News Briefs

 May 14, 2017| , CyberArk Software Ltd., an Israeli cyber security company, has announced that it has acquired US DevOps security technology startup Conjur for $42 million in an all cash transaction. Conjur has developed identification and auditing software for the DevOps market. With the deal, CyberArk hopes to position itself to provide a more complete suite of offerings to the quickly growing DevOps market segment. CyberArk was founded in 1999 by Udi Mokady and has raised $67.5 million in funding to date.

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  May 14, 2017 | Hargol FoodTech, the Israeli company developing Steak TzarTzar — high-protein grasshoppers — won this year’s TLV Startup Challenge in the ag-tech/food-tech category. Hosted by Startau, the TLV Start-Up Challenge  is one of the largest global startup competition in Israel bringing together top startups, entrepreneurs, and VCs from around the world. For winning the competition, Hargol was awarded entry into the Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play accelerator and $10,000 in professional services @ThinkFuture Technologies Pvt.

 

 

 

 

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May 10, 2017 | Guesty (formerly Superhost), a service for property owners to manage their apartments listed on Airbnb, raised $3 million. The current financing round was led by Magma Venture Partners (an early Waze investor), and was joined by Buran VC and AltaIR Capital. The company, which graduated from Y Combinator in 2014, was founded by Israeli twin brothers Amiad and Kobi Soto.

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May 9, 2017 | Hong Kong-based investment firm AID Partners Capital Ltd will acquire Israeli medical diagnostic company GeneSort for $23 million. The deal will provide GeneSort with additional resources and support as is seeks to expand into Southeast Asia and other global markets. Moshe Hogeg’s tech focused venture capital firm Singulariteam fund is the largest investor in GeneSort, having invested $2.2 million in the company. GeneSort is a molecular diagnostics company focused on integrating molecular genomics with personalized therapeutic approaches. GeneSort also recently signed a development contract with the government of Malta, and also won a contract with the Israeli government to deploy diagnostic testing in the country.

 

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May 9, 2017 | Israel’s Yokee Music. has been acquired by Canadian music provider Stingray Digital Group Inc. for an undisclosed amount. Three of Yokee’s social music apps, Yokee, Yokee Guitar, and Yokee Piano are top ranked in the music category in 100 countries. Although no financial details about the deal were disclosed, according to estimates the acquisition was for tens of millions of dollars. Founded in 2013, Yokee has raised $1.3 million from 2B Angels, Lior Prosor and other private investors.

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May 8, 2017 | Private equity firms invested $316 million In Israeli startups in the first quarter of 2017, according to the IVC-Shibolet Israeli Private Equity Market Survey released today. The quarterly investment is down 45 percent from the last quarter of 2016, but 22 percent above the $260 million invested in the first quarter of 2016. According to Omer Ben-Zvi, partner at law firm Shibolet & Co., “the quarterly dollar amount scope is relatively low, but that factor tends to be highly influenced by one or two big deals, which we haven’t seen this quarter. We do expect to see those kinds of deals in the next quarter.”

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May 8, 2017 | Investment banker Andy Kaye has joined Israeli crowd-funding firm OurCrowd as president and chief institutional officer. Kaye will work closely with founder and CEO Jon Medved. He will be responsible for working with the growing number of institutions that invest in OurCrowd’s portfolio of Israeli startups. Kaye was the CEO of wealth management firm Robertson Stephens Israel, among other executive positions. Founded in 2012 in Jerusalem, OurCrowd already boasts 17,000 investors from 110 countries, who have invested some $400 million in 110 portfolio companies and funds.

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May 7, 2017 | Israeli medical device company CartiHeal has raised $18.3 million in a round of financing led by aMoon. CartiHeal is developing an implant for regenerating damaged cartilage and bone. CartiHeal was founded in 2009 by CEO Nir Altschuler, in cooperation with Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

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May 4, 2017 | Taranis, an Israeli precision agriculture intelligence platform, today announced it has closed a $7.5 million Series A round of financing led by Finistere Ventures, an AgTech venture pioneer, and Vertex Ventures. Existing investors, Eshbol Investments, Mindset Ventures, OurCrowd, and angel investor Eyal Gura, also joined the round. With $9.5 million in total funding to date, Taranis aims to lead the digital farming revolution by giving farmers around the globe the ability to predict and prevent detrimental threats to their crops—and bottom line. Founded in 2014 by Eli Bukchin, Ayal Karmi, and Ofir Schlam, Taranis uses deep learning on proprietary data sets that includes sub-mm aerial imagery, field sensors, satellite imagery, weather forecast and data from its field scouting app to predict and prevent crop disease and pest losses thereby helping farmers increase their yields and cut costs.

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May 4, 2017 | Next Insurance, an Israeli insurtech company,  has raised $29 million in a Series A funding round led by Munich Re/HSB Ventures along with Markel, Nationwide, and other existing investors.  Founded in 2015 by CEO Guy Goldstein, Nissim Tapiro, and Alon Huri, to date the company has raised $42 million.

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May 4, 2017 |  SoftWheel, an Israeli startup integrating shock absorbers into wheels (including wheelchair wheels), announced that is has raised $10 million in funding. Founded in 2011, by CEO Daniel Barel, the company has raised $15 million to date, including the latest round.

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May 4, 2017 |Loom Systems, an  Israeli AI-powered log analysis software platform developer, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) with Meron Capital and 31Ventures Global Innovation Fund. The company was founded in 2015.

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May 3, 2017 |  Fornova, an Israeli online travel company has raised $17 million. The round was led by Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners and with the participation of previous investors.Founded in 2008 by Michael Rubanovich and Dmitry Babitsky, the company has raised $20 million to date. Fornova allows hotels, price comparison websites, and online reservation sites to get a full picture of their products in real time.

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April 27, 2017 | Israeli application reliability and log intelligence company OverOps announced today that it has closed a $30 million Series C financing round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Menlo Ventures. Both were previous investors in OverOps, which has now raised $52 million. Founded in 2012 by CEO Tal Weiss, OverOps (formerly known as Takipi) has offices in Tel Aviv and San Francisco. The company transforms application logs into real-time intelligence that enables modern development and operations teams to solve critical production issues in minutes vs. days or weeks.

 

 

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April 27, 2017 |  Gett, the Israeli taxi haling app has confirmed it is acquiring ridesharing app Juno. No financial details were disclosed but Gett (formerly GetTaxi) founder and CEO David Waiser told “Techcrunch” that the price of the deal is $200 million, although he did not say whether the payment would be in cash or shares. Gett has raised $513 million to date including a $300 million investment from Volkswagen last year.  “This current deal provides a really enormous opportunity for expansion,” Waiser said. Juno was founded in New York in 2016 by the Israeli founder of messaging app Viber, CEO Talmon Marco, which was sold to Japan’s Rakuten in 2014 for $900 million. Juno is a taxi app based in New York whose declared aim is to compete with Uber.

 

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