March 4, 2015 | The Israeli-invented crowdsourced navigation application Waze will now be included as an integral part of Google’s Mobile Services, the pre-installation software package that Google offers to Android users. The new designation will join Google Maps, Google Chat (now known has ‘Hangouts’) and Google Drive as part of the pre-installed apps on Google-powered devices. The designation is good news for Waze that generates real-time traffic reports from user data, and more users will be that the database of traffic information will be even more beneficial for users. Waze was founded in 2007 by Uri Levine, Amir Shinar and Ehud Shabtai and was acquired by Google in 2013.

March 4, 2015 | The mayor of Akron Ohio Don Plusquellic announced that the American city had reached a tentative agreement with five Israeli water tech companies with the goal of making the city an exclusive partner for Israeli water research in America. The plan, which is reportedly worth $5 million, has not been entirely formalized but would provide up to $500,000 in investments in five water companies or equivalent in-kind help. The companies would make an investment of $3.5 million in local water research in exchange for the municipal investment. The water technologies that are included in the agreement at Mekorot, Technion water initiatives and MemTech, among others.

March 3, 2015 | Teva Pharmaceutical Industries announced that it signed an agreement to sell its Sellersville, Pennsylvania facilities to G&W Laboratories. The sale is part of Teva’s plan to streamline operations by cutting down on manufacturing costs. The sale will include all of the company’s buildings, land and equipment on site, and according to the terms of the agreement G&W will continue to manufacture and supply supplies to Teva, according to its needs. According to the deal, Teva will also sell about 25 portfolio products to G&W, which will be manufactured and sold in the US under the G&W label. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries was founded in 1901 and is headed by CEO and President Erez Vigodman.

March 2, 2015 | One Hour Translation (OHT) Mobile has launched a new platform called Lingui, which works as an instant app localization solution. It allows users and businesses to quickly translate their applications into other languages, without needing to hire extra manpower or to create additional versions of the application. Lingui engages in automatic translation, professional-level translation and “crowdsourced” translation to create a version of the app in the selected language, updating the app in real time as the translations come in. The Lingui platform will be showcased by OHT-Mobile at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona this week. One Hour Translation was founded in 2008 by Lior Libman, Yaron Kaufman, Oren Yagev and Ofer Shoshan.

March 2, 2015 | The Israeli company CyberArk Software submitted a draft prospectus with the US Securities & Exchange commission to issue a secondary offering worth $200 million on NASDAQ. The company, which develops software to protect organizational information, will not raise any new funds in the offering. The underwriters for the secondary offering include Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and William Blair, among others. CyberArk was founded in 1999 by Udi Mokady.

March 1, 2015 | Kornit Digital, an Israeli company specializing in digital printing solutions, filed with the US Securities & Exchange Commission to raise up to $100 million in a NASDAQ IPO. The company hopes to raised the funds at a company valuation of $500 million, according to reports. Kornit Digital has not yet determined the number of sales that will be sold nor the price range for the shares. Barclay’s Capital and Citigroup Global Markets will act as joint underwriters for the offering. Kornit Digital was founded in 2003 by Avi Shterling.

February 26, 2015 | MasterCard announced the “Mobile Top App Index,” a European Index of mobile shopping apps, and one of the top 19 apps is Israeli. Out of the top apps selected by MasterCard in 2015, Israeli parking assistance app Parko was chosen as a winner. The application provides crowdsourced parking information to users, letting them know when a parking spot is free or is about to be vacated. The application also provides navigation services to the parking spot. Parko was founded in 2011 by Andrea Kruchkik Krell, Itai David and Tomer Neuner.

February 26, 2015 | Pereg Ventures is raising money for an investment fund for Israeli and US startups. The fund has already raised $25 million and hopes to raise an additional $75 million by the end of the year. Pereg as already invested some of its existing funds from the round in two Israeli startups, Zollo, in which it invested $1 million, as well as one US startup, RealNext. Pereg Ventures is run by two Israeli managing partners, former Nielsen VP Itzhak Fisher and Ziv Ben-Barouch and was founded in 2012.

February 26, 2015 | The UK-based provider of short-term credit to customers, Wonga, announced that it will be cutting 325 jobs in London, other locations. 325 jobs a third of Wonga’s workforce and employees in London, Dublin, Cape Town and Tel Aviv are likely to experience cuts. The company has plans to save about 25 million pounds (approx. $38.6 million) in costs over the next two years, and as part of the decision it will entirely close its Tel Aviv office this year and Dublin in 2016. Wonga was founded in 2007 by Errol Damelin and Jonty Hurwitz.

February 25, 2015 | Vectorious Medical Technologies, a medical device company, announced that it raised $5 million in new funding. Investors in the funding round included RadBioMed incubator and private investors including Zohar Gilon, Gur Muntzer and US-based Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center (GCIC) of the Cleveland Clinic. The company will reportedly use the funds to continue the development of its medical products for the treatment of cardiovascular conditions, with hopes to begin the first human trials together with US and Israeli cardiologists. Vectorious Medical Technologies was founded in 2011 by CEO Oren Goldstein.

February 25, 2015 | According to reports in the “Korea Herald,” Viber, the instant messaging application, may be facing patent infringements in Korea. The news source reports that a Korean court has ruled in favor of SK Telecom’s claim that Viber infringed its patent on reorganizing contact information on smartphones in the application, which was registered in 2006. SK Telecom sued Viber in November. Viber founder Talmon Marco reports to “Tech Crunch” that the company will soon release a longer statement addressing the allegations. If the court rules against Viber, the service could be banned in Korea.

February 25, 2015 | The SaaS company Knowmail announced that it raised $1.2 million in seed funding. The round was led by early-stage venture capital firms Plus Ventures, 2B Angels, After Dox and INE Ventures. The company plans to use the new funds to help accelerate its growth by developing its sales and development team. Knowmail’s tools help colleagues communicate and collaborate effectively. Knowmail was founded in 2014 by Oded Avital and Haim Senior.

February 24, 2015 | Unilever, the British-Dutch consumer goods company, signed an agreement with Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist to identify startups with technology that could be useful to the multinational company. Unilever is the 41st international company to sign on with the OCS program, and Chief Scientist Avi Hasson met with Unilever R&D chief David Blanchard to sign the agreement. The OCS program hopes to help Israeli startups with relevant technologies for partnered multinational companies to continue to receive funding, both from the OCS and from relevant multinational corporations.

February 24, 2015 | The Israeli advertising agency Allenby Concept House has plans to open a new branch in Amsterdam, according to a “Globes” report. The new branch will be a joint effort between Amsterdam ad agency Kwartvoorhalf and the owners of the app ‘I’M IN’ and will operate in Amsterdam under the company name Allenby Amsterdam. Allenby manages projects for companies like Skittles, Golf, SodaStream, G-Star and more. Founded in 2009, Allenby Concept House already has one branch outside of Israel in New York.

February 22, 2015 | According to a “Calcalist” report, the Israeli website security company Namogoo raised $5 million in a recent funding round. The round was led by Blumberg Capital, 83 North Venture Capital, Inimity VC, Adler-Chomsky and Founders Guild. Namogoo, which means ‘vanished’ in Hebrew, was founded in 2014 by CEO Chemi Katz and company COO Ohad Greenshpan. Namogoo hopes to minimize client-side injected malware on branded websites.

February 22, 2015 | NYU Langone Medical Center and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced that they received a $9 million gift from Laura and Isaac Perlmutter to fund two, major joint cancer research endeavors. The institutions believe that there is potentially far-reaching impact for the research projects in question to advance cancer research. The first $3 million grant will finance six cancer-focused research projects conducted by researchers at NYU Langone and the Technion. The remaining $6 million will be used to establish a state-of-the-art research facility on Technion’s campus in Israel that will support these and other research projects– and which will have a principal focus on the emerging field of cancer metabolomics. NYU Langone is a world-renowned leader in the investigation and treatment of cancer. The Technion is one of Israel’s leading academic and research centers and a top-ranked science and technology global research university.

February 22, 2015 | The international computer manufacturer Lenovo is recalling Israeli image-identifying Superfish software on some of its latest laptops. According to Lenovo, the company will disable the pre-install laptops on relevant computers, which the company believes to be computers that were shipped between September and December of 2014. It is believed that Superfish’s image recognition technology, which, among other things, can be used to search images and provide related image advertising content, is causing unwanted pop-ups on Lenovo computers, a breach that could put personal user data at risk. Superfish was founded in 2006 by Michael Chertok and Adi Pinchas.

February 22, 2015 | Reports were confirmed that Check Point, the Israeli software company, will acquire the cybersecurity firm Hyperwise for “tens of millions of dollars.” Initial reports had suggested that Check Point, which is headed by CEO Gil Shwed, acquired Hyperwise for up to $80 million, however the exact amount of the deal could not be confirmed. The company stated that it did not believe that the acquisition would affect its financial results. Shlomo Kramer, who is one of the co-founders of Check Point together with Shwed, is an investor in Hyperwise.

February 22, 2015 | The Israeli IP and call center designer, Tikal Networks hopes to raise £5 million (approx. $7.7 million) on London’s AIM stock exchange, according to reports. “The Independent” reports that the company hopes to raise £5 million at a company valuation of £16 million, after money. The offering is being handled by Grant Thornton. Tikal Networks’ founder, Doron Dovrat, was the first Israeli to float a company on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), his then-venture called Dmatek, which was later sold to venture capitalists for £53 million in 2008. Tikal Networks was founded in 2004 and serves 45 major companies has well as 20,000 individuals, on average.

February 19, 2015 | Uber, the popular car service application, announced that it raised a whopping $2.8 billion in Series E funding. The company raised $1.2 billion in December at a company valuation of $40 billion from undisclosed investors, by “New York Times” reports suggest that the company expanded their Series E round to raise a total of $2.8 billion. The company, which was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, plans to use the funds to continue investing in expansion, especially to Asian regions. Uber opened an office in Tel Aviv and began its transportation service late last year.

February 19, 2015 | The information security company Nyotron Information Security announced that it received a $7 million investment from Meir Shamir, the owner of Mivtach-Shamir Food Industries. In addition, existing company investors have committed $3 million to the same funding round. Paranoid, Nyotron’s cybersecurity software is designed to protect against sophisticated cyber attacks at a national level. Nyotron was founded by Nir Gaist.

February 19, 2015 | The Israeli company generating energy from waves in the ocean, WERPO, announced that it will partner with the African Center for Energy Policy in Ghana. As part of the collaboration, WERPO reports that it plans to generate 500MW of electricity for the people of Ghana through the power the sea. The company has similar joint ventures with countries in the Caribbean and China. WERPO, which stands for Wave Electricity Renewable Power Ocean, was founded in 2014 and is headed by CEO and Director Daniel Naimi.

February 18, 2015 | The Israeli Foreign Ministry, together with GAL Water Technologies, will establish a portable desalinization center in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Representatives from GAL as well as Foreign Ministry representatives attended an inauguration event of the portable unit to be shipped to the Marshall Islands that took place in Hadera, Israel. In addition, the Government of Israel will provide water-related health support to the Marshall Islands to the tune of $150,000. The Marshall Islands are a chain of 13 located in the Pacific Ocean near the equator.