News Briefs

September 27, 2016 | Israeli venture capital firm Aleph has raised $180 million for its second fund, Aleph II. Founded in 2013 by Michael Eisenberg and Eden Shochat, Aleph has invested in startups such as WeWork, Meerkat and JoyTunes.

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September 26, 2016 | Samsung GIC, the Global Innovation Center, part of Samsung Electronics, announced the opening of Samsung NEXT  Tel Aviv, It’s first branch outside of the US. The announcement was made by Eyal Miller, Managing Director and CEO of Samsung NEXT Tel Aviv, during a press event at the organization’s new offices in Sarona, Tel Aviv. Samsung GIC empowers entrepreneurs and startups to build, grow and scale advanced software and services. Headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley with additional locations in New York, South Korea and now Tel Aviv, Samsung GIC works with startups at every stage of development through incubation, investment from Seed to Series B, acquisition and partnership. The organization is spearheaded by David Eun, formerly President of AOL’s media division and Global Head of Content Partnerships at Google.

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September 26, 2016 | Team Israel has won the World Baseball Classic qualifying tournament in Brooklyn, crushing Great Britain 9-1 on Sunday night. Five Israel pitchers combined to limit Britain to four hits, and three members of the blue and white hit the first home runs of the tournament over the wall to lead Israel to victory, and a place in the WBC main tournament for the first time. Israel was a perfect 3-0 in the tournament, having beaten the British side 5-2 last Thursday then beat Brazil 1-0 on Friday in a pitcher’s duel, to move into the final. The team now moves on the 16-team tournament, which will begin in South Korea in March.

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September 26, 2016 | According to a report in Israel’s Calcalist, after leading five funds in Israel and exits of hundreds of millions of dollars, Sequoia Israel will make new investments only through their American fund, Sequoia Capital. A similar step was taken from Benchmark and Greylock Partners who are no longer active in Israel. According to estimates, the reason for the decision to close the Israeli fund is primarily the desire of the partners to work through the American fund to give Israeli companies better access to the American fund.

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September 25, 2016 | Israeli anomaly detection and real time business analytics company Anodot announced an $8 million financing round led by Aleph Venture Capital and with participation by Disruptive Technologies L.P., bringing Anodot’s total funding to $12.5 million. In the nine months since Anodot’s launch, dozens of customers, including several Fortune 500 companies, have already implemented the product to prevent crises and drive revenues. Ra’anana based Anodot was founded in 2014 by CEO David Drai, VP R&D Shay Lang, and Chief Data Scientist Dr. Ira Cohen.

 

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September 22, 2016 | Israeli network relationship management platform developer Mobilize announced it has closed a $6.5 million Series A financing round and launched the self-service version of its product. The investment was led by Trinity Ventures with the participation of Floodgate Ventures, Hillsven Capital, Array Ventures, Upwest Labs in addition to SaaS angels such as Eoghan McCabe, CEO of Intercom.io, and Sanjay Subhedar. Mobilize was founded by Sharon Savariego and Arthur Vainer and has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv.

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September 21, 2016 | American-Israeli online used-car marketplace Vroom has raised $50 million in a funding round from existing and new investors, bringing their total funding to $218 million. Founded in 2013 and headed by CEO Allon Bloch, VRoom will use the funding to help expand its operations in the United States and increase inventory. The company currently has an inventory of more than 2,300 vehicles, according to its website. Vroom expects to generate more than $1 billion of revenue in 2016, up from $900 million last year. The latest round was led by existing investor T Rowe Price Associates Inc, and added technology-focused investment firm Altimeter Capital and Foxhaven Asset Management as investors.

 

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September 21, 2016 | Israeli company BlazeMeter, which produces performance testing tools for DevOps,  has been acquired by CA Technologies. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed although media reports suggest the acquisition was for about $100 million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. CA Technologies said that the acquisition of BlazeMeter, which has offices in Tel Aviv and Palo Alto, would enable it to extend its DevOps portfolio. BlazeMeter will integrate with CA’s continuous delivery solutions to improve testing efficiency and accelerate the deployment of applications. BlazeMeter, which was founded in 2011 by CEO Alon Girmonsky, raised $6.5 million in a series A financing round in 2014 from Glilot Capital Partners and YL Ventures GP Ltd.

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September 21, 2016 | Israeli crowd-funding firm OurCrowd raised $72 million from financial institutions and private investors from around the globe. So far, the crowdfunding platform has invested $300 million in 100 portfolio companies and funds. Some of its portfolio startups were sold or went public, including: ReWalk, which is traded on Nasdaq; Crosswise (bought by Oracle); Replay Technologies (bought by Intel); and NextPeer (bought by Viber). Founded in 2013 by Jon Medved, OurCrowd’s community includes nearly 15,000 investors from 110 countries.

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 September 21, 2016 | Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva Pharmaceutical and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced an agreement to develop and commercialize pain drug fasinumab. This is Regeneron’s investigational NGF antibody in Phase III clinical development for osteoarthritis pain and in Phase II development for chronic lower back pain. Under the terms of the agreement, Teva will pay Regeneron $250 million upfront and share equally in the global commercial value (excluding Japan, Korea and other Asian countries covered by a previous collaboration), as well as ongoing R&D costs of about $1 billion.

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September 20, 2016 | FinTech startup Curve has raised $3 million, bringing its total funds to $5 million. Founded in 2015 by Israeli Shachar Bialick, along with Tom Foster-Carter and Anna Mostyn-Williams, the startup develops a credit card that aggregates all your bank cards and will be synced with a mobile app.

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September 18, 2016 | Israeli FinTech startup Tipalti has raised $14 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm SGVC. A provider of payments automation solutions, Tipalti was founded in 2011 by Chen Amit and Oren Zeev. It has so far raised $27 million.

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September 15, 2016 | Chinese corporation Kuang-Chi Group has announced it will invest $4.3 million in Agent Video Intelligence (Agent Vi), an Israeli video analytics company, as part of the startup’s $6 million financing round. Founded in 2008 by Gadi Talmon and Zvi Ashani, the company has so far raised $20 million. 

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September 14, 2016 | Digital testing company Applause has raised $35 million in a Series F financing round, led by Direct Equity Partners, an investment program managed by Credit Suisse, with the participation of Accenture. This round brings Applause’s total funding-to-date to more than $115 million. The round had full participation from all of Applause’s previous investors, including Goldman Sachs’s Merchant Banking Division, QuestMark Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, Mesco Ltd and MassVentures. The company’s most recent funding was a $43 million Series E round in January, 2014. Applause is an Israeli company, with global headquarters near Boston, Massachusetts and its development center in Herzliya that was originally launched in 2008 as uTest.

 

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September 14, 2016 | Car maker Volkswagen is partnering with former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin to form a new cyber-security company called CyMotive Technologies. Other former Shin Bet executives involved in the joint venture, which will be based in Herzliya, Israel, are Tsafrir Kats and Dr. Tamir Bechor. The new company will develop products and solutions for the next generation of cars. “We see CyMotive as a long-term investment, with the purpose of making the vehicle and its surroundings safer,” Dr. Volkmar Tanneberger of Volkswagen said in a statement. 

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