live calls from messaging apps. It can also turn on phone cameras and microphones to track events in the vicinity and use the GPS function to monitor a target’s location and movements.
The tech has been at the center of a number of high-profile cases including the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi Arabian dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and the targeting of journalists and dissidents in Mexico and other countries, according to extensive research by Citizen Lab, a research facility at The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. And late last year, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO Group, accusing it of being behind a malware attack that targeted some 1,400 people across the world, including human rights activists and journalists. NSO has disputed the allegations.
“In cybersecurity, there is defense and offense and when it comes to investing, we work with those who develop defensive capabilities and we don’t invest in certain kinds of technologies,” Margalit tells NoCamels.
Margalit added that although it is also important to have offensive capabilities, “as investors and as a country [Israel], we have a moral code, and democratic countries need to abide by this code,” and help preserve “circles of trust with clients and collaborators.”
Centers of innovation
Since its founding in 1993, JVP has raised $1.4 billion across nine funds, invested in more than 140 companies, and has overseen 35 successful exits including 12 NASDAQ IPOs with a total transaction value in excess of $20 billion.
Led by Margalit, the firm has also made it a mission to help build up cities as global tech centers.
JVP marks the grand opening of its International Cyber Center in New York on February 3, 2020. Photo: Shahar Azran
In the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, JVP set up the JVP Cyber Labs to attract top talent and capital. In Haifa, JVP is part of a group that is set to develop the city’s technology and innovation ecosystem with an investment of NIS 50 million ($14 million) over the next four years. The goal is to turn Haifa into a major innovation center in the areas of digital health, energy environment, industry 4.0, and smart transport.
Margalit told NoCamels the International Cyber Center was modeled after JVP’s space in Jerusalem which also houses the JVP Media Quarter, a technological incubator that serves as a center for engineers, artists, creators, and writers, among others.
Photo via Erel Margalit’s Facebook page.
“To create a big hub of creativity and activity, you need a big physical space. It creates a unique energy. And when you have a city like New York – a big city with lots of people – you need a space to bring them together,” Margalit said.
This concept was elevated at the center’s opening event in New York on Monday night with the launch of the “Margalit Startup City” brand, which JVP said “represents a series of international innovation centers launched around the world, with Margalit Startup City New York being the anchor for global activity.”
The centers, the firm said, focus on the ability to “change reality by connecting innovators, bringing millennials and younger generations to cities, all while creating thousands of job opportunities that leverage the social-economic aspects of each city.”
“With a belief in the power of people, the centers will connect the designers, philosophers, musicians, mathematicians, and storytellers of the world to advance innovation and creativity,” JVP said.
Israel’s future influence
Margalit tells NoCamels that building tech hubs, like the one in New York, will help grow Israel’s influence and reputation as a tech innovator across the world.
“If you look at the last decade, it was technologists serving technologists. Today, we are seeing tech in different industries. For example, banking and finance need AI, they need advanced technologies to be where their customers are. In the food industry, there are developments on alternative proteins, drones for agriculture and so on, and we need to be working with these big companies in the food world.”
Margalit said Israel has great innovators in diverse industries such as software, semiconductors, AI, and of course cybersecurity, but it “needs to connect to vertical leaders” and “tap in to big transformations across industries and in cities all over the world.”
Israeli venture capital firm Grove Ventures announced on Tuesday that it secured $120 million in total commitments for the Grove Ventures II Fund (Grove II) which will invest in Israeli early-stage, deep tech startups looking to branch into the European and US markets. Grove Ventures said that institutional investors, strategic investors, and globally acclaimed industry leaders are taking part in the fund, which was oversubscribed.
Founded in 2016, the VC firm specializes in backing startups focused on developing “hard-to-replicate solutions at the intersection of technology, science, and applicable market needs” in a range of sectors including semiconductors, Industry 4.0 and digital health among many others. The firm is led by serial entrepreneur and investor Dov Moran, the founder of M-Systems Inc., the company that invented the USB flash drive (bought in 2006 by SanDisk Corp. for $1.6 billion).
Grove Ventures previously invested in Tel Aviv-based fabless IoT startup Wiliot Ltd, also backed by Amazon, Samsung, and Qualcomm, and Israeli autonomous vehicles SWIR sensing solution company TriEye, which received additional funding from Intel, and secured an investment and partnership agreement from Porsche.
Moran said in a statement that, with the second fund, Grove Ventures is looking to “empower brilliant deep tech entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and passion around their product to build great international companies.
“We believe the world is on the brink of a revolution that will digitalize sectors such as manufacturing, mobility, and healthcare. We are looking for sharp entrepreneurs who can solve big problems using great technology to become industry game-changers. We want unique people with a clear vision on how to use these technologies to reshape industries while also having a positive impact on the world,” he added.
Grove’s fund partners said in a joint statement that they “share a deep, personal commitment to deep tech entrepreneurs.”
Grove II, they said, will allows them “to continue to connect passionate inventors with leading global corporates and accelerate their success.”
Ten Israeli companies were listed among two separate lists highlighting the top 50 companies worldwide in the food tech and agtech (agriculture tech) sectors in 2020, put together by SVG Ventures-THRIVE and published by Forbes this week.
THRIVE is an ecosystem and an accelerator for food tech and agtech startups worldwide. The annual top 50 lists are published as map infographics and showcase “exceptional companies… pushing the boundaries of innovation and technology,” the publication said.
The companies on the lists “are scouted for their exemplary leadership teams, technology and traction and are selected following months of rigorous research by the SVG-THRIVE team.” To qualify, the publication wrote, companies “must have a product in market, have received a minimum of series A funding and be ready to scale.”
The 10 Israeli companies listed are:
–DouxMatok, a startup that developed a patented sugar reduction solution that retains the texture, sweetness, and appearance of sugar. The company raised $22 million in a Series B funding round last year and appeared in the “food processing/ novel ingredient” in the top 50 food tech map.
–InnovoPro, a startup that creates sustainable food products made from the chickpeas including dairy and meat alternatives. This company, too, appeared in the “food processing/ novel ingredient” in the top 50 food tech map.
Future Meat Technologies’ production facility used 1,200-liter stainless steel vessels to grow chicken, beef, lamb, or pork. Such facilities are no larger than a barn and can manufacture up to 2,000 kg of meat per month (equivalent to 1,000 chickens or 7 cows per month). Photo: Dudi Moskovitz
–Tastewise, an Israeli AI-powered food trends prediction, and intelligence startup. The company uses billions of data points from restaurant menus, online recipes, and social media to provide real-time insights, analytics, and food trends. It too appeared in the “CGP (consumer packaged goods) and retail” category in the food tech map.
–TIPA Corp, a developer of biodegradable packages for the food, drink, and fashion industries. The company recently raised $25 million to expand sales. Tipa appeared in the “supply chain” category of the food tech map.
Infarm’s urban farming system in Germany. Photo via Kroger
–CropX, an agriculture analytics company that developed an adaptive irrigation service to optimize irrigation. The company taps into the power of big data, machine learning, and cutting-edge cloud-based software in the soil to boost agricultural output. CropX also appeared in the agtech top 50 list.
–Taranis, a precision agriculture startup that allows farmers to monitor fields and make informed decisions, also appeared in THRIVE’s agtech top 50 list.
CropX soil sensor installed in the ground. Courtesy.
–Prospera, a developer of computer vision technologies to monitor and predict plant health and development.
These Israeli companies joined major global firms on the round-ups, including the California-based Impossible Foods which makes plant-based meat alternatives and indoor farming company Bright Farms.
Israeli food tech and agtech
Israel has been delivering innovative startups operating in the food technology and agriculture technology sectors for the past decade. The country has been positioning itself as a key player in an industry worth an estimated $8.7 trillion in 2018.
In Israel, food-agri tech firms drew some $103 million in equity investment in 2018, “putting the Israeli sector on par with, and sometimes exceeding, much larger nations like Australia and India,” according to a report published in September by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), the Israeli non-profit organization that tracks the local tech ecosystem.
According to the report, Israel is home to some 350 food-agri startups founded in the past decade alone that focus on “deep tech” innovation primarily for the global agri-food industry. SNC also noted an increased rate of new company creation, with an annual average of 37 new startups since 2014. And since 2016, 124 startups have been established, more than the total founded in the previous six years.
This trend represents a “second wave” of food-agri tech innovation, SNC says, “driven by both the growing global demand for efficient and sustainable food production technologies and the strength of various technologies in Israel,” such as AI, robotics, data, sensing, and computation.
This second wave of companies using advanced tech in the food-agri sector builds on the longstanding tradition of innovation and excellence in agriculture that Israel developed over the last 100 years (even before the establishment of the state) to address resource shortages and the existential need to achieve food and water security in a challenging climate, the SNC report reads, referring to this period as the “first wave.”
According to SNC’s data platform Start-Up Nation Finder, Israeli agtech companies currently number over 400 and raised close to $300 million in 2019. Israeli food tech startups number over 240 startups and raised over $400 million last year.
Israeli food tech partnerships
Over the past several years, Israeli companies have partnered with major food corporations for significant ventures.
In September, an international consortium made up of global agrifood investment firm Finistere Ventures, Israeli food manufacturer Tnuva, beverage company Tempo Beverages, and Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd launched a NIS 1 billion ($238 million) food tech incubator in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. Dubbed “Fresh Start,” the incubator is expected to invest in over 40 advanced technology startups that will drive the food industry specifically in fields like milk and protein substitutes, personalized nutrition, innovative raw materials, smart food packaging, and Industry 4.0, including IoT, AI, and Big Data.
In May, Mars, Incorporated, the US multinational manufacturer of food and snack products such as M&M’s, Snickers, and Skittles, entered a partnership agreement with Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) to pursue innovative food tech solutions in Israel. According to the agreement, Mars is set to back relevant existing Israeli startups and support the formation of new ones, as well as work together with leading Israeli academic institutions, such as the Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, and the Technion, to further innovations.
And a month prior, Mondelez International, the Illinois-based food and beverage multinational, announced a partnership with the Israeli food tech incubator The Kitchen to develop opportunities in the snacking sector. Mondelez said in a statement at the time that the collaboration will allow for “unparalleled access and visibility into one of the world’s leading food tech ecosystems.”
This article is a guest post on NoCamels and has been contributed by a third party. NoCamels assumes no responsibility for the content, including facts, visuals, and opinions presented by the author(s).
Efrat Fenigson is VP marketing at Mindspace and the founder at G-CMO, a community of Israel’s top 100 CMOs from the Startup Nation’s global companies.
It’s no secret that COVID-19 forced companies to adapt their marketing strategies to a changing environment. The understanding that companies are facing challenging times all over the world meant marketers needed to improvise and think more creatively and on their feet.
Israelis are, unfortunately, quite accustomed to working under constraints such as limited budgets, tight timelines, and small teams. These restrictions often bog things down and create confusion and chaos, but for us Israelis, they spark innovation and creativity. At G-CMO, a community of Israel’s top 100 CMOs (chief marketing officers) from the Startup Nation’s global companies, we saw our CMOs acting fast when public health restrictions were put in place.
“With business activity going from 100 to almost 0 in days, causing sales pipeline and revenues to sharply decline, many companies immediately adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to figure out how they could preserve cash,” says Merav Meluban, head of marketing at Viola, one of Israel’s leading VCs and a G-CMO member. “This led to severe budget cuts, which immediately impacts marketing to be creative on a low budget.” Viola published a survey of marketing leads across the Israeli tech ecosystem, reporting that over 70 percent experienced a decrease of up to 50 percent in their budgets.
But over the past few months, some of the Startup Nation’s global marketing leaders responded with some inspiring marketing moves.
Here, we’re highlighting 33 inspiring initiatives and marketing solutions we’ve seen during these coronavirus times:
1.JoyTunes created a “Pay What You Can” initiative for its app “Simply Piano,” donating all proceeds to health organizations and making the teaching app free for remote learning.
2. WalkMe decided to convert its annual global customer event into a digital one. The company rented a studio and broadcasted the whole event via online channels.
3. Taboola launched Taboola News, aggregating news content about COVID-19 from trusted news publishers for tens of millions of users.
5.Pcysys created an unusual video with a Mime artist, Dani Aragon, explaining security vulnerabilities during corona times. On top of being highly entertaining, it’s also Pcysys’ way of supporting performing artists these days.
6. Masa created Masa : Online, an online space for Masa fellows in Israel, alumni, parents, and potential fellows from Jewish communities around the world, offering lectures, workshops, live events, some led by Masa’s community members themselves.
7.Video platform Kaltura partnered with events management company Bizzabo to provide brands with video features they can use when shifting to digital events.
9.Optibus offered bus companies to use its platform for free so that they could rapidly create plans for reduced bus service, or deal with plans to prevent crowding in buses.
10. Cyberint launched a COVID-19 cyber intelligence timely updates published across channels with in-depth analyses of threats relevant to WFH and retailers’ environment.
11. At Mindspace (my workplace), a high-end flexible workspaces provider, we reacted quickly and created our first VIRTUAL space online. We called it “VIRTUAL”, and our members enjoy live community sessions every day, both professional and leisure. We also provided our spaces for free for non-profit organizations fighting coronavirus spread or assisting relevant communities.
12. Personetics created custom insights and advice that analyze a customer’s financials and make specific recommendations on how best to optimize their account during the global health crisis. For example, if a person had their salary cut and the system noticed insufficient funds to pay the mortgage, the bank can offer immediate mortgage relief.
13.Optimove‘s content team transitioned into a marketing newsroom, publishing daily live broadcasts, trend research, situation analyses, best practices and much more.
14.Deep Instinct launched an online cybersecurity quiz – “beat the brain” – to challenge cybersecurity professionals cyber knowledge and skills.
15. Percepto announced its support in business continuity of critical facilities (i.e power plants) by enabling flight of autonomous drones for security and inspection, from home.
16. Freightos released the world’s first daily freight index to help companies deal with the fast-changing global supply chain ecosystem.
17.Meet in Place launched two content series: “Meet the Experts”, with senior partners shedding light on business reality post-COVID-19 outbreak, and “Until We Meet Again” – where they share hospitality/proptech highlights from the past week.
18. Cymulate started offering two months’ service for free, for immediate cyber threats testing to optimize a company’s security posture, which helped onboard tens of new customers. Cymulate also hosted for its customers and prospects a virtual show by the mind mentalist Lior Sushard – to just enjoy and free their minds.
19. Netafim developed a portable disinfection spraying system for workplaces and collaborated with an Israeli startup called NanoSense to create and manufacture a special smell-based test kit – all this, not for profit.
20. Lightico offered its services to businesses like banks, insurers, and telcos so they could go digital quickly and serve their customers remotely in just 72 hours. Lightico developed a mobile platform to help businesses streamline online processes such as collecting forms, documents, e-signatures, photos, consent and disclosures agreements, as well as verifying IDs
21. Creative content startup Lightricks built a whole campaign around its employees working from home, turning them into stars. The company also assigned its maintenance staff tasks they can perform from home, in a surprising transition to their role.
22. Bond, the post-purchase company, started offering NY business owners impacted by COVID-19, to turn their shop into a pop-up storage space, and continue earning money even while their shop is shut.
23. Verint created a dedicated site to support its customers and leverage their existing deployments for COVID-19 related concerns including the monitoring of quarantines and the maintenance of social distancing. The company also assists customers in meeting their pandemic-related security challenges such as border protection, criminal activities, and cyber attacks.
24. Payment giant Payoneer conducted dozens of online events for merchants and SMBs all over the globe, even those under severe quarantine restrictions in China.
25.Vayyar Imaging began collaborating with the Israeli government to fight the spread of COVID-19. Vayyar’s intelligent sensors provide touchless, remote and confidential monitoring to detect vital signs that can indicate early-stage COVID-19 symptoms. The data, including pulse, heart rate variability, and respiratory rate, are all measured remotely.
26.SQream has provided free licenses of its software for accelerated data analytics to government & healthcare entities.
27. IceCureMedical created dedicated Remote Installation and Clinical Training Program to support their users – which are cancer patients, in order to maintain continuity in cancer treatments globally during COVID-19.
28. As on-trade beverage sales remain at a standstill and events continue to be canceled, Ripples launched the DrinkX podcast to fill the industry voids that have resulted since the widespread outbreak of COVID-19.
29.AppsFlyerdirected attention and resources to the community: amongst many actions they’ve taken, they provided families of critical COVID-19 patients with full protective gear to allow them to say goodbye to their loved ones in their final hours.
30. Pitango VC created the #NoFilter series, online events with global tech and business leaders, who have been sharing insights and lessons from their vast experience and previous crises. Among them were renowned names like John chambers, the legendary former CEO of Cisco and Steve Luczo, Chairman of Seagate and former CEO of the company.
31. Papaya Global, a cloud-based SaaS platform that automates payroll, payments, and workforce management, opened a newsroom with daily updates as well as an AMA (ask-me-anything) post on LinkedIn regarding economic and legislative measures. There are also COVID-19 per-country crisis guides focused on labor law changes and their impact on global employers.
32. I.M. Segev, a company my parents co-founded over four decades ago (dad is the CEO, mom is VP BizDev) was asked to partner to create a “contactless” COVID-19 testing booth. Together with Maccabi Health Services, Israel’s second-largest HMO, they manufactured such a booth in less than four days. (I.M. Segev is not a G-CMO member.)
33. And last but not least, Google Israel, together with Ynet, released this video for Israel’s 72nd Independence Day. A beautiful Israeli time capsule!
Fenigson originally published a previous version of this article here.
This article was first published by The Times of Israel and is re-posted with permission.
The outbreak of the coronavirus and the lockdowns it has led to, along with the recession that will apparently follow, have spurred a lively discussion in Israel about whether the nation’s thriving startup ecosystem should also be in line to get government investments, in the form of grants or government guaranteed loans.
Some, like the former head of Israel’s National Economic Council, believe that government assistance is needed to help startups survive the crisis. Others, including prominent VC fund heads, say Israel should let capitalism do what it does best and let market forces to determine which startups survive without resorting to “socialist” assistance.
Israel had 16,314 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 238 deaths from the coronavirus as of midday May 6. With the economy at a near-halt, jobless figures spiked to 1,093,000 by mid-April, bringing the unemployment rate to an unprecedented 26 percent from below four percent pre-coronavirus.
A Taiwanese firm has set up a new $70 million program to collaborate and invest in Israeli startups focused on digital health, cybersecurity, and AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) and help them launch and expand into East Asian markets.
Innovation to Industry (i2i), a Taipei-based innovation and tech company that grew out of government-run incubators in Taiwan, launched the IP² LaunchPad which it said will provide Israeli startups with exposure, a center to launch their activities, validate their technologies and expand into East Asian markets with strong strategic partners.
Twenty five Israeli startups were selected for the program, the company said at the launch event held simultaneously in Israel and Taiwan last week. The participating companies will have access to investments starting at $200,000 in the first phase and up to $3 million at the end of the program, which will run for a year.
The IP² program is run locally by the Israeli consulting firm Healthier Globe headed by Rani Shifron. The firm helps startups and organizations set up operations in developing global markets.
The IP2 program selected 25 Israeli startups for its first annual cycle. Photo: Nati Levi
Healthier Globe said it scoured the Israeli tech ecosystem for relevant startup and an industry panel selected startups in digital healthcare (60 percent of the companies), cybersecurity (about 24 percent of the companies) and AIOT (about 16 percent).
The Israeli companies selected are all early stage and have completed initial investment rounds, according to the announcement. With the launch of the program, eight strategic cooperation agreements were announced and signed between the Israeli startups and the partners in the program. The agreements include piloting, feasibility studies, and clinical validation studies.
Some of the participating startups include Serenno Medical, a medical device company that monitors kidney health; Biop Medical, which developed a point-of-care device that helps in the early detection of cervical cancer; Resymmetry, the developer of a smart exoskeleton robotic wheelchair; Cybord, a cybersecurity startups that developed tech to detect counterfeit and malicious cyber hardware; and ShieldIOT, which provides end-to-end security for IoT networks.
i2i chairman Dr. Gary Gong initiated the program following his visits to Israel in recent years, his familiarity with the Israeli innovation industry and the vision for strategic cooperation, the firm said in a statement. Dr. Gong said he beleives “integrating the Israeli innovation industry with the hardware and healthcare industry in Taiwan will fuel the industry innovation in Taiwan.”
Healthier Globe CEO Rani Shifron said Taiwan has one of the best health care systems in the world and has successfully coped with the coronavirus pandemic, while maintaining a vibrant economy and business center. “In addition to the ecosystem exposure and the guidance, Israeli companies benefit from reduced tax payments in Taiwan for their income, grants, an office center and living quarters,” he said.
The program will be based at the Startup Terrace in Taipei, a $2.5 billion complex that provides co-working spaces, an exhibition center, offices, and housing, and is supported by the SME Administration, Ministry of Economy (MOEA) in Taiwan. The complex is home to 106 entrepreneurs from 11 countries, according to the announcement.
Mr. Ho Chin-Tsang, Director General of the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA) Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taiwan said: “I am pleased of the strengthening of the business ties with the Israeli innovation industry. I believe that the integration of the leading Israeli industry in software solutions with the huge hardware industry in Taiwan, a world leader in personal computers, LCDs, semiconductors and mobile phones as well as Taiwan’s leading healthcare system, will advance the development of each of the parties.”
Israel’s “Startup Nation” bona fides have been firmly established over the past decade. With a population of approximately nine million and home to some 6,500 startups, Israel has the largest number of startups per capita in the world.
In the past five years or so, there’s been a marked shift toward a “Scale-Up Nation” moniker, corresponding with larger-scale investments in companies pursuing growth and the proliferation of “unicorns” – privately-held companies that reach a valuation of $1 billion or more.
The term “unicorn” to define such companies was first coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013. Originally used to portray the rarity of such companies, there are over 600 unicorns globally, including more than 60 that have been founded by Israelis.
In fact, 10 Israeli-founded, private companies have joined the unicorn club since January 2021 alone, cementing Israel’s place as a force in the world of technology in both relative and absolute terms. For reference, 16 Israeli-founded companies became unicorns in all of 2020, and 12 joined the unicorn club in 2019.
In addition, unicorns aside, Israeli companies are drawing record investments and growing at impressive speeds, with multiple firms successfully raising funding rounds of over $100 million (dubbed mega-rounds) at a time. In a single day this month, one Israeli company – retail data firm Trax – raised over half a billion dollars. Another company, insurtech outfit Next Insurance, doubled its valuation to $4 billion in six months, raising two rounds of $250 million in six months.
Yet another company, Melio, became valued at over $1 billion in just three years after raising over $250 million in two rounds in six months to fuel its digital payments platform. And cloud security startup Wiz shot to unicorn status in just over a year, securing two founding rounds of over $100 in three months.
There’s also been a boom this year in companies pursuing mergers through blank-check SPACs (special purpose acquisition company) to bypass traditional IPOs and go public at skyrocketing valuations. These include Taboola ($2.6 billion), Innoviz ($1.4 billion valuation), eToro ($10.4 billion valuation), WeWork ($9 billion valuation), Hippo Insurance ($5 billion), Cellebrite ($2.4 billion), Payoneer ($3.3 billion valuation), REE automotive ($3.1 billion valuation), ironSource ($11.1 billion valuation), Otonomo ($1.4 billion valuation), Arbe Robotics ($722 million), TalkSpace ($1.4 billion), and Valens.
In honor of Israel’s 73rd Independence Day, NoCamels compiled a list of some of Israel’s most successful and prominent enterprises, highlighting the country’s booming and ever-growing high-tech sector. We’re starting with which companies became unicorns in the first quarter of 2021 (Q1 2021), and moving onto which companies pursued or are pursuing SPAC mergers.
Unicorns – 10 Israeli companies join $1B club in Q1 2021
DriveNets
In January, Ra’anana-based Israeli telecommunications startup DriveNets announced the completion of a $208 Series B funding round at a valuation of more than $1 billion.
DriveNets’ management team. Courtesy
Founded in 2015, DriveNets aims to revolutionize the telecom industry by helping Communications Service Providers (CSPs) handle increased demand while remaining profitable through building agile networks and detaching growth from cost. DriveNet’s flagship product, Network Cloud, is a cloud-native software “that turns the physical network into a shared resource supporting multiple services.”
DriveNets emerged from stealth mode in 2019 and works with service providers and cloud infrastructure services worldwide.
OwnBackup
Cloud services and recovery company OwnBackup raised $167.5 million at a $1.4 billion valuation in January. Founded in 2012, OwnBackup recovers lost and corrupted data caused by human errors, malicious intent, integration errors and rogue applications.
The company is the top-ranked backup and restore ISV on the Salesforce.com AppExchange and was selected as a Gartner 2015 “Cool Vendor” in Business Continuity and IT Disaster Recovery.
K Health
January 2021 was a big month for unicorns and K Health, the Israeli AI-powered telemedicine health platform, joined the club at that time, announcing a $132 million Series E round at a valuation of $1.4 billion.
Founded in 2016 by former Wix CEO Allon Bloch, K Health leverages AI and anonymized reports to diagnose health issues. The free app relies on a unique database that includes physician notes, lab results, treatments, medical histories and prescriptions to provide accurate, data-driven information about a user’s symptoms and health. The data was collected by Maccabi, Israel’s second-largest HMO, over a 20-year period.
Israeli company K Health delivers virtual, personalized, affordable healthcare through a smartphone app. Photo: K Health
Melio
Israeli fintech startup Melio, the developer of a digital payment platform focused on US small and medium businesses, raised $110 million in funding, the company announced in January, sending its valuation soaring to $1.335 billion in just three years since it was established.
Melio offers easy account payables services, simplifying the paperwork process for small businesses, and allowing them to pay vendors with credit or debit cards.
Using the Melio platform, clients add invoice details for a vendor manually and they can then manage and schedule payments using their method of choice.
Melio founders from left to right: Ziv Paz, Matan Bar, and Ilan Attias. Photo: Michael Tumarkin Photography
Yotpo
In March 2021, Yotpo, a leading eCommerce and content marketing platform that helps retail brands generate online revenue growth, announced the closure of a $230 million Series F funding round at a valuation of $1.4 billion.
Yotpo works with brands such as Patagonia, Steve Madden, and GoPro to collect customer-generated content including reviews, ratings, photos, and Q&A to build brand awareness, better customer experiences, and strong brand-customer relationships. The platform provides marketers with a unique set of customer behavior data and predictive analytics, and integrates with other tools such as Shopify, and Salesforce. In recent years, Yotpo added loyalty, referrals, and SMS marketing to its offerings through a series of acquisitions (Swell Rewards in 2018 and SMSbump in 2020).
Yotpo founders Omri Cohen, left, and Tomer Tagrin, right. Photo: Mor Shani
Orca Security
Also in March, Israeli cybersecurity company Orca Security raised $210 million in a Series C round led by CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), the independent growth fund by Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Redpoint Ventures. This drove Orca’s valuation to $1.2 billion.
Orca Security was founded in 2019 by former Check Point Software CTO Avi Shua and former Check Point executive Gil Geron. The startup says it created the first and only cloud security solution that can find vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, leaked and weak passwords, lateral movement risk, and high-risk data without agents or per asset integrations, within minutes.
The Orca Security team. Courtesy
Aqua Security
Aqua Security announced a $135 million Series E financing round in March 2021 at a valuation of over $1 billion. Founded in 2015, Aqua Security offers a cloud-native security solution that covers the full life cycle of products from development to production.
Axonius
Axonius, a cybersecurity asset management platform company with offices in Tel Aviv and New York, raised $100 million in a Series D round in March that valued the company at $1.2 billion). The company’s backers include Lightspeed Venture Partners, OpenView, Bessemer Venture Partners, YL Ventures, and Vertex Ventures.
The company says it gives organizations a comprehensive asset inventory, uncovers security solution coverage gaps, and automatically validates and enforces security policies. Customers include the New York Times, AB InBev, Landmark Health, and AppsFlyer, among others.
In February, Axonius reported that soaring worldwide customer demand drove a 215 percent increase in year-over-year annual recurring revenue.
Axonius was founded in 2017 by Dean Sysman, Avidor Bartov, and Ofri Shur.
Wiz
Just three months after emerging from stealth mode and raising $100 million, Israeli startup Wiz closed on a second funding round of $130 million in March 2021 at a company valuation of $1.7 billion.
Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, the former general manager of R&D at Microsoft Israel, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik, the same team that founded cloud security firm Adallom (sold to Microsoft in 2015) and Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group.
The startup was set up to help companies secure their cloud infrastructure at scale through a contextual risk assessment and clear action plan. Wiz says its unique architecture allows for seamless scanning of a given organization’s entire cloud environment across all compute types and cloud services for vulnerabilities, configuration, network, and identity issues without agents or sidecars.
Papaya Global
Papaya Global, a Tel Aviv cloud-based payroll and payment management platform, raised $100 million in a Series C funding round, the company announced in March, bringing its valuation to over $1 billion.
Papaya Global was founded by Eynat Guez, Ruben Drong, and Ofer Herman in 2016 with a vision to reinvent the global payroll, payment, and HR industries. The company offers an automated, cloud-based SaaS platform that provides a comprehensive solution – from onboarding to ongoing management and cross-border payments – and that meets privacy standards and security regulations (GDPR, ISO, SOC).
Papaya says its services are used in over 140 countries.
The SPAC boom – 13 Israeli companies seek public listing so far in 2021
More Israeli companies are looking to list publicly via SPAC mergers than ever before – and, by our count, at least 13 have announced definitive agreements to do so in the first few months of 2021. (For a good explainer on SPACs, see here; for a journey into how SPACs make sense in the Israeli context, see here).
Taboola
In January, Israeli content recommendation company Taboola announced that it would go public on the NYSE at a $2.6 billion valuation under the new symbol TBLA, following a merger with ION Acquisition Corp, a special-purpose acquisition company. Taboola had previously planned to merge with Outbrain, also an Israeli content platform, but the deal fell through reportedly due to market changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taboola was founded in 2007 with headquarters in New York and is headed by CEO Adam Singolda. As a content discovery and advertising platform, Taboola partners with publishers such as CNBC, The Daily Mail and USA Today among over 9,000 digital properties to drive audience monetization and engagement through the respective sites’ own editorial content as well as recommendations paid by advertisers.
Taboola says its platform provides over 1 trillion recommendations a month to approximately 500 million daily users.
The deal assigns Payoneer implied estimated value of about $3.3 billion.
TalkSpace
In January, the New York-based, Israeli-founded Talkspace, a company that connects patients with licensed therapists and counseling services through an online platform, announced a SPAC merger with Hudson Executive Capital LP at a valuation of $1.4 billion.
The combined company will operate as Talkspace and intends to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol TALK. The transaction is expected to close later this year.
Talkspace was founded in 2012 by Israeli husband-and-wife team Oren and Roni Frank.
Talkspace. Courtesy
Otonomo
Also in February, Otonomo, the cloud-based software startup that helps companies capture and monetize connected car data, indicated that it was headed to the public market (Nasdaq).
Israeli e-mobility company REE Automotive signed a merger agreement in February with 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. to list on the Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol REE upon closing. The deal assigned REE an approximate valuation of $3.1 billion.
The REE Automotive platform. Courtesy
REE emerged from stealth mode in July 2019 after six years in development to introduce its unprecedented approach to vehicles specifically for the electric vehicle (EV) market. The company developed an entirely flat and modular platform in which the motor, steering, suspension, drivetrain, sensing, brakes, thermal systems, and electronics are all integrated into the vehicle’s wheels.
The flat design offers customers the freedom to place any shape or size of body design on top, the company has said.
eToro
Social trading company eToro announced its intention in March to go public through a merger with FinTech Acquisition Corp V that values the Israeli company at a whopping $10.4 billion. The deal is backed by Betsy Cohen with investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2
Founded in 2006, eToro competes with Robinhood and offers one of the world’s most popular stock-buying apps with more than 13 million users in over 100 countries.
ironSource
Israeli app-monetization company ironSource said last month that it would merge with Thoma Bravo Advantage at a valuation of approximately $11.1 billion. The planned deal, which will yield $2.3 billion for the company and its investors, would be “the biggest [such] transaction ever in Israel.”
Founded in 2012, ironSource helps developers build their apps into successful, scalable businesses that engage users and monetize content.
The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv.
WeWork
WeWork announced late last month that it would go public via a SPAC merger with California-based BowX Acquisition Corp in a deal that values the shared working space company at approximately $9 billion.
The deal marks a sharp drop from the $47 billion the company was valued at in 2019 just before an ill-fated IPO that sent it into a tailspin amid allegations of misbehavior and self-dealings on the part of WeWork co-founder, Israeli entrepreneur Adam Neumann.
A WeWork sign. Photo by Eloise Ambursley on Unsplash
Founded in 2010, WeWork designs and builds physical and virtual shared spaces and office services for entrepreneurs and companies.
WeWork currently has 851 locations in 152 cities, totaling more than one million workstations where enterprise companies make up more than 50 percent of memberships. Going forward, WeWork said it intends to expand beyond its core business through its On Demand, All Access, and Platform offerings, enabling users to choose when, where, and how they work through the WeWork mobile app.
Hippo Insurance
Hippo Insurance announced a definitive agreement in early March to merge with Reinvent Technology Partners Z, a SPAC on the NYSE, at a company valuation of $5 billion.
Hippo was founded in January 2015 by Israeli-born CEO Assaf Wand, and CTO Eyal Navon, and is based in Palo Alto, California. It made its debut in the insurance marketplace in April 2017 and now offers homeowners’ insurance in 36 states.
The company’s policies are built on public data sets from municipal building records, and satellite imagery of physical property characteristics, promising clients a user experience that lasts just a few minutes. It also allows customers to save up to 25 percent on premiums, and obtain smarter coverage for household goods like appliances and consumer electronics. In addition to insurance, Hippo also provides complimentary smart home devices to clients to protect homeowners against water leaks, fire damage and break-ins.
Hippo last raised $150 million in a Series E round in July at a valuation of $1.5 billion at the time.
Arbe Robotics
Arbe Robotics, the real-time 4D imaging radar chipset provider for ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems), entered into an agreement last month to merge with Industrial Tech Acquisitions and to list on the Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol ARBE. The deal assigns Arbe an approximate value of $722 million.
Founded in 2015 by Kobi Marenko, Noam Arkind and Oz Fixman, Arbe Robotics’ 4D imaging technology provides Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), level 4, and 5 fully autonomous cars with high-resolution imaging radar that enables them to “see” the environment in any weather and lighting condition; in essence the future car’s “eyes and brain.”
Innoviz
Innoviz Technologies, the Israeli provider of solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software, announced this month that it completed its merger with Texas-based special purpose acquisition company Collective Growth Corporation and will begin trading under the ticker symbols INVZ and INVZW at a valuation of $1.4 billion.
An Innoviz Technologies vehicle. Courtesy
Founded in 2016 by Omer Keilaf, Oren Rosenzweig, Oren Buskila, and Amit Steinberg, Innoviz has become a leading provider of LiDAR sensing solutions for mass commercialization of autonomous vehicles, developing technology that generates a precise and constantly updating 3D map of a car’s surroundings. Innoviz’s partners and clients include BMW Group, Magna International, HARMAN, Aptiv and HiRain.
Cellebrite
Israeli digital intelligence firm Cellebrite announced last week that it entered into a definitive agreement with San Francisco-based SPAC TWC Tech Holdings II Corp to go public on the Nasdaq at a valuation of approximately $2.4 billion post-merger. The company will trade under the new ticker symbol CLBT.
Founded in 1999, Cellebrite offers digital intelligence and forensics solutions for law enforcement agencies, government authorities, and enterprises, to help accelerate investigations. Cellebrite says its solutions have been purchased by 6,700 public safety agencies and private sector enterprises in over 140 countries, playing a part in millions of investigations globally.
Valens
Israeli chipmaker Valens is reportedly in talks to go public via SPAC merger with PTK Acquisition Corp in a deal that is set to value the combined company at between $1 billion and $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported this weekend.
The company develops chips that address the challenges of the connected car, including the increasing amount of bandwidth and wiring necessary to cater to infotainment and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems needs.
Valens was founded in 2006 by Dror Jerushalmi, Massad Eyal, Eyran Lida, Gaby Gur Cohen, Nadav Banet, and Alon Benzaray. It’s based in Hod Hasharon.
NOTE: On April 20, 2021, we updated this article to include Axonius among companies that reached unicorn status in 2021. We also updated the list of companies pursuing SPACs in 2021 to include TalkSpace.
Cash flow for Israeli startups is plentiful at present and the local innovation scene is basking in the limelight, according to the recently released Startup Snapshot report based on data from over 200 local startups. COVID-19 has served up challenges but homegrown companies continue to prove their aptitude in pivoting and innovating and raised a record $5.37 billion in capital in the first three months of 2021.
“So much new money has flown into the Israeli ecosystem in the past two years, there are so many new investment funds and new investors who have money to deploy,” Tzahi Weisfeld, Vice President and GM of Intel Ignite, one of the authors of the report, tells NoCamels.
Startup Snapshot, a data sharing platform for the Israeli startup ecosystem, was compiled by Y. Benjamin Strategic Marketing in partnership with LeumiTech, Intel Ignite and Fiverr.
“Funds are flowing,” Nimrod Vromen, Partner Yigal Arnon & Co and CEO of Consiglieri, says in a press release. “In 2021, investors are seeking more active involvement in overseeing expenses and ongoing business activities, trying to protect themselves in today’s uncertain market environment.”
Intel Ignite General Manager Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld. Courtesy
“Everything is on steroids. Governments are going to invest a lot of money as they understand that they haven’t moved fast enough in the past few years. So there’s lots of money that’s going to be directed at technology,” says Weisfeld.
Tech unicorns, record funding rounds, and high valuations are being reported almost daily in the Israeli tech ecosystem.
“The speed of closing a round has almost been cut in half compared to pre-COVID, with 29 percent of the companies closing a round in under two months,” says Weisfeld.
“It is interesting to witness the impact of COVID-19 on early stage startups. If at the beginning of the pandemic these startups were at a disadvantage in terms of fundraising, the excess of capital in the market has led to a high level of investments in early rounds. At the same time, in light of the uncertain market environment, we see investors seeking more protection and thus requesting more restrictions when it comes to closing deals. For this reason, I believe startups will be seeking to diversify their funding types, with credit products resuming to appear more significantly in their portfolios,” said Nurit Pirani, Head of LeumiTech’s Business Center.
Moreover, an OECD analysis of the global impact of COVID-19 on SMEs and entrepreneurs mentions Israel as one country now enjoying a booming startup funding arena.
An illustrative photo of people working. Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
“We’re super quick when it comes to solving a problem,” says Weisfeld about the local innovator community.
The Startup Snapshot report shows how Israeli startups are growing with today’s COVID-19-shaken up market, how they are strengthening their teams, increasing their funds, and expanding to new locations abroad.
The report cites that the competitiveness of the local hiring market in filling thousands of vacant positions is forcing some 13 percent of startups to look abroad to hire employees.
COVID-19 effects are also changing the way business is done. The report shows that in order to succeed in the tech sector, companies must now navigate a new hybrid model of remote work, working from home and working at an office.
There are pluses and minuses in this new mixed situation. With work-from-home and remote work now part of the business lexicon, founders are less limited in terms of where their employees are based. The report shows that 21 percent of companies reported that location of their first employee abroad is no longer important.
And while face-to-face sales pitches are preferrable, being able to listen to a recorded video call has its benefits, says Weisfeld.
“The early part of sales is critical for the founders to understand what the customers expect and what they want. We work with startups and founders to go back and listen more than they would ever be able to get in real sales during face-to-face engagement. There is now an ability to go back to the recording and say, ‘let’s listen closely to what they just said.’ So, there can be a lot of learning in these recorded calls, which didn’t happen before. So that’s a plus,” he says.
On the other hand, remote communication is negatively affecting business relationships and sales.
“The ability to get people together and brainstorm ideas is important and right now we’re challenged [to do this]. A hybrid future will have to supply some solutions for this need because it is critical,” Weisfeld tells NoCamels. “The inability to spontaneously set up meetings is hurting entrepreneurs.”
“41 percent of startups that raised funding in the past nine months did so without meeting their investors face-to-face. With digital meetings replacing in-person interactions, early-stage startups are struggling to create credibility with investors that they have never met in person. Startups that manage to do this successfully will be able to tap into vast international funding and business opportunities,” Yael Benjamin, Founder of Y. Benjamin Strategic Marketing, says in a statement.
And while the near future looks rosy overall, the risk of companies growing too fast seems certain.
“Some big failures are bound to happen,” says Weisfeld, a seasoned executive and a serial entrepreneur, with three decades of experience in tech consumer and enterprise markets. “The SPAC phenomenon, these super, super large funding rounds, some of them are going to end painfully. But I think generally, the bigger flow of funding is going to create more opportunities … to fund more tech experiments and more startups. The biggest challenge stays that we don’t have enough talent.”
Rising from failure is an oft-repeated factor of innovation in general, and local tech specifically. “It’s an amazing time to be in this industry,” Weisfeld sums up
Israel’s innovation technology sector broke another capital funding record this week and has now topped $10.5 billion since the start of the year – the same amount raised in all of 2020, according to Start-Up Nation Finder. This is the second major report to highlight 2021’s sizzling cash flow for blue-and-white startups in recent weeks.
“The market is clearly ‘red hot’ with a lot of money flowing into early and late-stage companies, some of which with valuations that don’t always make sense. Companies that raise now should manage their cash in a clever way, balancing between the desire to ‘push forward’ and gain a competitive edge while keeping some for a rainy day,” Lior Handelsman, General Partner at Grove Ventures, tells NoCamels.
Funding seems to be pouring into local startups especially in cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise sectors, with companies in these spaces hauling in $6.2 billion or 60 percent of all investments.
Lior Handelsman, General Partner at Grove Ventures. Photo by David Grub, courtesy of Grove Ventures
The world demand for solutions in these fields — cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise– are high in part due to the massive forward push of digitization in the wake of COVID-19.
“Part of that accelerated growth of course has to do with COVID-19, and continued low interest rates in the world, which is creating demand to invest in the tech sector,” Dekel Persi, co-founder and managing partner at TPY Capital, said in a statement.
According to the new report, Israel recorded an increase of 137 percent in funding growth for the first five months of 2021 compared to the first five months of 2020.
Most of the funding comes from foreign investors, according to the report. Investment performance worldwide stands at 89 percent, Europe has recorded an increase of 123 percent for the same period, the US has seen an increase of 91 percent and Asia has seen an increase of 69 percent, according to PitchBook data.
“The record funding in 2021 indicates that the growth in 2020 was not a short-term COVID-related boost but reflects top investors’ increasing trust in the Israeli innovation ecosystem,” Uri Gabai, the incoming CEO of Start-Up Nation Central’s new Research and Policy Institute said in a press statement.
“This past year, we’ve seen an explosion in terms of fundraising, both in terms of amounts and in terms of worth. Some might say that this is a bubble, but on the other hand, I think that the process that has taken place in the world this past year, which was accelerated by COVID-19, is mainly one of realizing that technology is everywhere and critical to every industry,” said Nimrod Cohen, founding partner at TAU Ventures, an early-stage focused venture capital fund affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
From left: Nimrod Cohen, TAU Ventures, Lee Moser, AnD Ventures, and Dekel Persi, TPY Ventures. Courtesy
And mega funding rounds are breaking new ground on the daily.
Tel Aviv-based workplace management software maker Monday.com was all over business news sites Thursday (June 10) with reports that it had raised $574 million in its US initial public offering.
Just one day earlier, Verbit, a US-Israeli AI-powered transcription and captioning platform, announced it had raised a $157 million Series D funding round, to position the company as the latest tech unicorn with a valuation of over $1 billion.
In fact, 2021 has already set a record for the number of mega-rounds of investments of over $100 million. This record is likely to be shattered by the year’s end.
According to Start-Up Nation Finder, Israeli companies have completed 30 mega-rounds – representing 53 percent of all capital raised this year. Last year, local startups completed 21 mega-rounds.
Start-up Nation Finder: Total funding by Israeli tech companies 2017-2021. Graph by Start-Up Nation Central
“The past year has accelerated many processes in the world of high-tech investments and in the Israeli high-tech sector in particular,” said Lee Moser, managing partner at AnD Ventures
“The speed of closing a round has almost been cut in half compared to pre-COVID, with 29 percent of the companies closing a round in under two months,” Tzahi Weisfeld, Vice President and GM of Intel Ignite, told NoCamels last month.
According to the Start-Up Nation Finder report, median funding rounds more than doubled year-over-year from $6.8 million in 2020 to $14 million by June 8, in 2021.
Growth rounds (round B or higher) saw the median round size jump from $26 million in 2020 to $46 million in 2021. And early-stage companies saw median funding rise from $4 million to $8 million, according to report data.
The report also showed that most of the capital (64 percent) was invested in rounds C or later.
“The significant increase in median deal size reflects a maturing ecosystem that is able to maintain its competitive edge as a global hub of technological innovation and offering problem-solving solutions,” says Gabai. “We hope a new budget by the expected incoming government will focus on growth-oriented policies such as enhancing the innovation ecosystem’s economic impact and tackling the chronic shortage in tech-oriented human capital.”
Moser also has a word of caution. “This flood of money causes some startups to grow too fast and skip important steps in building a stable company. Entrepreneurs find themselves with double the amount they wanted to raise, with an investor who is not necessarily strategically suitable for them.”
“Excess money in the markets must not cause entrepreneurs to lose focus on building a stable company, starting with the very first initial steps that are critical to the continued growth and connection of investors who are right for them,” Moser added.
Viva Sarah Press is a journalist and speaker. She writes and talks about the creativity and innovation taking place in Israel and beyond. www.vivaspress.com
Israel’s tech ecosystem has ranked third globally and Tel Aviv came in eighth among cities in the new Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2021 published this month by StartupBlink, an Israeli-founded startup ecosystem research center.
The index is compiled from a variety of data sources processed by an algorithm and is integrated with the interactive and crowdsourced StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Map. Data from StartupBlink’s global data partners, such as Crunchbase, Semrush, and Meetup, are also incorporated to supplement the analyses.
The report provides two sets of rankings: the first is for countries, and the second for individual ecosystems within cities. Each location has a total score, which is a sum of three scores measuring Quantity, Quality, and Business Environment. The scores have comparative importance, providing unique insights into the differences between different ecosystems in absolute terms.
Building upon past years’ algorithms, this year’s report gave more weight to B2B startups, added more parameters related to technological services in the datasets, and increased data gathering of the R&D centers of international corporations.
Country Ranking
The US maintained its lead in the country ranking, demonstrating a prominent innovation scene across 267 US cities. The UK came second, with a significantly narrowed lead over third-ranked Israel compared to last year. This dramatic change could be attributed to the relative Quality score of the startup ecosystems, according to the report.
Israel ranks second globally in Hardware and IoT, Health Technology, and the Software and Data industries, and it ranks in the world’s top 5 in Energy and Environment Technology, Marketing and Sales Technology, and Social and Leisure Technology.
An aerial view of Tel Aviv from aboard an outgoing flight. Photo by NoCamels staff
In the Middle East and Africa region, Israel remains the main player by a significant margin. Three of the top four ranked cities in the region are in Israel, with Tel Aviv first, Jerusalem second, and Haifa taking third.
The United Arab Emirates ranked second in the region, followed by South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria closing out the top five.
The success of Israel’s ecosystem could also be partly attributed to the leadership of the Israeli public sector. The Israel Innovation Authority, an independent agency established to provide funding platforms to promote innovation development, has offered programs to support local entrepreneurs.
Israel is also a major draw for multinationals and global corporations, with many operating R&D centers, innovation labs or local offices in the country to tap into the local talent.
City Ranking
The top two city startup ecosystems remain the same as last year, with San Francisco taking the lead followed by New York. Beijing comes third with Los Angeles ranking fourth, London ranking fifth, Boston sixth, and Shanghai seventh, forming the “Big 7.”
The score gaps of cities ranked lower than the “Big 7” appear to be much smaller, indicating that situations are fluid and dynamic.
The city of Tel Aviv is ranked eighth globally and first in Israel, which has demonstrated a decrease of one spot since last year. Jerusalem, with a global rank of 54, has increased by a single spot and is the second-highest ranked city in Israel. Haifa has maintained its upward trend, increasing 24 spots to 119th globally and third nationally.
The report made a special note of the northern Israeli city of Yokneam, which ranked 16th nationally (and moved up 12 spots to 284th globally) as “a particularly inspiring case study of a small town relatively far from other cities in Israel that has received tax benefits and used them in a cost-efficient way to create a strong hub that produced a unicorn in its vibrant tech park.” This is in reference to the acquisition of Mellanox by Nvidia for $7 billion in 2020.
In Jerusalem, content creation app developer Lightricks, and BrainQ, a developer of AI-powered technology to treat neuro disorders, were mentioned as notable startups.
Future Prospects
Looking forward, the report suggests Israel shore up Tel Aviv’s position as a global hub facing growing competition from Asia, Europe, and the US. In the meantime, it should strengthen development in Jerusalem and other cities. Israeli’s regulatory reforms would also bring its Business score to an increase.
The report also notes the maturing cybersecurity industry as a source of substantial potential for Israel. The Israeli cybersecurity sector brought in $1.5 billion in funding in 2021 across 17 deals, in the first quarter of the year.
“Many countries try to copy the Israeli model of innovation, but this ecosystem is hard to replicate. It relies on entrepreneurs who are risk-takers by nature, and a geopolitical situation which incentivizes innovation as a critical need for survival,” the report noted.
Israeli companies and startups raised an all-time record of $11.9 billion in the first half of 2021, more than the total amount of investments in 2020 which stands at $10.3 billion, according to a new report published Wednesday by the IVC Research Center and the law firm Meitar.
In the first quarter of 2021 (Q1 2021), Israeli companies attracted over $5.38 billion in investments, according to the report, and the second quarter (Q2 2021) saw an upsurge to more than $6.5 billion over a total of 230 deals, compared to 172 in the previous quarter.
These investments included 38 deals of over $100 million each, accounting for 50 percent of the total capital raised in H1 2021, according to the Israeli IVC-Meitar Tech Review. These mega-rounds include Trax, the computer vision firm transforming retail which secured $640 million in April; US-Israeli auto finance startup Lendbuzz, which raised $300 million in debt financing with Goldman Sachs; Israeli-founded global fintech-as-a-service provider Rapyd, also with a $300 million investment; and Israeli-founded insurtech company Next Insurance with a $250 million investment that doubled its valuation to $4 billion in just six months.
Investment agreements of $50 million were seen in 79 deals in H1 2021, according to the report. This is compared to 47 such deals in all of 2020, and 39 in 2019.
Investments in early rounds (Seed and A round) saw an increase in 2021 both in terms of the number of transactions and in dollar volume and such deals in Q2 2021 reached 126 transactions with $1.04 billion raised. Investments in more advanced rounds (B rounds and above) also continued to increase: $5.48 billion in Q2 2021, compared to $4.66 billion Q1 2021, an 18 percent increase.
A majority of capital in H1 2021 flowed to companies in the fintech sector and the cybersecurity industry with 57 transactions in fintech for approximately $3 billion, compared to 26 deals in the corresponding period last year, and $2.9 billion in capital for cybersecurity companies. Investments for food tech startups and companies were also on the rise with over $300 million in capital over 27 deals. IoT companies raised over $1 billion in Q1 and Q2 2021.
An overwhelming majority of the investments were backed by VCs – a record $10.69 billion of the $11.9 billion total, surpassing 2020’s annual figure of $9.1 billion. Foreign investors also continued to be more involved than Israeli investors, though the latter took a much more active approach in H1 2021, making more investments than the quarterly average.
Foreign investors put in over $4.5 billion in capital in H1 2021 while Israeli investors invested over $1.6 billion, according to the report.
“According to the findings observed during the first half of 2021, it seems that the Israeli high-tech industry continues to be a strategic target for foreign venture capital investors, with technology companies benefiting from generous investments at every stage, with serious investors participating in earlier stages, which is reflected in greater fundraising volumes, and leads to increased chances of survival,” said Senior IVC Analyst Mariana Shapira in a statement.
SPACs and IPOs – Israeli companies
Israeli high-tech activity in the US, Israel and other public capital markets increased significantly in H1 2021, according to the report. This was reflected in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs), SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company) transactions, and follow-on offerings over the past six months.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) attracted the largest number of IPOs — 35 — during 2021 which accounted for approximately 12 percent of the total amount raised through the 48 IPOs in total during the first half of this year. Twelve were in US capital markets and one was in London.
“Exceptionally high activity in IPO deal-making defined this half-year, with more than double the number of offerings from 2020. While this level of capital inflow by exits has been seen before, as in 2019, its uniqueness this time is that there are no outlier M&A deals, like Mellanox in 2019 or Mobileye in 2017,” reads the report.
“Since 2013-2014, we have not seen such a large number of Israeli high-tech companies go public in such a short period of time,” said Mike Rimon, a partner at Meitar, in a statement.
Indeed, nearly two dozen Israeli companies went public on capital markets or via SPAC mergers so far this year, including Monday.com’s Nasdaq IPO in June at a post-money valuation of $6.8 billion, SimilarWeb’s New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) IPO in May, and WalkMe’s IPO on the Nasdaq, also in June. The SPAC boom included Ironsource’s merger deal with Thoma Bravo Advantage at a valuation of approximately $11.1 billion, Israeli-founded online payments startup Payoneer’s $3.3 billion SPAC merger, and Israeli content recommendation firm Taboola’s SPAC merger with ION Acquisition Corp and trade on the Nasdaq at a valuation of $2.6 billion.
“These companies, especially those that went public in the US, completed their IPO at very high valuations, and most raised their valuation following the IPO,” added Rimon. We anticipate this trend to continue in the near future, albeit possibly more moderately than in the first half of 2021.”
Itay Frishman, also a partner at Meitar said: “The Startup Nation wants to be a scale-up nation. Companies in Israel try to [keep up with] their counterparts in Silicon Valley. All those unicorn companies, including those that went public, will have to prove they deserve their high valuation.”
“Until recently most Israeli companies were sold or evaluated based on dreams and promises. Today, the Israeli high-tech market is ready for the next phase. The final outcome will be tested in the coming years. The future will determine if what we see is the real thing,” said Frishman.
M&As in H1 2021
The Israeli high-tech M&A deals in the first half of 2021 amounted to about $4 billion, a rate that was similar to 2020, which also saw a decline, said the report.
The three big acquisitions in 2021 so far were MyHeritage’s acquisition by Francisco Partners for $600 million; Prospera’s acquisition by Valmont for $300 million, and VDOO’s acquisition by JFrog, also for $300 million.
The low number and total value of M&As in the first half of 2021 is an expected result of the exits activity for the Israeli tech sector, said Shira Azran, a partner at Meitar.
“First, companies are able to raise significant capital at high valuations and prefer this over a sale. This is an outcome of the increase in the share of US growth and private equity funds in tech investments in Israel, deploying significant capital amounts into companies. Second, we see the patience and trust of investors in the ability of companies to reach high valuations and realize their investment in the capital markets and not necessarily through M&As,” she explained.
A leading Taiwanese organization selected 21 Israeli tech companies for three accelerator programs aimed at easing their entry into Taiwan and other East Asian markets.
Innovation to Industry (i2i), a Taipei-based innovation and tech company that grew out of government-run incubators in Taiwan, launched the $70 million program, IP² LaunchPad, last year to foster tech collaborations between Israeli companies and Taiwanese industry. The vision was to provide Israeli startups with exposure to Taiwan, a center to launch their activities, validate their technologies and expand into East Asian markets with strong strategic partners.
The first cohort was comprised of 25 early-stage Israeli startups in health tech, cybersecurity, and AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things).
Last week, i2i announced a new cohort of 10 Israeli companies in advanced stages, following a first round of funding and with initial sales, focused on healthcare digitization, renewable energy, AI, IoT, 5G, and cybersecurity. The organization also launched two additional programs: the IP² Plus program — a continuation program for veterans of the first round and for veteran Israeli companies that would like to enter new markets, and the IP² Sustainability program which runs in cooperation with Israeli NGO Start-Up Nation Central and generates progress in the sustainability area.
Representatives of the Israeli companies chosen to participate in the IP2 program by i2i and representatives of the program’s partners in Israel. Photo: Nati Levi
Of the total of 21 selected startups participating in the three programs, six have signed distribution agreements or clinical trial deals including Onvego, the developer of a speech solutions platform which signed with Syscom, one of Taiwan’s key system integration player; InCyber, a cybersecurity startup that specializes in insider threats, and that signed a deal with Lydsec, a leading security authentication solution provider; and Cellwize, a mobile network automation provider that is working with telecom company eFormula Technology.
In addition, Israeli medtech startup OutSense Diagnostics, the developer of an IoT sensor for wellness monitoring and early detection of illness signed a clinical trial agreement with Show Chwan, a major Taiwanese health system; Israeli industry 4.0 company QualityLine inked an agreement with Might Electronics; and Fairtility, which provides AI solutions to boost the efficiency of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), signed an agreement with Nuwa Healthcare, a pharmaceutical and medical group for reproductive medicine and infertility care in Asia, according to a press announcement.
The process of selecting the start began about six months through the Israeli consulting firm Healthier Globe headed by Rani Shifron. The firm, which runs the IP² program locally, specializes in helping startups and organizations set up operations in developing global markets.
i2i chairman Dr. Gary Gong initiated the program following his visits to Israel in recent years, his familiarity with the Israeli innovation industry, and the vision for strategic cooperation, the firm indicated last year. At the time, Dr. Gong said he believes “integrating the Israeli innovation industry with the hardware and healthcare industry in Taiwan will fuel the industry innovation in Taiwan.”
An event announcing the 21 companies selected to participate in three Soft-Landing programs in Taiwan, which took place on July 27, 2021 and was broadcast online simultaneously in Israel and Taiwan. Photo: i2i
The three programs — IP² LaunchPad, IP² Plus, and IP² Sustainability — will operate at the Startup Terrace innovation center, in Taipei, a $2.5 billion complex that provides co-working spaces, an exhibition center, offices, and housing, and is supported by the SME Administration, Ministry of Economy (MOEA) in Taiwan. The complex is home to 106 entrepreneurs from over a dozen countries
As part of the operation, the i2i team in Taiwan serves as the local arm of the Israeli companies and helps push forward their exposure in Taiwan. An advisory board comprised of a group of experts and key industry leaders also provides the Israeli teams with access to governmental, business, and investment offices appropriate to the Israeli companies’ operational needs.
“We are maintaining the momentum of the program’s success from last year, and we see how the Israeli and Taiwanese ecosystems complement each other to produce technological and business success stories,”said Ho Chin-Tsang, director-general of the SME Administration (SMEA), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taiwan.
Stanley Tzu-An TSENG, the director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv said Taiwan and Israel have been working closely for many years, pointing to agreements in agriculture, environmental protection, energy, water technologies, IT, and communications.
Taipei, Taiwan via Pixabay
“Israel’s innovativeness is known all over the world, and I am happy at the expansion of our existing cooperative efforts and at the creation of cooperative efforts between Israel and Taiwan in new areas through the IP² LaunchPad program, for the second year in a row now and with new programs included that have been set up in cooperation,” he said.
Omer Caspi, the representative of Israel Economic & Trade Mission in Taipei said he believed that the IP² launchpad program “not only reflects the mutual interest of innovation and technology collaboration between Taiwan and Israel, but also a great potential for a long-term relationship and partnership between people on both sides.”
An online event announcing the selected companies and the signed agreements was held on Thursday in Tel Aviv and Taipei.
A recent report placed Taiwan as Asia’s top-performing economy in 2020, amid strong demand for the island’s tech exports, especially semiconductors. According to estimates by the Taiwanese government, the economy grew 2.98 percent in 2020, surpassing China’s 2.3 percent growth that year.
Tel Aviv slipped to seventh place in the Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER) for 2021. The report is an annual one on global startup ecosystems and subsector trends published since 2012. Last year, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem ranked together in sixth place in the report. In 2019, Tel Aviv also ranked in sixth place.
This year’s report, like last year’s, reflects the impact of COVID-19 on the global startup economy, but ecosystems have continued to thrive despite new varients in the ongoing pandemic. Ninety-one ecosystems created unicorns in 2020 and although US companies dominated, China, Canada, India, Germany, Israel, the UK, and France produced between 7 and 10 unicorns in the first half of 2021, according to Crunchbase, the report says.
The global survey conducted by Startup Genome maps the global startup industry in 140 cities worldwide. Last year, the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem ecosystem tied with the city of Los Angeles, while this year Los Angeles took 6th place and Tel Aviv moved down to 7th.
Meanwhile, the top five global startup ecosystem “maintained their reign at the top” with California’s Silicon Valley ranking first, followed by New York City and London tieing for second place. Beijing and Boston followed in 4th and 5th place. The top 10 list concluded with Shanghai, Tokyo, and Seattle.
The report once again ranked the top 30 global start-up ecosystems plus runner-ups, as well as 100 emerging ecosystems.
Though it dropped to 7th place, Tel Aviv continued strong among the top 30 global startup ecosystems, placing in the top tier among success factors such as performance, funding, experience, connectedness, and market reach.
Tel Aviv earned high marks in funding and market reach as it continues its impressive year, breaking funding records in the first three months of the year alone, more than any country in Europe.
Tel Aviv
The report calls Tel Aviv “one of the leading cities in the world for innovation and technology.” In a more in-depth look at the “beating heart of the Startup Nation,” Tel Aviv is said to boast one startup for every 154 residents, the world’s highest ratio. The high-tech capital of Israel is home to “creative and experienced talent, a mix of local and international investors, and 2,750 startups.”
The city also hosts 115 foreign R&D centers and a “vast range” of multinational companies using the city as a base for innovation. Giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Ford, Nike, and many more have offices in Tel Aviv and benefit from the country’s high expenditure on R&D, the second-highest rate of R&D spend per capita on the world.
An aerial view of Tel Aviv and the municipality building. Photo: Courtesy of Barak Brinker/Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality
Tel Aviv has recently experienced a recent surge in VC money, only improving the conditions for growing companies and the ecosystem saw a 25 percent increase in capital raised in 2020 with over $6.8 billion flowing into startups last year. This doubled the number of unicorns in Tel Aviv. It is now home to more than 20 private companies worth more than $1 billion, according to the report.
“Tel Aviv has shown tremendous growth and maturity with many startups evolving into scaleups, unicorns, and public companies, said Yifat Oron, senior managing director, and head of the Tel Aviv Office at Blackstone, a US alternative investment management company.
AI, big data, and cybersecurity
Te Aviv took the number one spot among the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Top Performers identified within a specific region, although the big news was that three UAE ecosystems had ranked in the Top 10. AI and big data is the leading subsector in MENA with $3 billion invested in early-stage rounds and $8 billion in exit value between January 2018 and June 2020, the report said.
Tel Aviv is 7th in the world by number of AI startups, the report says, with 714 companies and a total of $3 billion invested in 2020. According to the report, a new AI plan calls for $1.6 billion to further grow the subsector over the next five years. It has already unlocked initial funding of $168.2 million
The report highlighted ZenCity, an AI solution for governments, which raised $30 million in June 2021 and Israeli digital adoption platform WalkMe, which raised $286.75 million in an initial public offering (IPO.)
Person on Laptop. Courtesy of Pixabay
The Startup Genome Report said 2020 was a record-breaking year for Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity companies, which raised $2.9 billion in total. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, the subsector raised $1.5 billion across 17 deals. The report highlighted Israeli enterprise networking and security firm Cato Networks, which raised a total of $332 million, cloud networks infrastructure company Wiz, which raised a total of $350 million and cloud-native security company Aqua Security, which raised a total of $265 million.
The Israeli high-tech industry has broken funding records again in 2021, with local companies raising $17.78 billion in 575 deals since the beginning of the year, according to a report published last week by the IVC Research Center and law firm Meitar.
The funding raised is an increase of 71 percent from the $10.3 billion raised in 2020. The report showed the amount was due in part to 53 deals of over $100 million, accounting for $9 billion or a 51 percent share of the total sum for the first three quarters of the year.
In the third quarter alone, Israeli startups saw 177 investment deals totaling $5.89 billion, continuing the uptrend from the first quarter this year first quarter of the year, where Israeli companies attracted over $5.38 billion in investments. The second quarter saw an upsurge to more than $6.5 billion over a total of 230 deals.
Early round investment (seed + A round) deals increased in the first three quarters of 2021, while capital investment volume also continued to climb, the report said. The overall amounts in the first three quarters of 2021 already surpass the 2020 amounts for both seed and A round deals. There were 293 seed and A round deals in the first nine months of 2021 alone, which raised a total of $2.5 billion. In comparison, early stage startups raised $1.86 billion in 343 deals in all of 2020.
Growth rounds raised $15.3 billion in 282 deals.
Israeli high-tech exits soared to $18.92 billion in the first nine months of 2021, up 92 percent from annual 2020 results. IPOs skyrocketed in the first three quarters with 65 deals that amounted to $9.78 billion.
“While we see a certain slowdown of IPOs of Israeli tech companies, we expect to continue to see significant equity financing activities as well as growth in M&A transactions due to an increasing number of companies that have raised significant amounts, whether through public markets (including through mergers with SPACs) or through private equity rounds. In addition, we have recently been witnessing acquisitions of Israeli companies by other Israeli companies, which did not constitute a significant exit channel a few years ago; we expect this trend to become more common in the near future,” said Adv. Mike Rimon, a partner in Meitar Law Offices.
Amounts raised by cybersecurity, fintech, food tech and IoT companies peaked in the first quarter of 2021, with the number of deals in these verticals declining in the third quarter. With cybersecurity companies bringing in $1.5 billion, and fintech firms $1 billion, these companies accounted for 50 percent of the total volume for the quarter.
“We see the continued effect of Covid-19 on our lives. The technology sector accelerated with the world digitizing and transitioning to cloud in all areas, and along with the the increased demand for cyber solutions. In addition to continued growth of mature companies, we see two main trends – first, the increase in early stage and seed rounds, and second is the increased participation of US investors, in all stages of investments in Israeli companies. We expect these trends to continue for the remainder of this year and next year,” said Adv. Shira Azran, a partner in Meitar Law Offices.
Ten Israeli startups have been selected to join the 5th cohort of Google’s Startup Growth Lab, the tech giant announced on Monday.
The promising startups will attend workshops and meet with Google and industry experts for the next four months to help them scale their companies.
The Startup Growth Lab program was first launched by Google Israel In 2018 and now runs in 14 countries. It is a program for leaders from Israeli B2C & B2SMB startups, aiming to accelerate their business. Previous startups in the lab include Healthy.io and Day Two.
Startup Growth Lab graduates have raised $2 billion, hired more than 4,000 employees, and include four startups that have become unicorns and one that has become a public company, according to Google.
The 10 startups that were accepted to the program are:
Coralogix – The Tel Aviv -based company is a streaming data platform that produces real-time insights and trend analysis for logs, metrics, and security.
Compete – The Ramat Gan-based company offers an easy-to-use SaaS solution that provides insights into complete compensation package data so the company can get a clear view of their employee compensation and benefits compared to the market.
Juno Journey – Juno Journey is a next-generation skill-optimization platform that utilizes advanced AI to optimize each employee’s personal development process.
Circles – This emotional support platform matches people who are going through similar life challenges in small, safe, and private groups with professional facilitators.
LingoPie – The Tel Aviv-based firm has developed a learning app that uses real TV shows and movies to help customers learn a new language.
Cyrus – Founded by cybersecurity experts Oren Arar, Jonathan Livneh, and Shahak Shalev, Cyrus is the new personal cybersecurity and identity protection service fighting cybercrime.
Zenner -This Tel Aviv-based company is building a digital, innovative, and improved travel experience into a travel insurance, intelligence, and assistance platform.
Rewire – Rewire is a licensed remittance company that helps users save on fees and rates when sending money from Israel to one of more than 20 countries. The service, which is accessible from any device connected to the internet.
CalmiGo – CalmiGo was founded to offer scientifically proven, technology-based, drug-free products for anxiety, stress, pain, ADHD, and other health-related conditions.
Antidote Health – Antidote Health has developed a telehealth platform using AI and machine learning to provide premium healthcare for 40 million Americans who currently don’t have insurance.
This article is a guest post on NoCamels and has been contributed by a third party. NoCamels assumes no responsibility for the content, including facts, visuals, and opinions presented by the author(s).
Syvanne Aloni works as a Marketing and Communications consultant in Israel and the UK, with clients spanning a variety of industries and sizes. She has a particular passion for unlocking international opportunities for Israeli-based businesses and often acts as a cultural bridge for startups looking to do business with the Anglo world. Syvanne’s thought pieces on Israeli tech, law, and cyber have been published in Globes, CTech, The Times of Israel, and the Jerusalem Post.
In a world that continues to battle COVID-19,2021 became a year of acclimatization as billions around the world learned to accept the new normal. Many businesses continued to operate on a largely remote basis and technology uptake has continued to flourish.
Yet, many in the global community have struggled to adapt their cybersecurity hygiene accordingly, enabling, in turn, malicious actors to access vital data or to disrupt crucial networks. The result has been a sharp uptick in attacks, with ransomware and supply chain attacks sparking the greatest concern in the cyber community. The cyber insurance sector – a field that covers a company’s liability for a data breach or cyber attack – has faced an unprecedented volume of claims as a result, with many establishing record costs stemming from such attacks. Market conditions have hardened severely, supply is struggling to meet demand and yet the cyber risk continues to grow.
With a surge in the frequency and severity of cyber attacks worldwide in this past year, cybersecurity protection has become one of the biggest growth markets in the insurance industry.
And with the cyber industry starting the new year in such tumult, we are shining the spotlight on the “hottest” Israeli companies leading the way. These innovative minds have taken a different approach to minimizing cyber risk, focusing on cyber insurance as a risk transfer mechanism and answering its pain points with disruptive solutions.
As we enter what promises to be another transformative year for the cyber insurance product, here are a few cyber insurance visionaries who lead the sector around the globe from their Israeli offices:
Founders: Rotem Iram and Roman Itskovich (previously also: Etai Hochman, and Tilli Kalisky-Bannett)
One of the leading cyber insurance providers, Israeli-founded insurtech firm At-Bay is, admittedly, now less of a startup and more of a unicorn, following its recent Series D funding round at a $1.35 billion valuation. No genuine review of the major Israeli game-changers in the global cyber insurance market would be complete without it. At-Bay has innovated the insurance sector with an incisive product that combines both insurance coverage and cybersecurity technology. At-Bay helps its clients to address cyber risk head on and to actively reduce the growing threats of 2022.
At-Bay Executive Leadership Team from left to right: Ayelet Kutner, Tara Bodden, Rotem Iram, Brett Sadoff, Roman Itskovich, Joseph Schiro. Courtesy.
The company has particularly useful offerings for SMEs (small-and-medium-sized enterprises,) which allow them to complete online quotes and benefit from remote risk assessment solutions whilst constantly monitoring these risks throughout the year. By contrast, traditional cyber insurers review their policy and potential risks only once per year upon policy renewal. This is why At-Bay has outperformed the cyber insurance market considerably on risk mitigation, evidenced through their figures. At-Bay customers are seven times less likely to need to make a claim following a cyber incident.
For third-party cyber risk modeling made simple, Cyberwrite’s predictive analytics algorithms are the answer. Cyberwrite enables insurance professionals with limited technical knowledge to calculate the cyber risk of SMBs and to estimate the economic impact of a cyber attack on their business. They apply non-invasive technology to profile an organization’s inherent and residual risk, benchmark this against industry peers and analyze their potential financial damage exposure to vendors. Cyberwrite’s technology is particularly useful for those concerned about the potential harm caused by supply chain attacks (a growing trend that is set to continue into 2022) and for those who are keen to minimize business interruption losses due to third-party crashes.
This is the go-to education provider for all things cyber insurance. The Cyber Insurance Academy caters to all insurance professionals wishing to take the plunge into the world of cyber. It offers an online, rigorous academic program that is designed to enable brokers, underwriters, claims professionals, and risk managers to engage more confidently with their clients and maintain a healthy risk appetite. This small but mighty startup has attracted a significant number of individuals and household brands to their training program – proving that Israel’s world-leading cyber expertise has continued to branch into other sectors around the globe.
Asaf Armoni and Guy Simkin, founders of the Cyber Insurance Academy. Courtesy
The Certified Cyber Insurance Specialist (CCIS) Course course is the most comprehensive course in the market and the only cyber insurance learning program to be accredited by the prestigious Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). It also provides opportunities for its alumni to continue their education, network with other industry professionals and keep their finger on the pulse of this fast-paced industry. As the cyber insurance industry continues to expand and cyber risks evolve, the Academy’s masterclasses will become one of the most surefire ways for insurers to future-proof their business.
This Israeli startup is the underwriter’s new best friend. Kovrr’s cyber risk modeling platform delivers global (re)insurers and enterprises transparent data-driven insights into their cyber risk exposures. Aimed at risk professionals, underwriters, and CISOs, their AI-powered risk models can quantify and manage risk and maximum probable loss of portfolios well in advance and can, in turn, inform focused mitigation. Kovrr’s product provides the comprehensive answer to systemic risk which many other providers struggle to compete with.
Founders: Yonatan Hatzor, Neta Rozy, Ori Cohen, and Tamir Carmel
This is the hassle-free insurer for downtime crashes. Tel Aviv-based firm Parametrix offers an insurance product that covers lost time from third party information technology services. It monitors cloud-based, third party products, their availability, and performance without needing to install new hardware and software. This data then produces inexpensive policies based on parametric models – whenever downtime events are detected, the system triggers a pre-agreed policy and quick, hassle-free payouts 15 days later.
The team at Parametrix.Photo by Roni Fux
This is nothing short of revolutionary in the cyber insurance field – gone are the days of slogging over a claim form and chasing for compensation. And all the while, Parametrix is addressing one of the most acute issues faced by businesses in 2022: supply chain attacks and business interruption.
We are rounding off 2022’s line up with somewhat of a curveball. Surance.io provides what you didn’t know you needed: state-of-the-art household cyber protection and prevention. This startup answers the estimated 3.1 billion dollar market for personal cyber insurance against cyber attacks such as identity theft, cyberbullying, breaches of personal information or reputational harm, and much more. The company’s first product, Home Safety Net, scans the home’s connected devices, alerts about risks, recommends how to avoid threats, and offers personal cyber personalized insurance that covers both physical and media damages. In the onslaught of increased personal cyber attacks, this is set to become a household must-have worldwide.
Seven Israeli startups were named to the third annual Digital Health 150, an annual global ranking by New York-based research firm CB Insights of the 150 most promising companies using digital technology to transform the healthcare industry.
CB Insights provides a tech market intelligence platform that analyzes data on private companies, venture capital, partnerships, and investor activities. This year’s Digital Health 150 was unveiled live during CB Insights’ annual Future of Health event.
This year’s winners “include startups working on data integration & analytics, home health tech, virtual care, clinical intelligence,” CB Insights said.
The Israeli startups are three firms based in Israel and four firms that have Israeli founders. Most of the digital companies also have an R&D center in the country. They range from an AI-based medical imaging startup to a cancer tumor monitoring firm.
Brian Lee, SVP of CB Insights’ Intelligence Unit said this year’s list “is one of our most expansive yet, spotlighting 16 categories including virtual care, clinical trials tech, and workflow automation, as well as adding new categories such as home health tech and computer-aided imaging.”
An illustrative photo of medical tech. Image by Pixabay
The companies were selected by CB Insights’ Intelligence Unit from a pool of over 11,000 companies, including applicants and nominees. They were chosen based on several factors including data submitted by the companies, company business models, and momentum in the market. CB Insights also used Mosaic scores, its proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.
The cohort of startups raised some $14.98 billion in aggregate funding across 522 deals since 2016 and includes startups at different investment stages of development from early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns. In 2021, the 150 companies raised $9.2 billion in equity funding across 153 deals, as of November 19, 2021. Since 2020 there have also been 39 mega-round investments (over $100 million) to this year’s Digital Health 150, with 31 of those investments taking place in 2021.
Seventeen of the 150 companies are unicorns, which means they are valued at or above $1 billion as of their latest funding round.
Twenty-three percent of this year’s Digital Health 150 companies are based outside the US. This year’s winners are based in 18 countries including China, Nigeria, Germany, Argentina, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel.
Here are the seven Israeli startups:
DiA Imaging Analysis
Israel’s DiA Imaging Analysis is a leading provider of advanced AI-based solutions for ultrasound analysis. The company’s software enables users to identify clinical indications and abnormalities accurately. The company’s LVivo product line for cardiac and abdominal automated analysis allows clinicians with various levels of ultrasound experience to use and analyze ultrasound images on their ultrasound devices or healthcare IT systems with increased speed, efficiency, and accuracy.
The Israeli medical imaging startup, which has offices in Ramat Gan and Beersheba in Israel and Connecticut in the US, was founded in 2009 by Hila Goldman-Aslan (CEO), Michal Yaacobi, Arnon Toussia-Cohen, and Dr. Noah Liel-Cohen. According to CB Insights, the company has raised at least $19 million to date from companies that include Connecticut Innovations, XTX Ventures, Downing Ventures, DEFTA Partners, and Philips.
A screenshot of the LVivo Toolbox from DiA Imaging Analysis.
DiA Imaging Analysis offers seven FDA-cleared products and partnerships with 11 leading channels, such as GE Healthcare, Philips, and IBM Watson.
“This is yet another acknowledgment of DiA’s efforts automating the way clinicians analyze ultrasound images at point-of-care and in the Echo Lab. DiA is continuously expanding its product lines to support additional clinical applications, and we look forward to introducing our upcoming new offerings in 2022,” said CEO Goldman-Aslan in a statement.
Sweetch
The Tel Aviv-based mobile health platform Sweetch increases patient adherence across various aspects of disease management and improves clinical outcomes for people with chronic conditions. Sweetch says it is the first to combine AI and EI (emotional intelligence) to learn patients’ real-life behavior patterns and optimize engagement
Founded in 2013, one of the company’s offerings is an AI-based platform that seeks to identify those at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
The team at Sweetch. Photo by Aviv Nava.
The company’s proprietary Just-in-Time-Adaptive-Intervention (JITAI) technology converts millions of data points originating from an individual’s smartphone and other connected devices into hyper-personalized recommendations in just the right tone, time and real-world context to catalyze long-term behavior change as part of their daily routine.
“We are proud to be named to CB Insights’ DH150 list, one of the highest recognitions a digital health startup can receive,” said Yoni Nevo, CEO of Sweetch, tells NoCamels. “We are rapidly growing as we achieve our mission to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people with chronic conditions, and we welcome many new employees to our team in 2022.”
Lumen
Lumen is a handheld, portable device to accurately measure metabolism. The company uses a CO2 sensor and flow meter to determine the CO2 concentration in a single breath, in less than a minute, which was previously only possible through an hour-long lab test. This indicates the type of fuel your body is using to produce energy. Lumen also includes an application that acts as a virtual nutritionist, providing dietary and exercise recommendations based on the user’s metabolism.
The Tel Aviv-based startup was founded as Metaflow in 2014 by Daniel Tal, Dror Ceder, and Avi Smila, the founders of social toolbar app developer Wibiya and twin sisters Michal and Merav Mor, athletes who compete together in Ironman competitions and ultra-marathons.
The Lumen device. Courtesy.
According to CB Insights, the company has raised at least $16 million in funding from companies like Legend Capital and Softbank Ventures Asia.
“We’re thrilled to be recognized as an innovative leader in the digital health space by CB Insights. Our mission is to make people metabolically healthier through our groundbreaking technology as we grow towards becoming the largest health platform of 1 million metabolism measurements a month,” says Daniel Tal Mor, CEO and co-founder of Lumen.
Theator
Israeli-founded surgical firm Theator works to leverage advanced AI and computer vision tech to improve the performance of a surgeon. It provides video analytics to enable surgeons to review and assess their work from pre-op preparation to post-op analysis at different angles.
Dr. Tamir Wolf and Dotan Asselmann, co-founders of Theator. Courtesy
Theator has partnered with medical institutions like McGill University Health Centre, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), and leading surgical societies such as the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES).
Nym Health
Founded in 2018 by Amihai Neiderman and Adam Rimon, Nym Heath develops coding software that allows clinical data to be processed autonomously, efficiently, and accurately, the company says.
The company’s tech is currently being adopted throughout the United States by revenue cycle management companies and healthcare providers.
“In the United States, there are over 250,000 medical coders who manually review patient charts and assign billing codes. This is where Nym comes in – their technology produces billing codes without human involvement, dramatically streamlining healthcare processes. With Nym, healthcare facilities can reduce billing cycle times and costs,” Nym said in a recent press release after the company raised $6 million.
Vocalis Health
Israeli-founded startup Vocalis Health is a company pioneering AI-based voice biomarkers in healthcare. Founded in 2019 in the merger of two early-stage Israeli AI healthtech firms Beyond Verbal and Healthymize, the company’s products are cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA.)
Earlier this year, the company’s COVID-19 screening tool, VocalisCheck, received a CE mark, becoming the first device to receive CE mark approval for the medically intended use of screening for COVID-19.
Using your voice. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Last November, the company announced a partnership with the Mayo Clinic, a leading American academic medical organization to research and develop new voice-based tools to screen and detect patient health.
The clinical validation will use Vocalis Health’s proprietary software, operated from any connected voice platform – mobile, computer, tablet – to analyze patients’ health based on voice recordings.
Vocalis Health and the Mayo Clinic previously worked together on research to establish the vocal characteristics of PH. In this new collaboration, the Mayo research team will conduct a prospective clinical validation study to further develop the vocal biomarkers.
c2i Genomics
C2i Genomics offers post-surgery monitoring of cancer recurrence and progression by analyzing subtle changes in the pattern of the tumor’s DNA.
C2i’s liquid biopsy is a tool for cancer tumor monitoring. It works by identifying subtle changes in genetic patterns across the entire tumor.
Founded in 2019 by Israelis Ezra Sofer, Asaf Zviran, and Boris Oklander, the startup has offices in New York and Massachusetts and an R&D center in Haifa.
In April, the company raised $100 million led by Casdin Capital.
Israeli accelerator program Deloitte Launchpad, run by professional services and consulting firm Deloitte, announced this week the nine startups that will participate in its third cohort.
First launched in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic, Deloitte’s program concentrates its support on Israeli growth-stage startups to break into the US market by providing expansion and office relocation guidance, funding for future rounds, and access to Deloitte’s extensive global network.
Deloitte has accelerated 14 companies across two previous cohorts, which have collectively raised over $230 million to date.
For the accelerator program’s latest cohort, startups were required to have a validated product, at least half a million dollars in annual revenue, positive year-over-year growth, and plans to relocate to the US within a two-year timeframe.
The chosen companies are:
Affogata; a customer feedback analytics platform that gathers and analyzes data in real-time from anywhere on the open web where customers talk about a company’s product or service to help business owners proactively determine their next best steps.
Arbox; a startup that provides business owners with a sleek and easy-to-use business management platform, clients’ app, and website to schedule appointments, communicate with clients, manage payments, and increase revenue anytime and anywhere.
Atmosec; a platform enabling companies to boost productivity by facilitating the safe and secure adoption of SaaS products so that companies can benefit from the advantages of SaaS while minimizing increases in risk.
Blings.io; a service that develops next-generation video technology capable of rendering videos in real-time. The startup’s ultimate goal is to be behind every video on the web.
Demostack; This startup helps SaaS revenue leaders accelerate growth with better product storytelling without the need for code or R&D-related wait times.
Healthee; a startup running a digitized healthcare platform called Zoe that helps and empowers employees to access, understand, and maximize the use of their health benefits.
Qbiq; a real estate technology startup that expedites real estate planning. Qbiq uses pioneering AI technology that generates customized and optimized floor plans, 3D virtual tours, and performance comparisons instantaneously, allowing landlords, brokers, and tenants to close deals faster and maximize the potential of any space.
Satori; the developer of the first DataSecOps platform — a universal data access platform for cloud-based data stores and infrastructure, touting multiple out-of-the-box integrations with industry’s leading data stores, such as Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, Amazon Aurora, and Azure SQL. The solution does not require any changes to organizations’ data infrastructure or user setup, empowering data teams to apply comprehensive controls across data stores in days instead of months.
Watchful.ai; an AI-based technology platform that provides managers and decision-makers of high-traction web and mobile applications with industry-leading product intelligence that impacts the success of their products across all life-cycle stages.
More than 70 percent of our planet is covered in water. And yet, in all its abundance, water is becoming scarce resource. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 1.1 billion people lack access to it and 2.7 billion experience its scarcity at least once a year. By 2025, two-thirds of the world population may face water shortages.
“I’m worried about how much people don’t care. Or how much people don’t realize that there are cities in the US the richest country in the world that suffer from a water crisis and it’s happening now. It’s not in 20 years or in a million years, it is happening now,” warned Eyal Yassky from Hilico, a company that develops portable rainwater collectors, when he spoke to NoCamels.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, one of the most water-scarce regions in the world, one country stood out for its ingenious approaches to water conservation. “Israel is a Silicon Valley for water technology,” Esther Altura from DrizzleX, a water metering company, tells NoCamels. “It makes so much sense that [Israel] is going to bring this message of water conservation to the [world].”
From the “Silicon Valley of water tech”, NoCamels highlights six Israeli startups developing innovative technologies that aim to curb the global water crisis.
The carbon footprint of water: WINT
Founded in 2017, WINT Water Intelligence is a company that utilizes artificial intelligence to detect and stop leaks in buildings. WINT customers also get deep data insights about wastewater and their water own levels of water consumption. In 2019, the company expanded into the US and Europe and its technology has been adopted by companies like Microsoft and Mastercard.
Yaron Dycian, former graduate of elite IDF R&D unit Talpiot, Silicon Valley veteran, and now Chief Product and Strategy Officer at WINT, tells NoCamels about the wider implications of water wastage.
“So here’s the crazy thing – water in buildings is wasted at an average of 25 percent. So whatever goes into your building, the quarter typically goes to waste,” says Dycian. This is mostly because current building infrastructure is not conceived to meet the required standards of water conservation, he says.
A photo of 3 WINT systems. Courtesy.
Damages and financial losses need not result from a large malfunction in the pipeline in the building. A single leaky toilet could be enough. “It’s death by a 1000 cuts, and a leaky toilet is one of these cuts,” Dycian says. “Now [assume] the seal [of the toilet] doesn’t shut well because it’s broken or damaged. So water continues to flow at [for example] 350 liters per hour. Now, doing the math, you multiply that by 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, and you get to about 30,000 shekels or $10,000 for, on average, one leaky toilet in the building at any point in time. It’s enormous, it’s phenomenal. It’s endless amount of water wasted, just one toilet,”
The solution is very simple:, according to the Israeli company. WINT has installed control units that read the data from water meters. An AI system distinguishes then between normal and abnormal flow patterns. In case of a leak or malfunctioning pipeline, the system “screams” and warns the operator to shut down the water flow. “It’s very easy to fix. The moment I tell you ‘You have this problem!’ the facility team can go and fix it in 10 minutes,” Dycian says.
Overuse of water is not only a financial burden, it also contributes to global warming. Pumping, collecting, cleaning, treating, and distributing water are energy-consuming and CO2-emitting activities. “13 percent of the American energy consumption go to these processes. So you can imagine the amount of carbon that gets emitted because of this water consumption,” says Dycian.
“Water is carbon,” he says, “and by using less water we actually generate less carbon and we, therefore, help reduce the magnitude of the problem [of global warming]. And using 25 percent less water is not even a sacrifice. Nothing in our lifestyles or anything that we do will change. Think of that simple toilet leaking 24/7, 365 [days a year.] It contributes as much carbon to the atmosphere as one passenger car over a year. You fix one of those toilets, it is as if you took a car off the road. That’s a big, big deal.”
A WINT device and a smartphone. Courtesy.
WINT raised $15 million in a Series B round in January, led by Insight Partners and with participation from existing investors like Marius Nacht, a co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity pioneer Checkpoint Technologies and a serial entrepreneur. The investment fuels WINT’s continued market expansion and innovation, a statement from the company said. They have raised a total of $25 million to date.
In November, US business magazine Fast Company recognized WINT’s partnership with PepsiCo as a sustainability winner in their Next Big Thing in Tech awards. In a pilot program with the US beverage and snack giant, the company helped PepsiCo cut water consumption by 10 percent at a Belgian snack facility. Now PepsiCo is rolling out WINT’s tech to five European sites.
Making people aware: DrizzleX
“In Israel, [we have a saying:] Every drop counts. And that’s not what I saw in the United States. I was shocked how people were so careless about water usage,” Esther Altura, co-founder of DrizzleX and grandmother of eight, tells NoCamels.
Her company, DrizzleX, which she manages with her son Ariel Altura who is CTO, was founded in 2019. The company has raised a total of $1 million in funding over two rounds, including a Series A in November 2020.
The company’s main market is the US, though it is also set to expand in countries like Chile, Brazil, and India.
DrizzleX started with the idea of making tenants in multi-apartment buildings pay individually for their water bills instead of leaving this to the landlords.
DrizzleX co-founder Esther Altura at a conference. Courtesy.
Using their own smart micrometers that can be easily applied to any type of residence or facility, old or new, the aim is to have people become aware of their own water expenses. “Research shows that the best water conservation [method] is when people are financially responsible for the water they use,” Altura says.
The firm’s primary method of operation is by collecting data on water flow and having it analyzed by an AI in the company’s cloud. “We count every drop in the apartment. Every time you use water, it’s being counted[and the] records go to our database,” she says.
While DrizzleX sees itself first and foremost as a water management company whose goal is the conservation of water for landlords and tenants to save money, there is also an educational mission to it as well. “We use our vast amount of data to educate people on how to use water wisely. DrizzleX is an educational tool. People learn their own [water consuming] habits and can compare them with the ones of their peers. One of the biggest things they found in research is that people are very [sensible to] social pressure and on how you’re doing compared to your neighbors,” she says.
Water from the sky: Hilico
Hailing from a career in photography and documentary filmmaking, the young adventurous entrepreneur Eyal Yassky has seen his fair share of natural catastrophes around the world.
Water was always a central issue after every crisis, Yassky tells NoCamels, referring to his experience in a mudslide in Columbia. “So when there’s an earthquake or anything of that sort it kills a certain amount of people. Let’s say, 100 people. We know that the lack of access to clean water will kill about three times more than that. And that happens in every disaster. No matter where you go, no matter which kind of disaster,” he says.
When he lacked adequate water supply, Yassky began to wonder why no one was using rain as a water source, noting the abundance of rainwater in catastrophe-stricken areas. “Rainwater is the most natural form of water that you can get. Even groundwater initially got there from the sky and people have been harvesting rain since the dawn of time. And the vast majority of natural disasters are caused by rain in one way or another,” he explains.
The Hilico portable rainwater collector. Courtesy.
Teaming up with his childhood friend Moshe Belilty, Yassky co-founded Hilico in 2016. Their solution was a portable rainwater collector that allowed people in off-grid communities to have access to clean water.
“The philosophy behind it is that water equals freedom, that’s what it’s all about. If you have access to clean water you’re free to go to school, to go to work, to be safe,” says Yassky.
The portable rainwater collector is lightweight (around 1kg), easy to install, and very resilient. The collecting antibacterial cloth is shaped like jungle leaves. “In the center of it, there’s a filter that leads into a tube the tube and then goes to a foldable storage unit of 10 liters. These can be daisy-chained forever so there’s no limit to how much you can collect,” he says.
The product was meant to go live on Amazon this year for individual purchase when the war in Ukraine broke out, at which point Yassky and Belilty decided to halt sales and donate available stocks of their rainwater collector to Ukrainian refugees.
UVC LED cleaning: Alumor
It is a well-known statistic that more than a billion people are drinking untreated, dangerous water every day and thousandsof people die every day from unclean water,” David Waimann, Alumor founder, tells NoCamels in a Zoom conversation
As an engineer and former British Peace Corps volunteer, Waimann has a lot to say about the global water crisis in the third world.
“There is a misnomer — a misunderstanding — that the bigger problem is no water at all in poorer countries. This is not true. The real problem with water in poorer countries are that the water is dirty and dangerous. So we are here to overcome that problem,” he says.
Miriam’s Well water tech device from Alumor
Using UVC LED technology and a coarse filter to separate sediments and kill off bacteria and viruses, Alumor has developed a small compact water filtration device called Miriam’s Well.
“It has been designed with the developing world in mind, says Waimann, “so it cleans to a very high level, indeed to the most stringent levels of the US government. It works with solar energy, it is very low cost, it is very light and it does two liters in a minute. And it is very, very simple to main. So you switch the filter once every year or so. And that can be done by the people in the field,” says Waimann.
Miriam’s Well is still in its prototype phase and has yet to enter third world markets since the company was only founded in 2019. According to Waimann, Alumor aims to raise sufficient funds to manufacture a mass product that hundreds of thousands of people will be using over the next five years in the developing world.
A better way to irrigate: Agrinoze
With agricultural production expected to expand by 70 percent in the next thirty years and water resources dwindling, according to the World Bank, making sure plants get just the right amount of water needed has become a mission for the global agri-tech sector.
Using a crop itself as an indicator of how much water the plant really needs, Israeli firm Agrinoze has found its way around the overuse of water and fertilizers through precision irrigation. “We have a system based on sensors and an algorithm that automatically and autonomously irrigates the crop 24/7 and the trigger for the irrigation is the crop itself. You can think of us as a self-driving car,” says Erez Fait, the company’s co-founder, and chairman. Shortly before his return to Israel after a month-long tour abroad, he spoke to NoCamels over Zoom from a hotel room on a chilly morning in Washington DC.
Agrinoze precision irrigation solution. Courtesy
One result of this precision irrigation is a higher crop yield with lower water consumption. “Saving water is the outcome of this precision agriculture. Our solution is that by [aiming to] grow more we save water. We currently have projects in Thailand, in Indonesia, in California, and of course in Israel, where the target is saving water. Because we are saving [water up to] 40 or 50 percent [you can say] we are a water-saving solution,” says Fait.
Founded in 2018, Agrinoze has developed precision technology that also limits the overuse of underground water-polluting fertilizers through water recycling. “The other advantage of Agrinoze is the ability to use wastewater or [fertilizer] treated water much better because we can take into consideration the existing nutrients. Think that now instead of having a lack of water we can take this wastewater, which in other cases goes into the river or the sea, and use it for agriculture,” he says.
“We have a banana plantation next to Haifa [city in North-western Israel], where we are irrigating with recycled water. And for the last three years [we used] zero fertilizer. Zero means zero. And usually bananas need a lot of potassium and other [minerals]. And the yields are the same, sometimes more,” says Fait.
Agrinoze was recently honored as one of ten startups featured in the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit’s TechHub in San Francisco, California.
Away with the water-polluting plastic: Solutum
The twenty-nine million metric tons of plastic trash that flow into oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040, according to National Geographic. Along with endangering wildlife, the plastic itself pollutes waterways, and riverbeds and, under the guise of microparticles, finds its way back into our bodies through contaminated food and water.
Shocked by the images of plastic islands and aware of the pollution plastic causes to our environment, Sharon Barak, CEO of the 2017 established company Solutum, set out to develop a product that feels and looks like plastic, yet dissolves when coming in contact with water.
“We wanted to find a solution for the 20 percent plastic waste that is not collected and ends up in the ocean. In the ocean, you really see the outcome. Our products are therefore designed to be water biodegradable,” Barak tells NoCamels.
Solutum’s plastic substitute. Courtesy.
Most importantly, the plastic substitute of Solutum does not pollute the water after dissolving. “Afterwards you can drink it, it’s safe. We are not using any [polluting] material. We are doing continuous testing in labs to ensure there are no side effects,” she says.
The environmental safety of the product is crucial to Solutum with ever more people becoming aware of the danger posed by (micro) plastic found in water. “When I started this company four and a half years ago, I needed to explain to people ‘, Okay, listen, there is a plastic issue in our planet.’ But today everyone has become aware of it. I am always asked ‘Does your product leave microplastics’. ‘No it doesn’t!”
Solutum is in the seed stage and still raising funds to expand. They last raised an undisclosed amount in 2020.
Barak feels encouraged by the interest shown by plastic-producing companies. Against her expectations, she believes plastic producing companies have realized that the tide is turning against single-use plastic, and they have become aware of the need to find profitable solutions that stop harming the environment.
Israeli tech companies raised $5.6 billion in 212 deals in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report published this week by IVC Research Center and LeumiTech, the banking arm of Leumi Group.
The $5.6 billion is a slight improvement from the $5.4 billion raised in the first quarter of 2021, but it’s less than the $8.1. billion companies raised in the fourth quarter of that year.
The money raised in the first three months of 2022 included 14 “mega-rounds” of over $100 million each, which account for 44 percent of the total capital raised in the first quarter.
The cybersecurity sector experienced five mega-rounds, while the fintech and IoT sectors had two mega-rounds each. The food tech sector had one mega-round, the report showed.
There were 39 exits (IPOs and merger and acquisition deals) that totaled $8.96 billion. This was largely due to Intel’s acquisition of Israel’s Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion and the acquisition of Israeli threat detection firm Siemplify by Google for $500 million.
Following an impressive year for initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2021, the number decreased drastically in the first quarter of 2022, with just seven IPOs totaling $1.05 billion. The largest IPO was made by ImageSat International raising $66 million on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Only one SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) IPO was made in Q1 2022, which was Israeli cancer radiation treatment company Alpha Tau Medical, which performed a SPAC deal with Healthcare Capital on NASDAQ
“After a phenomenal year for the Israeli high-tech it seems as though 2022 started with more restraint,” said Timor Arbel-Sadras, CEO of LeumiTech. “Furthermore, it seems that investors have slowed pace and are waiting for a correction in valuation in the private sector, same as happened in the public sector. VC managers need to react to these corrections and make sure their funds keep presenting good performances. These performances rely on the ability to sell or issue their portfolio companies with a substantial increase in valuation versus the investment stage.”
“It is unclear yet if this recognition has already penetrated throughout the ecosystem: there are many cases with a large gap between the Bid and Ask prices in investment and acquisition deals that cause a slowdown in the closing pace and a demand increase in raising private debt. We witness a decrease in the number of IPOs and we expect to see again the dominance of M&As in Exits deals. M&A deals will include both mature startups as an alternative to IPO and also the acquisition of early-stage startups by matured ones as an engine to inorganic growth at attractive valuations,” Arbel-Sadras added.
Intel’s growth accelerator program Intel Ignite, announced the 10 startups Tuesday chosen to participate in its sixth Tel Aviv cohort.
The program had more than 220 applicants, with 10 chosen to move on to the next round as part of the sixth cohort.
The selected startups work in various tech verticals pursuing innovation in AI, digital health, robotics, sensors, hardware, developer tools, and cyber security.
Programs will consist of a variety of fields including founders’ dynamics, go-to-market strategy, marketing and sales, product development and management, and recruitment, among others.
Founded in 2019, Intel Ignite is a global corporate startup program for early-stage startups designed to manifest innovative ideas into tangible industry-disrupting technologies. The accelerator program has supported 48 startups in Israel thus far as well as 20 in Europe, which have since collectively raised nearly $700 million in funding to date.
Earlier this month, Intel announced the acquisition of Granulate, an Israeli AI workload optimization firm, for $650 million. Granulate was part of Intel’s first Israeli cohort.
The 10 selected startups, which have cumulatively raised $5 million, are:
redefine.dev; which solves continuous integration (CI) bottlenecks with continuous pipeline optimization and predictive test selection.
Verobotics; which designs robotic solutions for facade upkeep, monitoring, and maintenance for small residential buildings and skyscrapers.
Xyte; which developed an end-to-end platform that grants companies the ability to connect their hardware to the cloud. Similar to software-as-a-service (SaaS), this enables companies to provide their hardware-as-a-service (HaaS).
Senser; which is a data-driven service experience.
Predicta Med; which is the first AI deep learning platform designed to detect autoimmune diseases at their earliest stages.
Kahoona; which is a disruptive first-party data generation and activation platform for the open web that empowers businesses to leverage audience data without compromising user privacy or performance.
Volumez; which a startup building the first-of-its-kind global data management platform to simplify data storage across private, public, or hybrid clouds.
PxE – which enables machines to understand the world
Dual Bird Technologies; which is a startup currently in stealth mode that accelerates data analytics.
Oligo Security; which is also currently in stealth mode.
“It is an exciting time for us at Intel Ignite due to the great success in the collaboration between our fresh, innovative startups and Intel during the last year,” said Ranny Nachmias, managing director of Intel Ignite Israel. “Lately, we have won the title of ‘Acceleration program for 2021’ which is a great proof of confidence in the program. The sixth Israeli cohort, starting next week, drew an impressive number of applicants from various verticals in the industry,” he continues, “I am thrilled to see how the startups in the upcoming batch flourish along with the program and the unique personal professional connections created between the founders, experts, and mentors.”
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to disrupt the flow of vital food, medical, mineral, and energy resources and lead to more threatening cyber attacks, nimble startups around the world are applying new technologies to address these challenges.
OurCrowd, Israel’s most active crowdfunding platform, announced on Wednesday, that on Monday, May 2, it will host “Startups Respond to the Ukraine Crisis: Solving the Global Challenges,” an online discussion with experts and entrepreneurs they believe is poised to shake up the fields now under pressure from the war in Ukraine, including medicine, energy, food, cybersecurity, and supply chain logistics.
Guests at the virtual event will include Dr. Galia Barkai, the director of Israel’s first virtual hospital; Gleb Kogan, director of business development at TytoCare; Freightos CEO Ziv Schreiber; Michal Levy, Senior Vice President, Agriculture Innovation, Israel Ministry of Agriculture; Rafi Mendelsohn, VP Marketing, Cyabra; Andrew Bennett, CEO of mPrest. Leah Stern, OurCrowd Partner for Global Communications, will host the discussion.
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center began the initiative to set up a field hospital inside Ukraine as the Russia-Ukraine war intensified. From a collection of tents near the Polish border, medical staff have been treating refugees and locals and have worked remotely with physicians back at Sheba using telemedicine tools
“This field hospital will change the paradigm of what humanitarian aid can be,” says Dr. Galia Barkai, director of the Sheba Beyond program, Israel’s first virtual hospital. Barkai is also the head of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Unit, head of Telemedicine Services, and was instrumental in leading Sheba’s first coronavirus telemedicine program in February 2020 before the pandemic swept the country.
Technology developed Israeli telehealth companies, like TytoCare, connected patients to clinicians with diagnostic instruments that allowed doctors to perform remote medical examinations.
“We can bring the highest-level physicians to the field without actually having to bring them physically,” Barkai says.
Research shows that epidemics and pandemics are exacerbated by conflict. Canada’s SaNOtize has developed a nasal spray that protects against infection by COVID-19 and other viruses.
“In the absence of vaccination – which we see in countries like Ukraine – it is a great first line of defense to help protect the people from disease,” says Dr. Gili Regev, SaNOtize’s CEO and co-founder.
The war has exacerbated serious problems with the global supply chain already highlighted by the pandemic, disrupting the export of energy, food, semiconductors, and other commodities.
Freightos, based in Jerusalem, has developed a digital platform for international shipping that harnesses technology and data from global logistics providers, importers, air carriers, and ocean liners to help companies find sought-after freight space – a booking.com for international freight, says CEO Ziv Schreiber.
International shipping is “a surprisingly outdated industry,” and what’s key to making it work better is digitization, as happened in the travel industry, Schreiber says.
The war has also triggered a drive for greater energy independence, especially by European countries that rely heavily on Russian gas and coal.
mPrest, the company that created the software behind Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, is using its technology to help large electricity providers like the New York Power Authority manage their grids and integrate cleaner technologies.
“This move to clean energy is happening,” says CEO Andrew Bennett. “Now you have an additional incentive, and that’s energy independence.”
In addition to violence on the ground, Russia is also waging an information war against Ukraine, spreading disinformation on social networks. Tel Aviv-based Cyabra uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to sift through publicly available information to pinpoint malicious activity.
‘Startups Respond to the Ukraine Crisis’ hosted by OurCrowd will be held online on Monday, May 2, and available for streaming from May 3. To register, click here:
Israeli food tech startup Yo! Egg, which has developed plant-based poached and fried eggs (also known as sunny-side-up) announced that it plans to launch in US restaurants later this year, following a recent seed funding round of $5 million.
The company’s seed round was led by food-tech focused venture capital firm Stray Dog Capital and NFX, alongside contributions from Surround Ventures and Secret Chord Venture. Yo! Egg is using this initial capital to scale up production and emerge into the American market.
Founded in 2019 by accredited vegan chef Yosefa Ben-Cohen, experienced food service operator and entrepreneur Nisim Ben-Cohen, and food tech executive Eran Groner, Yo! Egg aims to disrupt the conventional egg industry and eliminate the need for chicken farming. It is pioneering the sustainable production of eggs for every type of culinary application, first bringing the “whole egg” experience in the form of sunny-side up and poached eggs for consumers who eat eggs but would prefer a more animal-friendly, sustainable, and cholesterol-free option.
Both restaurants and distributors will get the chance to taste the range of Yo! Egg products at the National Restaurant Association trade show in Chicago until May 24th. Following the company’s American debut, Yo! Egg will provide its products to restaurants and diners in the greater Los Angeles area within the year.
“The Yo! Egg team has a unique mix of extraordinary product innovation expertise and engineering talent that we believe will help our company revolutionize the way the world produces and consumes eggs,” said Yo! Egg CEO Eran Groner.
“With hundreds of millions of people across the world demanding plant alternatives for their favorite proteins, Yo! Egg’s first-of-its-kind eggs will be a hit in restaurants nationwide,” said Gigi Levy-Weiss, general partner at NFX. “I am confident in Eran, Yosefa, Nisim and the team they have built to transform the $200 billion egg market.”
“With over 95 billion eggs consumed every year in the US, and each egg requiring 53 gallons of water to produce, we need a better solution,” said Stray Dog Capital partner Johnny Ream. “”Yo! Egg has developed one of the most impressive plant-based products we have seen to date, and we believe both the product and scaling innovation the company is pursuing will give them the potential to drive significant growth and impact.”
Israel’s 4th Vegan Fest, said to be the world’s largest vegan festival, welcomed over 100,000 attendees to Tel Aviv this week for three days of vegan cuisine and innovation.
The event — held at the Sarona complex in the city that has been called the “vegan capital of the world” — is taking place for the first time since 2019.
Organized by Vegan Friendly, the Israeli organization that works to promote veganism and animals right founded in 2012, Vegan Fest featured 100 Israeli vegan food stalls representing local vegan restaurants and businesses. The event, which was free to the public, also had cooking classes, holistic activities, lectures, live music, and workshops.
Festival attendees and industry professionals came together at the festival’s FoodTech area to discuss the latest innovations in vegan food technologies. The FoodTech area highlighted Israel’s strong food tech industry, with local companies representing tech ranging from 3D-printed steaks to milk made from cells to meat alternatives grown from mushrooms.
“Israel is considered the most vegan country in the world,” Vegan Friendly founder and CEO Omri Paz tells NoCamels. He adds that the Israel is considered “a hub for vegan food tech companies” and that it is the country “with the biggest amount of vegan food companies and investments.”
In the “Leading Women in FoodTech” panel on Tuesday, Dr. Hila Elimelech, co-founder and head of R&D at Israeli plant-based fish startup Plantish, told the crowd that 10 percent of Israel’s population is vegan.
A panel of leading women in vegan food tech at the Vegan Fest in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Photo by Isabel Engel.
Veganism is on the rise – in Israel and around the world – as people look for healthier and environmentally conscious ways to consume food. According to animal welfare organization Animal Matters, around 70 billion farm animals are reared each year for food – a rate that is unsustainable for the planet. The global vegan market is growing exponentially, with the plant-based market to reach $16.7 billion by 2026, according to Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data. Being vegan is no longer a niche trait but a lifestyle choice many choose to adopt.
“This is not a trend anymore, this is really becoming who we are. We are going to be different consumers. I’m not saying everyone in the future will be vegan or vegetarian. What I am saying is that the future of food will look different and will offer different people different choices of healthy and plant-based products,” InnovoPro CEO Taly Nechushtan tells NoCamels. Nechustan appeared with Dr. Elimelech and others in the “Leading Women in FoodTech” panel.
Vegan Fest has grown significantly since its first gathering in 2013, which welcomed around 5,000 attendees. This year’s event – in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Municipality – hosted several top Israeli innovators in the realm of vegan food tech. In a series of panels – including ones titled “Failures and Successes – The Challenges in the World of Entrepreneurship” and “The Future of Food” – the festival aimed to spotlight the work of Israeli companies crafting more sustainable meat and protein alternatives.
The scene at Vegan Fest in Sarona complex this week. Photo by Isabel Engel
“We really believe that the vegan food tech companies have a crucial role in the vegan revolution. So, we want to promote that as much as possible because we are big believers in the technology,” Paz adds.
In light of the festival, NoCamels spotlights 5 Israeli companies participating in Vegan Fest that are transforming the world of food tech through innovative vegan products.
Plantish
At a time in which the unsustainable demand for seafood is at an all-time high, vegan food tech company Plantish is reinventing the way that consumers eat fish. Working to create fish and seafood analogs derived from plants, Plantish is providing the complete experience of fish dishes for those seeking to minimize their environmental impact. Their first product, a whole-cut vegan salmon fillet, was launched in January. The innovative ‘fish’ product places a premium on a normal – and delicious – salmon experience without the negative toll on the ocean.
“We are making cultured meat, we are making texture and flavor which look like, smell like, and feel like fish without hurting a single animal. This is something which is super exciting every day,” says Dr. Elimelech at the “Leading Women in FoodTech” panel Tuesday.
Plantish says its salmon is nutritionally similar to conventional salmon, and is high in protein, Omega-3s, Omega-6s, and B vitamins. Photo by Shahaf Beger
Founded by the team of Dr. Elimelich, Dr. Ofek Ron, Dr. Ron Sicsic, and Dr. Arial Szklanny, the Plantish company is working to lessen human impact on the oceans – especially during a period in which ocean acidification is on an exponential rise.
Using the festival as a platform for vegan food tech innovation and collaboration, Dr. Elimelech says she and the Plantish team are hoping to continue to change the way that all people consume fish.
The company will ride on the growth of the vegan seafood industry and aims to launch its product in restaurants throughout Israel by 2024.
InnovoPro
Founded by Dr. Ascher Shmulewitz in 2013, InnovoPro aims to launch the “chickpea revolution” through innovative chickpea-based protein products that are sold to food production companies worldwide.
With a research and development team devoted to extracting protein out of chickpeas – a protein known in the vegan community as a super-food legume – InnovoPro is committed to offering companies ingredients for clean-label vegan products. Their chickpea protein products are neutral in taste and texture with strong emulsification properties so they can be added to a wide range of food products. Currently, the team is focusing on three pillars: the company’s platform, global reach, and a sustainable supply chain.
“We believe that the more people will be involved in reducing our impact, we can do a good service for the next generation,” InnovoPro CEO Taly Nechushtan tells NoCamels.
InnovoPro’s chickpea-based yogurt. Courtesy
More than providing healthy chickpea-based protein ingredients, InnovoPro is looking to minimize the human footprint on the planet. Their sustainability efforts, coupled with their innovative approach to protein harvesting, make InnovoPro a game-changer in the realm of vegan food tech.
InnovoPro is looking to add new products to their chickpea platform, including a texturized protein for meat-analog formulators and an egg-white replacement for bakers. It is only through high-tech innovation that the use of vegan ingredients will continue to rise, Nechushtan explains.
“But how can you change current food formulations and preparation methods without new technologies and new ingredients? It’s like the chicken and the egg. You must use new ingredients, new food tech solutions, new technologies in order to improve the category of food,” Nechushtan adds.
Kinoko Tech
Israeli food tech company Kinoko Tech is working to produce the next generation of protein-rich food through fungi and fermentation technologies. At Hebrew University, the Kinoko team discovered a way to grow mushrooms into meat alternatives. Their natural fermentation process produces a product that has a meat-like taste and texture with high nutritional value.
The company was founded in 2019 by three women: Dr. Jasmin Ravid, Dr. Daria Feldman, and Hadar Shohat. The women’s joint background in nutritional sciences, microbiology, and food technology has led Kinoko to be a game-changer in the vegan startup world.
Their products – more than provide consumers with tasty protein alternatives – are both plant- and climate-friendly. The company aims to take strides in sustainable foods to minimize environmental impact and the burden of the modern inefficient food system.
“I see huge challenges ahead of us with the huge system, but I am very excited about the amount of people and talent and money that is now going into finding a solution for this problem. We are not looking away anymore, we are looking straight into the problems and trying to solve them. And that excites me,” said Kinoko co-founder Jasmin Ravid in a Vegan Fest panel.
Remilk
Remilk is working to create real dairy without the need for cows through microbial fermentation. Their product invites consumers to rethink their notion of dairy by creating identical milk products without a negative environmental impact.
Remilk’s innovation stems from milk proteins, which they copy and insert into yeast. The result? Real milk proteins that, when combined with vitamins, minerals, and non-animal fat and sugar, develop into authentic dairy products.
Remilk serves up animal-free ‘dairy’ products. Photo: Remilk
The company is not only providing an environmentally-conscious alternative to cow-based dairy, but it is also creating a healthier product for consumers. With milk products deriving from fermentation and not cows, Remilk provides consumers with a cholesterol-, lactose-, hormone-, and antibiotic-free product – all while being 100% cruelty-free.
The company, founded in 2019 by Aviv Wolff and Ori Cohavi, raised $120 million this year to further its real dairy protein production on a larger scale. Planning to launch the world’s largest full-scale precision fermentation facility in Denmark, Remilk will continue to innovate and produce real dairy in labs, not farms.
The company was featured in “How to join the food tech industry?” and “The Future of Food” panels in the food tech area at Vegan Fest this week.
MeaTech
MeaTech, an international deep tech food company working in the field of cultured meat, was a Vegan Fest sponsor and participant. The company’s CTO, Dan Kozlovski, was a featured panelist on “The Future of Food” panel on Tuesday, while Business Development Manager Yair Ayalon gave a lecture on Wednesday and Biologist Dana Hillel gave a lecture on MeaTech’s cultured meat development process on Thursday.
In 2019, Yaron Kaiser and Arik Kaufman co-founded MeaTech to bring sustainably-sourced and authentic meat products to the vegan food industry. Their team now works with two primary technologies: cell-based processes and cultured steak products. In their cell-based vision, MeaTech develops cell lines and works with stem cells to form ground meat alternatives. To create cultured steaks, MeaTech uses innovative 3D printing technologies and incubation.
MeaTech’s 3D meat printer. Courtesy.
The company aims to create high-quality real meat products that are both safe and slaughter-free through high-technology science. They aimed to showcase their products and partake in the vegan food innovation scene at the recent Vegan Fest.
“Vegan Fest is a unique opportunity for MeaTech and other Israeli food-tech and alternative protein startups to engage the vegan community with a shared vision of transforming food sourcing and systems to address issues such as animal welfare, the restoration of ecosystems, and global food security,” said Arik Kaufman, MeaTech’s CEO said in a statement ahead of the event.
