September 26, 2016 | According to a report in Israel’s Calcalist, after leading five funds in Israel and exits of hundreds of millions of dollars, Sequoia Israel will make new investments only through their American fund, Sequoia Capital. A similar step was taken from Benchmark and Greylock Partners who are no longer active in Israel. According to estimates, the reason for the decision to close the Israeli fund is primarily the desire of the partners to work through the American fund to give Israeli companies better access to the American fund.

September 22, 2016 | Israeli network relationship management platform developer Mobilize announced it has closed a $6.5 million Series A financing round and launched the self-service version of its product. The investment was led by Trinity Ventures with the participation of Floodgate Ventures, Hillsven Capital, Array Ventures, Upwest Labs in addition to SaaS angels such as Eoghan McCabe, CEO of Intercom.io, and Sanjay Subhedar. Mobilize was founded by Sharon Savariego and Arthur Vainer and has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv.

September 21, 2016 | Israeli company BlazeMeter, which produces performance testing tools for DevOps,  has been acquired by CA Technologies. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed although media reports suggest the acquisition was for about $100 million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. CA Technologies said that the acquisition of BlazeMeter, which has offices in Tel Aviv and Palo Alto, would enable it to extend its DevOps portfolio. BlazeMeter will integrate with CA’s continuous delivery solutions to improve testing efficiency and accelerate the deployment of applications. BlazeMeter, which was founded in 2011 by CEO Alon Girmonsky, raised $6.5 million in a series A financing round in 2014 from Glilot Capital Partners and YL Ventures GP Ltd.

 September 21, 2016 | Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva Pharmaceutical and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced an agreement to develop and commercialize pain drug fasinumab. This is Regeneron’s investigational NGF antibody in Phase III clinical development for osteoarthritis pain and in Phase II development for chronic lower back pain. Under the terms of the agreement, Teva will pay Regeneron $250 million upfront and share equally in the global commercial value (excluding Japan, Korea and other Asian countries covered by a previous collaboration), as well as ongoing R&D costs of about $1 billion.

September 18, 2016 | Israeli FinTech startup Tipalti has raised $14 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm SGVC. A provider of payments automation solutions, Tipalti was founded in 2011 by Chen Amit and Oren Zeev. It has so far raised $27 million.

September 14, 2016 | Digital testing company Applause has raised $35 million in a Series F financing round, led by Direct Equity Partners, an investment program managed by Credit Suisse, with the participation of Accenture. This round brings Applause’s total funding-to-date to more than $115 million. The round had full participation from all of Applause’s previous investors, including Goldman Sachs’s Merchant Banking Division, QuestMark Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, Mesco Ltd and MassVentures. The company’s most recent funding was a $43 million Series E round in January, 2014. Applause is an Israeli company, with global headquarters near Boston, Massachusetts and its development center in Herzliya that was originally launched in 2008 as uTest.  

September 14, 2016 | Israeli startup Optimove has raised $20 million from Israeli venture capital firm IGP – Israeli Growth Partners. Optimove provides online marketing technologies to some 200 companies. Founded by Pini Yakuel in 2009, this is the company’s first financing round. 

September 13, 2016 | Israeli cyber security company Claroty has come out of stealth mode and announced it has completed a financing round of $32 million. The startup also announced that it is launching its protection platform for industrial networks. Established in 2014 as part of Israeli cyber security foundry Team8, Claroty’s backers include Bessemer Venture Partners, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Marker, ICV, Red Dot Capital Partners, and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. The company enters the market as the most substantially funded cyber security startup focused on protecting industrial control systems, and with one of the deepest teams in OT security from organizations including Siemens, IBM, Waterfall Security, Palo Alto, iSIGHT Partners (FireEye), ICS2, and Industrial Defender. With offices in Tel Aviv and New York, Claroty was founded by CEO Amir Zilberstein, chief business development officer Galina Antova, and CTO Benny Porat.

September 13, 2016 | Israeli marketing analytics startup Datorama has raised $32 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Marker LLC and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors also participated in the round. This series brings Datorama’s total funding to $50 million. Datorama was founded in 2012 by Ran Sarig, Efi Cohen and Katrin Ribant.

September 11, 2016 | Columbia University’s top honor for achievement in biological and biochemical research has been awarded to two researchers from the Hebrew University for their research, which led to the new field of Epigenetics, and yielded insights into how cells and embryos develop. The 2016 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize was presented to Prof. Howard Cedar and Prof. Aharon Razin of the Hebrew University, and their American colleague Dr. Gary Felsenfeld.

September 8, 2016 | Israeli startup Celeno Communications completed a $38 million financing round. Founded in 2005 by president and CEO Gilad Rozen, the company supplies chips and software technology for managed WiFi apps. Red Dot Capital Partners, which focuses on investments in growth companies, led the round. New investors participated in the current round, including Poalim Capital Markets, and the OurCrowd investment fund. Previous investors also took part, including Liberty Global, Cisco, Pitango Venture Capital, 83North (formerly Greylock Israel), Vintage Investment Partners, and Miven. According to figures from the IVC databse, including the current round, Celeno has raised $107 million since it was founded. Celeno has 120 employees, including 85 in its Ra’anana headquarters. The company also has representatives in the US, Europe, and Asia. Among other things, Celeno plans to use the funding to recruit 20 new employees in a variety of areas.among other things.

September 6, 2016 |  Israeli startup FairFly, which notifies travelers when the price of their airline ticket drops, has announced it will no longer serve individual clients, and is shifting focus to serve the enterprise sector. In a letter to clients, CEO Aviel Siman-Tov, writes: “We’ve decided to put all of our focus on our enterprise product and discontinue our mobile app.” Starting Sept. 15, the company will no longer provide services to individual clients through its mobile and web platforms. FairFly was founded in 2013 by Uri Levine (the co-founder of popular navigation app Waze), along with Siman-Tov, Gili Lichtman, and Ami Goldenberg.

September 5, 2016 | Israeli cyber security startup Cronus Cyber Technology announced that it raised $3.5 million. According to figures from the IVC database, the company has raised $6.2 million since it was founded, including the current round. CEO Doron Sivan and CTO Matan Azugi founded Cronus in 2014. Cronus’s product uses an algorithm to try to imitate a human hacker’s way of thinking. Former Israeli Air Force chief Eitan Ben Eliyahu is the company’s chairman. Cronus’s financing round included US fund Janvest Capital Partners, a European investor, and a strategic investor from Hong Kong. The company previously received funding from the Ministry of the Economy and Industry Chief Scientist. The company’s headquarters are in Haifa, and it also does business in the UK, Germany and Hong Kong. The money raised is expected to enable Cronus to expand its business to the US.  

September 4, 2016 | Co-working space WeWork has announced that it will double its presence in Tel Aviv with the opening of two new Tel Aviv locations – Ibn Gabirol and Hazerem – and the expansion of the Herzliya Pituach location. WeWork Ibn Gabirol and WeWork Hazerem are expected to be open by the end of 2016, marking the 5th and 6th locations launched in Israel of the US-based firm, since entering the Israeli market two years ago. Herzliya Pitucah, the 2nd location to open in Israel, is also expanding due to high demand. The new locations in Israel come at a time of global expansion for WeWork. In 2016, the company has opened its first locations in Montréal, Mexico City, Berlin, Shanghai and Seoul, with plans to come to Paris in 2017. Founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, WeWork runs 77 sites in 23 cities around the world, including Berlin, London, Boston, New York and San Francisco, providing professionally designed workspace, as well as other services (insurance, consultancy, etc) that startups need in order to scale up. The company has achieved a valuation of $5-10 billion, after raising over $1 billion from institutional investors, including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, J.P. Morgan and the Harvard Management Company.  

September 1, 2016 | Israeli startup Beyond Verbal, which offers emotion analytics based on vocal intonations, has raised $3 million in a financing round led by Chinese technology giant Kuang-Chi. Beyond Verbal focuses on raw vocal modulations – probably the most expressive output our body produces. This non-intrusive technology enables wearables and digital health applications to better understand consumer interactions. Founded in 2012 by Yoav Hoshen, Yuval Mor, and Yuval Rabin (son of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin), Beyond Verbal has so far raised $10.1 million.

August 31, 2016 | Israeli company Freightos, an International online freight network, has as acquired WebCargoNet, a Barcelona based air-cargo rate management provider. WebCargoNet helps bring air cargo companies online with automated freight routing and pricing, and will complement Freightos’ efforts to do the same for air, ocean and trucking, the company said in a statement. The result, said Eytan Buchman, the marketing director of the Israeli company, will create the “world’s largest freight Big Data database of over 200 million data points,” helping more companies take part in the online freight marketplace offered by the Jerusalem-based company.

August 30, 2016 | Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia, the Israeli directors of a popular music video for British rock band Coldplay’s song “Up&Up” won an MTV Video Music award for best visual effects on Sunday night in New York. The song from Coldplay’s “A Head Full Of Dreams” album has amassed over 75 million views on YouTube since being posted on May 16. The “Up&Up” video, with its turtle swimming through a New York City subway station and a baby crawling across the wing of small airplane, was described by the Metro UK as “brilliantly weird.”  Chris Martin, front-man for Coldplay, told the Radio station Beats 1, “I think it’s one of the best videos people have made.”Heymann and Muggia were also nominated for best director, but lost out on that award to the artist of the night, Beyonce, who took home seven awards, including video of the year.

  August 25, 2016 | The Israeli enterprise mobility developer SkyGiraffe announced that it closed a $6 million funding round. The round was led by SGVC with participation from Trilogy Equity Partners, Heroku Founder and CEO James Lindenbaum, Parse Founder and CEO Ilya Sukhar, and Lookout Founder and CTO Kevin Mahaffey. The company, which had previously raised $4.5m from 500 Startups, Microsoft Ventures, Trilogy Equity Partners and angels, intends to use the funds to continue expanding its platform among other growth initiatives. Founded by CEO Boaz Hecht and VP of R&D Itay Braun in 2012, and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with a research and development center in Ramat Gan, Israel.  

August 24, 2016 | Israeli company Mobileye, which develops vision-based driver assistance systems that help prevent collisions, said Tuesday that it is developing a self-driving system with Delphi Automotive that will be ready for production by 2019. Mobileye cut its ties with Tesla Motors last month after the electric carmaker’s autopilot system faced scrutiny from regulators following a fatal accident in early May. Tesla’s autopilot system uses EyeQ chips from Mobileye to help with image analysis for steering and staying in lanes. Mobileye and Delphi said their technology would cater to automakers that may not necessarily want to develop their own self-driving systems. Mobileye, which was founded by Prof. Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram in 1999, recently teamed up with BMW and Intel to manufacture a driverless car by 2021.    

 August 24, 2016 | Olympic bronze medalist judoka Yarden Gerbi has put her name tag up for auction on eBay, saying she will use the money to support the Pediatric Cancer Unit at a Tel Aviv hospital. As of now, the top bid stands at $13,100 or NIS 49,421.09, though with five days left to the auction it will likely rise. Gerbi, whose bronze during the Rio 2016 Games made her just the second Israeli woman to win a medal at the Olympics, says donating the proceeds from the ID tag to the Children’s Cancer Ward at Sourasky Hospital will make it “more special for society.” She says she will dedicate the tag to the winning bidder and sign it for them.

August 22, 2016 | Israeli DIY-website platform company Wix.com  announced a sponsorship deal with major league baseball’s New York Yankees. As part of the cooperation package, Wix will be the team’s official website design sponsor and partner for 2016. The partnership will include a campaign to find the New York Yankee’s number one fan. The winner will build a site together with Wix at the TheBiggestYankeeFan.com domain. Wix, founded in 2006 by CEO Avishai Abrahami, CTO Giora Kaplan and VP Client Development Nadav Abrahami, has developed a platform enabling users to easily set up and design their own website. This is not Wix’s first involvement in sport. Six months ago, Wix announced a sponsorship deal with top English soccer team Manchester City and before that the company twice advertised during the Superbowl, the biggest sporting event in the US.

August 22, 2016 | Indian software company Wipro has invested $1.5 million in Israeli startup cyber security company Intsights. In a filing to the Bombay stock exchange, Wipro said it was acquiring a minority stake in the startup. Founded in 2015 by CEO Guy Nizan, VP Intelligence Alon Arvatz and CTO Gal Ben David, the Herzliya based company infiltrates the cyber-threat underworld to detect and analyze planned or potential attacks and threats. The company also provides advance warning and customized insight concerning potential cyber attacks, including recommended steps to avoid or withstand the attacks and delivers in-depth analysis of cyber threats originating from in-house sources, third-party sources or threat actors. Intsights raised $1.8 million in October 2015 from Glilot Capital Partners. Wipro made the investment through Israel venture capital firm TLV Partners.

 August 21, 2016 | The Technion’s fourth Student Formula team finished twice in the top ten in the Formula Student competitions held this summer in Europe. In the competition in Hungary, the team finished in 9th place (out of 34 universities) and in the Czech Republic in 8th place (out of 42). Ranking was based on a number of criteria, including business plan presentation, circling the track, a 22 km heat (endurance), driving in figure eights, fuel efficiency and acceleration to a distance of 75 meters. Technion’s Formula car, which competed in the combustion engine category, achieved especially good results in the acceleration heat, the 22 km heat and driving in figure eights – heats that were held on a wet course in the Czech competition. According to the team leader, student Evgeny Guy, “In both competitions the car performed as planned with no unusual problems. All in all, this was our most successful season to date, and we received warm compliments not only from the judges but also from other teams.”