News Briefs

December 21, 2016 | Israeli machine learning startup Dynamic Yield has raised $22 million in Series C financing round led by Vertex and ClalTech, with participation from Baidu and Global Founders Capital. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLP and Innovation Endeavors also participated. Dynamic Yield’s advanced machine learning engine builds actionable customer segments in real time, enabling marketers to increase revenue via personalization, recommendations, automatic optimization & 1:1 messaging. Dynamic Yield, founded in 2012 by CEO Liad Agmon and CTO Omri Mendellevich has offices in Tel Aviv, New York and Berlin. The company has raised $37 million to date, including the latest financing.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

  December 19, 2016 | Israeli augmented reality startup Lumus Ltd., has raised another $30 million in financing. Lumus previously announced it had raised $15 million bringing the total raised in this round to $45 million. Quanta Computer, one of the biggest Taiwanese laptop makers, led the round, with additional participation from HTC and other strategic investors. Shanda Group and Crystal-Optech also participated. Founded in 2000 by Yaakov Amitai and based in Rehovot, Lumus develops high-end transparent near-to-eye displays for augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and smart eyewear. Lumus develops and sells transparent displays to companies working on developing consumer and enterprise AR solutions.

 

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

December 19, 2016 |Israeli Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup Dragonera has raised $3 million in a seed round led by serial entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg’s venture capital fund Singulariteam. The Tel Aviv based company, which was founded this summer, also announced the launch of its artificial intelligence driven software development platform. The company says its platform can automate up to 70% of early development of new products by leveraging micro-services, and pre-existing pieces of code. The proceeds will be used to accelerate its product’s release in various markets around the world.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

December 18, 2016 |DayTwo, a leader in actionable health solutions based on gut microbiome, is pleased to announce its ongoing collaboration with the Mayo Clinic to bring the DayTwo Personalized Nutrition Solution to early adopters in the US. DayTwo provides actionable health solutions based on gut microbiome aimed at improving health and preventing disease, utilizing the DayTwo Microbiome Platform. Its first product, the DayTwo Personalized Nutrition Solution, is based on groundbreaking research from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, led by Prof. Eran Segal and Dr. Eran Elinav. The research showed there was no “one size fits all” approach to nutrition, and different people responded differently to the same food. Hence, nutrition guidelines aimed at balancing blood sugar levels must be personally tailored. Founded in 2015 by CEO Lihi Segal and Yuval Ofek, DayTwo is the brainchild of Segal and Elinav. The startup has already received funding from billionaire Marius Nacht, the co-founder of successful Israeli cyber-security firm Check Point. His investment is estimated at a couple of million dollars.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 15, 2016 | Israeli Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup Knowmail has closed $3.5 million financing round lead by CE Ventures, with participation from existing investors AfterDox, Plus Ventures, 2B Angels, INE Ventures, and various unnamed private investors. The company plans to use the proceeds to continue building out Knowmail’s functionality ahead of a launch in early 2017. Knowmail was founded in 2014 by Haim Senior, Oded Avital and Avi Mandelberg. The company is a SaaS that acts as a personal assistant by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help employees communicate and collaborate more effectively by better management of emails and other messages.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 15, 2016 | Israeli cyber security company Intezer has raised $2 million in a seed round co-led by Samsung NEXT and Alon Cohen founder and former CEO of CyberArk Software Inc. and FilesX. Several additional angel investors also participated in the round. Intezer has developed a virtual “security camera” for the digital space of the enterprise. Intezer was founded in 2015 by Itai Tevet, CEO and former head of CERT – the Computer Emergency Response Team of Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Roy Halevi, CTO and former cyber security architect for the IDF, and Alon Cohen, Founding Investor, founder and former CEO of CyberArk. Intezer is planning to double the size of its team over the coming year.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 15, 2016 | Israeli fintech company BlueVine has closed a $49 million Series D financing round led by existing investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North, Citi Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund and Silicon Valley Bank. BlueVine is an online provider of everyday financing to small businesses. Since launching in March 2014, BlueVine’s cloud-based financing solutions have helped thousands of small businesses obtain quick, easy access to the funds they need to purchase inventory, cover expenses and expand operations. The company was founded by CEO Eyal Lifshitz and CTO Nir Klar in 2013 and now has 93 employees in its Tel Aviv and Palo Alto offices (about half in each). With this latest financing round, BlueVine has raised $107.5 million to date including $40 million in January 2016.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 14, 2016 | Israeli cyber intelligence company EverCompliant has closed a $9.5 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Arbor Ventures and included existing investors Carmel Ventures, StarFarm Ventures and Nyca Partners. With this investment, Melissa Guzy of Arbor Ventures has joined the Board of Directors of EverCompliant. The Tel Aviv based company pioneers transaction laundering detection and prevention. Founded by CEO Ron Teicher, CTO Noam Rabinovich, and VP R&D Raz Abramov, EverCompliant raised $3.5 million in May 2015.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 13, 2016 | After a 33-year career, Intel Israel General Manager Maxine Fassberg announced today that she has decided to step down from the post. Yaniv Garty, currently Group General Manager, Wireless Connectivity Solutions at Intel Platform Engineering, has been appointed to replace her. Fassberg’s long career at Intel began in 1983 at the Intel Electronics plant in Jerusalem, as a lithography engineer. She managed the plant in Kiryat Gat (Fab 18) in 2000-2004, and was appointed manager of the new Intel Kiryat Gat plant (Fab 28) in 2006. She was appointed Intel Israel General Manager in June 2007. Garty will officially take up the post of General Manager on January 15, 2017.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 13, 2016 | Israeli startup BreezoMeter, a leading global air quality analytics provider, announced today the closing of $3 million round in series A fundraising. Funding was led by Phi Square Holdings, with Entrée Capital, Launchpad Digital Health and SeediL also participated in the financing. BreezoMeter will use the funding to expand its air quality data access globally. The company also plans to launch an new line of products with the goal of providing real-time knowledge about air quality to everyone at all times. BreezoMeter was recently selected by Unreasonable Group and Barclays to join the Unreasonable Impact program for future green economy leaders, due to the projected 500 jobs the company will add to the emerging green economy within the next five years. Breezometer is also working on a project to help the city of Paris, France with its air pollution problem.

 

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 12, 2016 | During a stop on Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Economic Development Mission to Israel, economic development leaders took part in the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and Israel’s CyberSpark, a non-profit private organization focused on the promotion of the unique cybersecurity ecosystem in and around Be’er-Sheva, Israel, which includes a combination of academic, industry, and government resources. The MOU was signed in Tel Aviv on Sunday in a meeting attended by CyberSpark’s leadership team and executives from many of the leading cybersecurity firms in the country. The signing of the cooperation agreement solidified ties between two regions known for their global leadership in the field of cybersecurity.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 11, 2016 | Israeli startup Life On Air Inc. has raised $52 million for its live video chat app Houseparty. The financing round was led by Sequoia Capital with the participation of previous investors Aleph VC, Comcast Ventures and Greylock Partners. The company has raised $70 million to date. Houseparty is an immensely popular app, launched in early 2016, which allows large groups to participate in live chat if they are members in the chat group. Thus participants can know exactly who they are chatting with. Houseparty has been one of the most downloaded apps this year from Apple’s iStore. Houseparty is a second app for Life on Air, whose first product was live-streaming smartphone video app Meerkat, which failed after being frozen out by Twitter. Life on Air is headquartered in San Francisco with its development office in Tel Aviv. The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Ben Rubin, CTO Itai Danino, COO, Roi Tirosh and Head of Product Uri Haramati.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 11, 2016 | Content discovery platform Taboola announced this week that it will open a big data center at the Advanced Technologies Park (ATP) adjacent to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba in 2017. Taboola delivers personalized recommendations to over one billion users every month, on many of the web’s most innovative and highly-visited websites. In 2016, it signed agreements with MSN and AOL. It currently has 550 employees and is looking to grow to 800 in 2017. The company expects to have 20 employees working at the new Beersheba center by the end of 2017. Taboola has major centers in Tel Aviv and New York and offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Bangkok. Taboola was founded in 2007 by CEO Adam Singolda and has a current valuation of around $1B.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

| December 8, 2016 | OurCrowd, a leading equity crowdfunding platform, will host their 2017 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit on Feb. 16, 2017, in Jerusalem. The company claims it is the world’s largest equity crowdfunding event and the biggest investor event in Israel. Registrations have already doubled from this time last year, with up to 5,000 people from the global tech investment community expected to attend and more than 100 startups making news are slated to participate. Attendees will span some 60 countries, and will include investors, venture and corporate partners, entrepreneurs, 30 global delegations, industry leaders and members of the press. The 2017 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit theme, “The Future Is Here,” will showcase how 2016’s highlighted cutting-edge technologies are being implemented in businesses now and remaking entire industries.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]

 | December 7, 2016 | Israeli video optimization startup Beamr imaging Ltd. has raised $4 million from Verizon Ventures, the company reports. Previous investors in the Tel Aviv-based video and image encoding and processing company with commercially deployed content adaptive optimization technology include Eric Schmidt’s fund Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC, and Disruptive. Beamr raised $15 million in March and $9.5 million in a financing round in 2014. Beamr was founded in 2009 by CEO Sharon Carmel.

[sharethis-inline-buttons]