News Briefs

April 26, 2016 | Israeli artificial intelligence (AI) medical imaging startup AIDoc Medical has closed a $7 million funding round led by TLV Partners, with participation from previous investors including Magma Ventures and Emerge. The Tel Aviv based startup plans to use the new capital to expand its core R&D team, customer success, and marketing teams both in the US and in Israel. AIDoc uses artificial intelligence to diagnose medical images including CTs and MRIs. The company, which was founded by CEO Elad Walach, CTO Michael Braginsky and VP R&D Guy Reiner has raised $10.5 million to date.

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April 26, 2017 | Israeli startups raised a total of $1.03 billion in the first quarter of 2017, 8 percent below the capital raised in the first quarter of last year, according to the IVC-ZAG Israeli High-Tech Capital Raising Survey. The figure reflects a 4 percent decrease compared with the previous quarter (the fourth quarter of 2016). In the report, released today, IVC Research Center says the number of funding deals was 10 percent below the quarterly average in the past three years. The report was compiled in collaboration with law firm Zysman, Aharoni, Gayer & Co. (ZAG | S&W).

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April 26, 2017 | Israeli taxi haling app Gett is in advanced talks to buy ridesharing app Juno for $250 million, “Techcrunch” reports, according to multiple sources. Both companies declined to respond. 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. The new combined Gett and Juno company would reportedly offer its drivers a stake in the company in a bid to outcompete Uber, “Techcrunch” reports.

Israel-based Gett (formerly GetTaxi), was founded by CEO Shahar Waiser. The company, which is mainly a taxi-hailing app, is strong in its home country as well as in Western Europe and Russia but has struggled to gain a foothold in New York and elsewhere in the US. Gett has raised $513 million to date including a $300 million investment from Volkswagen last year.

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April 25, 2017 | Twistlock, an Israeli cloud container security solutions developer has raised $17 million in Series B funding, led by Polaris Partners and with the participation of existing investors YL Ventures, TenEleven and Rally Ventures. The company, which raised $10 million last year, has raised $30 million to date, including the latest round of financing. Twistlock, which was founded in 2015 by CEO Ben Bernstein and VP R&D Dima Stopel, has headquarters in San Francisco and its development office in Herzliya.

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April 25, 2017 | HiBob, an Israeli-British startup developing human resources management software, has raised $17.5 million in a Series A round of funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Eight Roads Ventures, Arbor Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in 2014, Hibob’s flagship software, called Bob, serves as a central hub for a company’s every HR need, and includes attendance records, time-off schedules, and nearly any piece of data a firm would collect from its employees. The software is designed so that employees can input much of the data themselves.

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April 25, 2017 | Israel’s Luck Genome, which develops social casino games, has been acquired by Dutch game developer GamePoint for $12.5 million. Luck Genome was founded in 2015 by CEO Guy Ezra and head of product Liat Adir. Luck Genome will keep its name and its development center in Tel Aviv, following the acquisition. Game Point is a leading digital casino player with more than 100 employees.

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April 24, 2017 |  Arbe Robotics, an Israeli startup building collision avoidance product for drones and Swarm platform based on radar, has raised $2.5 million. The company is based in Tel Aviv and was founded in 2015 by Kobi Marenko.

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April 23, 2017 |  SteadyMed Therapeutics, an Israeli medical company, raised $30 million in a private placement led by Adage Capital Management, OrbiMed, Deerfield Management and Kingdon Capital Management. SteadyMed  develops drug product candidates to treat orphan and high-value diseases with unmet delivery needs. The company was founded in 2005 in the Zisapel family’s RAD Biomed incubator. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, much of the company’s development is carried out in its Rehovot offices.  In 2015, the company raised $40 million on Nasdaq and last year raised $32 million in a private placement.

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April 23, 2017 |  Invertex, an Israeli fashion-tech company raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by  OurCrowd, a Jerusalem-based equity crowdfunding venture capital firm. Permoda, an international retail and fashion group also participated in the round, together with prominent angel investors.

Invertex instantly capture and analyzes a person’s anatomy in detailed three dimensions. This provides users with the capacity to tailor their existing products to their customers’ specific needs or create new, fully-customized product lines. The company was founded in 2014 co-founded by CEO David Bleicher and Robert Williams.

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April 20, 2017 | Microsoft is preparing to buy Israeli cloud-monitoring and analytics startup Cloudyn in a deal thought to be worth between $50-$70 million, according to a report in Israeli business publication Calcalist. Headquartered near Tel Aviv, Cloudyn was co-founded in 2011 by CEO Sharon Wagner, CTO Dr. Boris Goldberg and VP products Vittaly Tavor. The company’s SaaS (software-as-a-solution) platform enables enterprises to save manpower by automating the monitoring of their cloud assets, through data analytics and optimization. Cloudyn has raised more than $20 million since its inception, including an $11 million round in 2015, and their clients include Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Ticketmaster.

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April 20, 2017 | MeMed, an Israeli start-up developing a reliable test to distinguish bacterial from viral infections, has secured a $9.2 million contract by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a branch of the US Department of Defense (DoD) to improve clinical applications of its technology. The contract will fund the completion of MeMed’s pioneering point of care platform distinguishing bacterial from viral infections.  MeMed was founded in 2009 and is run by co-founder and CEO Eran Eden and co-founder and CTO Kfir Oved.

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April 20, 2017 | The nanosatellite Duchifat 2 (Hoopoe 2), built by Israeli high schoolers, was successfully launched into space on Tuesday afternoon by the American launcher, Atlas V, located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After the satellite’s scheduled arrival at the International Space Station in about two days, it will be sent into orbit around Earth for about a month and a half using a special robotic arm operated by astronomers.

https://www.facebook.com/IsraelMinistryOfScienceAndTechnology/videos/1437602736261798/

Israeli Minister for Science, Technology, and Space Ofir Akunis, said, “Duchifat-2 is not only an educational venture that brings space closer to youth and lays the way for tomorrow’s generation, it is also an international research project. This is Israeli pride for the future generation, and an opportunity to increase public awareness about space.”

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April 20, 2017 | The National Basketball Association (NBA), the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and the Israel Basketball Association today announced that the 16th edition of Basketball without Borders (BWB) Europe will be held Aug. 13-16 at The Wingate Institute in Netanya, Israel, marking the first time that the NBA and FIBA’s global basketball development and community outreach program will be held in Israel.

BWB Europe will bring together the top male and female players born in 2000 from across Europe to learn directly from NBA and FIBA players, legends and coaches and to compete against the best young players from the continent. BWB Europe will also include a variety of NBA Cares and Jr. NBA community outreach efforts with youth in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in partnership with local community organizations.  These programs will highlight the power of sport to promote cultural understanding while teaching the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle and the values of the game, including teamwork, integrity and respect. BWB has reached more than 2,720 participants from 134 countries and territories since 2001, with 43 campers drafted into the NBA.

Minnesota Timberwolves forward Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to ever play in the NBA, said in a statement, “Basketball without Borders is an amazing program, and I’m fortunate that I was able to participate as a camper in 2005.  It’s great to see the NBA and FIBA recognize Israel’s basketball development efforts by hosting the camp there for the first time.  I look forward to working with Europe’s top male and female players and showing them the beauty and culture of my home country.”

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April 19, 2017 | Japanese telecom giant SoftBank is leading a $16.5 million “strategic” investment into Dome9 Security, an Israeli cloud infrastructure security company. Founded out of Tel Aviv in 2010 by Zohar Alon and Roy Feintuch, Dome9 targets enterprises with a SaaS (software as a service) platform that helps them assess their network security and detect potential misconfigurations, while simultaneously protecting against cyberattacks. The company recently moved its headquarters from Israel to Mountain View, California. This latest funding round brings the company’s total amount raised to $29 million.

 

 

 

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| April 19, 2017 | New York based ticketing platform company SeatGeek announced the acquisition of Israeli ticketing software company TopTix for $56 million. The acquisition by SeatGeek was financed by a new $57 million Series D investment round in SeatGeek led by Glynn Capital, with participation from existing investors Accel, Causeway Media Partners, Haystack Partners, Mousse Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures.

Established in 2000 by Yehuda Yuval and Eli Dagan, TopTix developed the SRO ticketing system, which currently serves 500 clients in 16 countries, processing 80 million tickets annually. Current TopTix clients, which will now be clients of SeatGeek, range from museums and theaters to festivals and sports teams, including well-known organizations such as the Royal Dutch Football Association, Ravinia Festival, and many English soccer clubs. TopTix will power the expansion of SeatGeek Open, SeatGeek’s primary ticketing platform that launched in August of 2016. SeatGeek Open enables artists and teams to sell tickets directly within other apps and websites, in places where fans are spending time and consuming content. TopTix will operate as a subsidiary of SeatGeek, continuing to service clients across the globe.

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