News Briefs

July 10, 2016 | The State of Israel has signed an agreement with Spacecom Satellite Communications Ltd., a global fixed satellites operator of the advanced AMOS satellite fleet, for the purchase of communications services on the company’s Amos satellites for five years. The contract is worth $63 million. The state purchased an option to extend the contract for a further eight-year period, If the option is exercised, the contract will be worth a total of $164 million to Spacecom. Spacecom was founded in 1995 and is based in Ramat Gan, Israel.

 

 

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July 10, 2016 | Israeli startup Drupe, a mobile application for the Android platform, facilitating access to the functions of the smartphone, has raised $3 million in new funding from Canaan Partners Israel and Sweet Capital, a fund that was established by the founders of Candy Crush empire King Digital Entertainment. Drupe is an overlay for Android phones that contextually shows relevant contacts and various modes of communicating with them all with one swipe. When users swipe from the Drupe widget on the phone, they’re showed the most common contacts in their address book on the left and their most-used social apps on the right. Drupe was founded in 2014 by Assaf Ziv and Barak Witkowski and is based in Kfar Saba, Israel.

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July  7, 2016 | The EDAB-FENS Brain Awareness Week Excellence Award for 2016 has been awarded to The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Dana Foundation and the European Dana Alliance for the Brain (EDAB) presented the award in collaboration with the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). Celebrating special contributions to the promotion of brain awareness through continued public outreach efforts, the Neuroscience Outreach Awards were presented at FENS Forum 2016, Europe’s pre-eminent neuroscience meeting, on July 4 in Copenhagen. The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) was founded in 2010 with the support of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, as an interdisciplinary center for brain sciences. The Center has an innovative and revolutionary research agenda for understanding the brain and its complex products: movement, perception, cognition, language, and creativity.

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July 6, 2016 | Israeli startup Twistlock, which provides security solutions to virtual containers, announced it has completed a $10 million financing round led by TenEleven Ventures. Also participating in the round is new investor Rally Ventures and existing investors YL Ventures and a strategic venture firm. Twistlock also announced that Alex Doll, founder of TenEleven Ventures, has joined its board of directors. Twistlock was founded in 2015 by CEO Ben Bernstein and VP R&D Dima Stopel, who bring extensive enterprise security expertise in both the defense and private sector; both spent more than 10 years in the Microsoft R&D center in Israel and served in the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) intelligence corps. The company, which has moved its headquarters to San Francisco, has its development office in Herzliya. Twistlock raises $2.5 million in seed funding last year. The company has Fortune 50 firms, large enterprises, as well as innovative startups in its rapidly growing customer base.

 

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July 6, 2016 | FST Biometrics, a leading identification solutions provider based in Israel, today announced that Avi Naor, a member of FST’s board of directors, has made an investment in FST Biometrics and has been appointed as chairman of the board effective immediately. Naor, one of Israel’s first hi-tech entrepreneurs, served as CEO and president of software giant Amdocs, which he co-founded, from 1995 until 2002.  Naor led the company’s IPO in 1998, as well as several subsequent offerings, and is credited with building the company into the multi-billion-dollar powerhouse it has become. As part of the Alpha Group investment organization, Naor bought equity in Retalix, Ltd., and served as board chairman from 2011 until 2012, when Retalix was sold to NCR.

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July 5, 2016 | Medical device company Nyxoah, which has developed a solution for obstructive sleep apnea, reports that they have raised raising $20 million in funding. The company was established by Robert Taub, founder of Omrix Biopharmaceuticals, which was sold to Johnson & Johnson for $438 million in 2008. While Nyxoah was founded in Belgium, its R&D activity is situated in Israel and employs 15 out of the company’s staff of 25. Taub is Nyxoah’s CEO, in addition to being an investor and co-founder.

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July 4, 2016 | According to research done by the Israeli financial news daily Globes, Israeli companies raised an all-time record $1.4 billion in the second quarter of the year, compared with $1 billion in the first quarter and $1.1 billion in the second quarter of 2015 (according to the IVC). The figures for the second quarter of 2016 include a $300 million investment in Israeli company Gett (formerly GetTaxi) by Volkswagen.

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July 4, 2016 | Doodle, an online scheduler and a subsidiary of the Swiss media group Tamedia, has bought Tel Aviv-based startup Meekan, a developer of a chatbot that acts as a virtual scheduling assistant, for an undisclosed amount. Meekan was founded in 2013 by the father-son duo Lior and Eyal Yavor and is based on the company’s scheduling and optimization technology, as well as the Flexible Time algorithm.

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June 30, 2016 | IronSource, an Israeli company which makes tools to help mobile app developers distribute and profit from their apps, has acquired Israeli startup StreamRail for a sum estimated to be in the seven figure range. Founded in 2014 and numbering 15 employees, StreamRail has developed video-player technology that enables publishers to make money off of content. The U.S. venture capital fund Sequoia Capital invested in the company. The sale, the most recent in a string of acquisitions by IronSource, should complement its array of tools designed to help mobile app developers distribute and profit from their apps. IronSource CEO Tomer Bar Zeev confirmed the acquisition but didn’t provide any further details.

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June 29, 2016 | Crowdfunding venture capital fund OurCrowd, has announced the Israeli launch of Radicle, an accelerator fund dedicated to growing early stage agricultural technology startups into proven industry leaders. The fund is launched in partnership with Finistere Ventures, Cloud Break Advisors, and an alliance of top agricultural industry leaders, including Bayer and DuPont. Radicle aims to reduce the time to develop, market, and commercialize new agriculture technologies. With a focus on global AgTech solutions, Radicle will offer a specialized platform to incubate high-quality AgTech companies that can solve global farming problems. Radicle will be a $15 million fund with $6 million in initial closing commitments. Radicle maintains a physical presence in all core markets, including Israel, San Diego, Palo Alto, Research Triangle Park and the Midwest USA.

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June 29, 2016 | Israeli startup Vidac Pharma has closed a $9 million a Series A financing round. The financing was led by a new investor, Israel Biotech Fund. Existing investors, including Mivtach Shamir Holdings, also participated in the financing. Dr. Robert Spiegel and Mr. Ed Saltzman, members of Israel Biotech Fund’s Venture Advisory team, will join Vidac’s board of directors. Based in Jerusalem, Vidac Pharma is a privately-held clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing novel small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and oncodermatology disease.

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June 28, 2016 | Cisco Systems Inc. is set to acquire Israeli cloud security company CloudLock Inc.. Cisco will pay $293 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention-based incentives for CloudLock employees who join Cisco. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts and with a development center in Tel Aviv, CloudLock was founded in 2011 by CEO Gil Zimmermann, CTO Ron Zalkind and VP business development Tsahy Shapsa. The company has raised $39 million to date and has 150 employees, 30 of them in Israel.  CloudLock’s team will join Cisco’s Networking and Security Business Group under SVP and General Manager David Goeckeler. This will be Cisco’s 13th acquisition of an Israeli company.

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  June 28, 2016 | Humavox, an Israeli company that creates wireless charging solutions, has entered a binding agreement to merge with Australia’s Aurum Inc. As part of the merger, Aurum will acquire 100% of Humavox shares and will be investing $16 million over a period of 24 months into Humavox. The deal involves a major restructuring, in which Humavox’s CEO Omri Lachman will become CEO of Aurum. The merger marks a huge step for the Kfar Saba based company, and paves the way for widespread adoption of its wireless charging solution for wearables and IoT. With Humavox’s wireless technology installed, any wearable or connected device can be dropped into any compatible 3D container, and be charged seamlessly.

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June 27, 2016 | Dentsply Sirona Inc. has signed a binding agreement to acquire Israeli dental implant systems manufacturer MIS Implants Technologies Ltd. for $375 million in cash. MIS implants, a privately held company, sells dental implants under its MIS brand and has annual sales of about $80 million. It operates mainly in the affordable implants sector and sells its products in 65 countries. MIS was founded in 1995 and has become a major player in the dental implants sector without any major external investment other than from the founders and private investors the Peretz and Hirsh families. The company’s CEO is Idan Kleifeld. In 2011, MIS raised an investment at a company value of $150 million from the private TA Fund, which has invested in several Israeli growth companies.

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June 27, 2016 | OurCrowd, a leading global VC equity crowdfunding platform, officially opened its Herzliya office last night, cementing an on the ground presence in one of the world’s most exciting startup and tech clusters. The team based in Herzliya includes 15 employees and is responsible for the firm’s engineering and product development. The offices will house several OurCrowd fund management teams and also host weekly presentations for foreign delegations and international firms seeking a closer look at the innovation and investment activity in the Startup Nation. Since its founding in 2013, OurCrowd, headquartered in Jerusalem, has enjoyed exponential growth and now has over 100 employees worldwide, nearly 100 portfolio companies with over $230 million invested and several successful exits. The office launch was attended by nearly 200 people from the tech, VC, and investment community. “Our team is excited to be opening up in Herzliya, one of the most active hotbeds for innovative enterprises,” OurCrowd founder and CEO, Jon Medved said in a statement. “Being in Herzliya means we will be even closer to many of our finest local portfolio companies, and even better placed to seek out exciting investment opportunities.”

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