Israel’s Viola Ventures Raises $250M Fund For Early-Stage Investments

Israeli venture capital firm, Viola Ventures, announced last week the closing of a $250 million early-stage investments fund. This will be the company’s sixth fund.

The company will focus on backing startups in sectors like fintech, vertical AI, deep tech, digital health, next-generation enterprise infrastructure, SaaS 3.0, Web 3.0, and cybersecurity. In general, the VC said it intends to allocate funds to 25-30 seed and Series A round companies seeking early-stage investment.

The collective value of the capital firm’s assets under management (AUM) is now over $1.25 billion.

It also comes on the heels of a record-breaking year for Viola Ventures as eight of its portfolio companies have reached unicorn status.

Founded in 2000, Viola Ventures seeks out promising tech-focused start-ups and invests in them to grow into “global category leaders”. Some of the companies it has supported include ironSource, an app developing company, Payoneer, a financial services company, AI transcription firm Verbit, and Immunai, a biotech firm; all of which represent Israel’s top-performing companies throughout Israel’s tech ecosystem, even by global standards. 

“It’s not only important to invest in high-performing companies but to invest in them early,” said Danny Cohen, general partner at Viola Ventures. “Our track record proves that we know how to identify outstanding teams and support them to unicorn status and beyond.”

“The Israeli ecosystem has shattered its own glass ceiling reaching 60 unicorns, 33 of them in the last 12 months,” said Omry Ben David, general partner at the Israeli VC, “Viola Ventures invested less than 0.5 percent of the capital deployed in Israel in 2021 and has 15% of Israel’s total unicorns.”

“The Israeli tech ecosystem is definitely evolving. Israeli entrepreneurs have growing aspirations and we are seeing more Israeli companies going public and staying independent, thus controlling their own destiny for longer,” he added.