July 27, 2014 | The Israeli company BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics is expected to receive a $5 million grant from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The funds will go towards conducting trials on its product in conjunction with the University of Sao Paolo, according to “Globes.” The company has yet to respond to the reports, which are not yet official. BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics specializes in developing stem cell therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.

July 27, 2014 | According to a report by “Bloomberg News,” the Israeli company SodaStream is in talks with an unnamed investment firm for sale. As a result of the report, the share price of SodaStream stocks shot up sharply on Wall Street. The “Bloomberg” report also noted that the talks are on an acquisition price of $40 a share. SodaStream is the creator of the home soda machine and is based in Lod, Israel.

July 23, 2014 | The TV Format Fund, created by Alon Dolev and the Rubicon Business Group six months ago, will invest $55 million in TV shows for their sale aboard. The fund hopes to capitalize on the recent success of Israeli TV pilots like “Homeland” by investing in new pilots being launched in Israel and selling them aboard, much like a venture capital firm in the world of high-tech. Dolev’s fund raised the initial funds from Rubicon, an investment group with stated interests in the finance, tourism, insurance and leisure, and hopes to bring in new investors, Dolev told Reuters. In addition, Dolev asserts that he hopes to invest in between 12-14 new shows each year. “We can return 60-100 percent of the investment from selling options,” Dolev said.

July 23, 2014 | The cross-platform language learning solution Lingua.ly announced that it has launched a free iOS application to make it even easier to learn new languages. The iOS app follows an existing Android and web application for the company’s platform that allows users to type and paste words in 18 languages in order to receive translation, along with lessons that help users remember what they’ve translated. Currently, Lingua.ly supports Russian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew, among other languages. According to company CEO and co-founder Dr. Jan Ihmels, “The availability of Lingua.ly on iOS confirms our commitment to provide an open and free language learning solution for users around the globe.”

July 23, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, the Mobileye initial public offering on Wall Street will be valued at approximately $3.8 billion after money. The original prospectus was for a valuation between $3.5-5 billion, making the actual valuation at the lower end of estimates. The company will offer 8.325 million shares at a price of $17-19 per share. The offering will most likely take place in two weeks, when the stock will be traded under the ticker MBLY on the New York Stock Exchange. Mobileye was founded in 1999 and has developed a camera-based system to mount on vehicles in order to aid in collision prevention.

July 22, 2014 | SuperSonic Software announced the close of its second round of funding at $15 million. The top investor in this round is one of China’s largest venture capital firms, SAIF Partners, as well as Greylock, bringing total investment in the company to $23.2 million since the company was founded in 2009. SuperSonic’s main product is a cloud-based software development kit enabling mobile application developers to include advanced features like streaming interactive advertisements in their applications. As SuperSonic CEO and co-founder Gil Shoham told VentureBeat, “We have identified several interesting opportunities that … will significantly improve user acquisition effectiveness and ROI.”

July 21, 2014 | A delegation of Israeli gaming startups will head for the United States and Canada in cooperation with the Ministry of the Economy. The startups hope to pitch their technologies and receive investment from large companies and investors like Google, Apple, Facebook, Sony, Amazon, Ubisoft and others at the Casual Connect conference in San Francisco this week. Some of the Israeli startups that are part of the delegation include TabTable, Side-Kick, and other companies that facilitate the promotions of games and apps like TROPHiT and DAU-UP. The delegation was organized by the Ministry of the Economy’s Invest in Israel initiative and the Israeli digital game developers’ association GameIS.

July 21, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, Mobileye collision prevention solutions provider has updated is Wall Street IPO filing with first quarter 2014 results and a list of current shareholders. Mobileye expects the offering at a company value of $3.5-5 billion, especially since the revenue keeps rolling in for the company. “Globes” reports that Mobileye’s first quarter revenue rose by 204% from the corresponding quarter due to a spike in sales to automakers like GM, Nissan, Ford and Volvo, among others. Mobileye is an Israeli startup that has developed a system based on camera and artificial vision technology for automobiles with the purpose of preventing accidents.

July 20, 2014 | The social app Yo! raised $1.5 million in seed funding, valuing the application at $10 million. Yo! also reported the names of its investors, which they have kept undisclosed thus far, including Betaworks, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and the founders of China’s Tencent, among others. In addition, one of the founder’s of the company, Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg also invested in the company. According to Yo! the funds will be used to expand operations in San Francisco, and to hire a team of engineers and business developers. Over 2 million people worldwide have downloaded Yo!’s application worldwide since its release last month.

July 17, 2014 | The Israeli gifting website Jifiti announced that it will partner with electronic invitation website Evite to allow invite recipients to send gifts through the same platform. Evite is a leading digital invitation and party planning platform that has over 200 million annual electronic invite recipients in its database. Jifiti’s main technology called ‘Gift It’ allows guests to browse and select gifts from retailers like Sephora, Amazon, Nike, Banana Republic and Toys ‘R’ Us and instantly send someone a digital ‘gift card’ for in-store or online redemption. Jifiti was founded in 2012 by Yaakov Martin, Meir Dudai and Shaul Weisband and to date has raised $3.5 million in funding.

July 17, 2014 | Alcobra Pharmaceuticals filed a prospectus for a $100 million offering on NASDAQ. The company has developed alternative drugs for the treatment of ADHD based on its research. In May 2013, Alcobra’s IPO raised $25 million at a company value of $89 million. As of today, Alcobra is worth $260 million. The filing for the offering comes as Alcobra announces patient recruitment for Phase III clinical trials for its treatment for ADHD.

July 17, 2014 | The smart payment technology provider Zooz announced that it raised $12 million in a recent financing round that was led by Blumberg Capital, XSeed Capital, lool ventures, Rhodium, and new investors Access Industries and Camp One Ventures. Zooz hopes to use the funds to continue the development of its product, scale up operations and open new offices. Zooz’s technology provides advanced payment technology by enhancing and optimizing the existing payment infrastructure of enterprise-sized businesses, enabling them to accept flexible payments in-store and online. Founded in 2010 by Oren Levy and Ronen Morecki, Zooz’s offices are located in Herzliya Pituach.

July 17, 2014 | Intel announced that it will transfer 360 of its employees in Israel to Ireland for the period of 12-24 months. According to a “Globes” report, Intel originally planned to send only 60 Israelis to help the beginning of operations at the Dublin plant. The Israeli employees will relocated to Dublin together with their families. Intel is one of the pioneers in the Israeli high-tech sector, training future engineers and significantly contributing to the local Israeli economy.

July 15, 2014 | OurCrowd, the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform, announced that it has raised $60 million in equity for 46 companies since its founding. Twenty of those companies raised more than $1 million each in investments, and four companies raised well over $3 million using the OurCrowd platform. OurCrowd’s roster of supported companies includes ReWalk, Consumer Physics (the creators of SCiO), BioCatch and Abe’s Market. CEO of OurCrowd Jon Medved stated, “We are proud to have raised these amounts in just 16 months since launching. These numbers demonstrate that our model works and can be effectively used for major funding rounds. The fact that OurCrowd has deployed more money for our companies than our Silicon Valley competitors proves that we are indeed at the forefront of equity crowdfunding innovation.” OurCrowd is a hybrid VC-equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors who wish to invest in Israel and global early stage companies.

July 15, 2014 | According to the IVC Research Center, Israeli high-tech companies raised $930 million in the second quarter of 2014, the highest quarterly amount since 2000. The amount was raised by over 175 Israeli high-tech companies in Q2/2014, a 38 percent jump from the $673 million raised in the first quarter of 2014 and 109 percent above the $446 million attracted to Israeli tech in the second quarter of 2013. Each company averaged a financing round of $5.3 million in Q2/2014. The figures include a $135 million investment in Landa Digital Printing by Germany’s ALTANA Group.

July 15, 2014 | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is set to review Teva Pharmaceutical Industries‘ drug application for the treatment of asthma, the albuterol multi-dose dry-powder inhaler (MDPI). According to a “Globes” report, the inhaler will be used to treat patients of 12 years of age or older for bronchospasm. Teva VP of Global Respiratory R&D Tushar Shah said, “If approved, albuterol MDPI would become the first breath-actuated dry-powder symptomatic and rescue inhaler available to asthma patients. As the current market-leader in asthma rescue inhalers, it is our hope that the new dry-powder innovation utilized with albuterol MDPI will help fill an unmet need in the existing asthma market.”

July 14, 2014 | Apple won the patent trial against Israeli company Emblaze, finding that the former did not infringe the latter’s patent on live streaming video. Emblaze asserted in the case that Apple had forced major organizations and companies, like Major League Baseball, to adopt a live streaming video platform that infringed the company’s patent. The judge presiding over the case in San Jose, California found Apple not guilty of patent infringement following Apple lawyer Mark Fowler’s argument that Emblaze is a failed company going after Apple because of its success. Emblaze Group was founded in 1993 in Israel as a software company developing computer-based training, which today focuses its efforts on expanding live video streaming platforms.

July 14, 2014 | ReWalk Robotics filed for an initial public offering on NASDAQ to raise $58 million, with a company value of $250-300 million after money. According to a “Globes” report, the company recently changed its name from Argo Medical Technology to the name of its major product, the ReWalk Exoskeleton, a device that allows paraplegics to walk upright. The device was invented by Dr. Amit Goffer whose startup Odin sold to Medtronic for $9 million in 1997 and who himself is paralyzed. The ReWalk device recently received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the sale of its device in the United States.

July 13, 2014 | Israel Chemicals and Dutch company AkzoNobel have signed an agreement to cooperate in the long-term production and marketing of vacuum salt and white potash. According to a “Globes” report, the two companies signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding calling for the production and marketing of 1.5 million tons of vacuum salt and 50,000 tons of white potash. Israel Chemicals has begun the construction of a production facility for the products at its mining facility in Suria mine, Catalonia, Spain.

The American company ServiceNow which offers a platform-as-a-service provider of IT service management software acquireed the Israeli automatic business service management (BSM) Neebula for $100 million. Neebula’s flagship product, ServiceWatch, automates the discovery, mapping, and monitoring of IT-enabled enterprise services. This addition will become an integral part of the ServiceNow IT Operations Management portfolio. “Neebula is very excited to be part of the ServiceNow team,” said Yuval Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Neebula. “We had a vision to transform the ITOM market by automating the creation and maintenance of service models.

July 9, 2014 | DSP solutions provider Ceva acquired French company RivieraWaves for $19 million. RivieraWaves is a privately-held company that creates solutions for wireless connectivity IP for WiFi and Bluetooth technologies. Ceva hopes that RivieraWaves will expand the company’s licensing and royalty revenue base tby improving the service of devices like smartphones, tablets and small cells. The acquisition will also allow Ceva to extend its domain into the sectors of wearable technology and Internet of Things devices in the home and car. According to ABI research, Ceva’s addressable market is set to reach 35 billion connected devices by 2020. Ceva was founded in Israel but is headquartered in Mountain View, California with design centers in Israel, Ireland and sale and support offices in Europe, the United States and Asia.    

July 9, 2014 | Matomy Media Group raised a total of $70 million following their initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange. Following the offering, the digital ad company was valued at $347 million. The offering closed just after one day at a price of 227 pence ($3.89), with Matomy offering up 21 percent of the company to new investors. Matomy was founded in 2007 by Ofer Druker and is controlled by Ilan Shiloach and specializes in digital and mobile advertising.

July 9, 2014 | Perion application development platform will partner with cloud-based security company CYREN. Perion hopes to use CYREN’s online security services to expand Perion Codefuel’s, Perion’s software monetization solutions unit, suite of browsing and security applications. Perion, formerly IncrediMail, is a global consumer software company founded in 2000 by Yaron and Ofer Adler.