June 21, 2016 | Sony Pictures Entertainment announced that it has invested in Israeli video startup Interlude. No financial details were disclosed but sources believe that the investment is $50-$100 million. In addition Sony and Interlude will collaborate in developing entertainment content that will be distributed on Interlude’s platform. With offices in New York and Tel Aviv, Interlude is a media and technology company that is pioneering a new kind of video that responds to a person’s emotions and interests. Founded by CEO Yoni Bloch in 2010, Interlude has raised $38.2 million to date including an $18.2 million financing round in December 2015 from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Warner Music Group, Samsung, Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital. The company, which has developed the Eko interactive storytelling platform, has 60 employees, half of them in Israel.
News Briefs
Sony Invests Millions In Israeli Video Startup Interlude
Mobile Marketing Startup Moburst Raises $1.6M
June 20, 2016 | Israeli startup Moburst, which serves as a marketing agency for mobile applications, has closed a $1.6 million financing round. Since its founding in 2012, the Ra’anana based company has raised $2.4 million. The company has 15 employees and the main investors are Elevator fund and German bank CentralWay. Over the past year, Moburst has expanded its customer base to include huge global brands such as eBay, Pfizer, Google and Hotels Combined.
Mellanox Accelerates World’s Fastest Supercomputer
June 20, 2016 | Israeli high-tech firm Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, announced that Mellanox interconnect solutions accelerate the world’s fastest supercomputer, at the supercomputing center in Wuxi, China. The new number one supercomputer delivers 93 Petaflops (3 times higher compared to the previous top system), connecting nearly 41 thousand nodes and more than ten million CPU cores. Mellanox’s InfiniBand solutions now accelerate nearly 50 percent of the world Petascale-performance systems on the TOP500 list, 1.6 times more than the closest competitor. Mellanox was founded in 1999 by Eyal Waldman, Shani Cohen and Roni Ashuri and has a current market cap of $1.9 billion.
EFI Buys Israel’s Optitex For Up To $52.8M
June 16, 2016 | Electronics For Imaging, Inc. has announced the acquisition of privately held Israeli company Optitex Ltd., based in Petah Tikva. Optitex produces 3D design software for the textile industry. Optitex will be integrated into EFI’s Productivity Software business unit. The deal is worth up to $52.8 million. The approximately 100 members of the Optitex team have joined EFI. Optitex has offices in the US, Italy, India, Hong Kong and Israel.
Birthright Israel Launches First Accelerator, Excel Ventures
June 19, 2016| Birthright Israel’s Leadership Program, “Birthright Israel Excel“, is launching “Excel Ventures” – a first of its kind program which invites young entrepreneurs from both leading American universities and the Israeli Defense Forces’ most prominent tech units, to join together in an innovative program to create the next big startups. The 10 week program will be held in Tel Aviv and will serve as an accelerator for the young entrepreneurs. In the program they will go through all the critical stages of bringing an idea to life, putting a team together, finding investors and carrying out a reality-changing new concept. The participants will be mentored by leading figures from the Israeli startup community, including Yoram Tietz (Managing Partner, Ernest & Young), Liat Aaronson (Partner, Marker LLC Venture Capital), Yifat Oron (CEO of LeumiTech), and Amir Pinchas (Head of Microsoft Ventures Startup Portfolio and Operations) among others. Excel Ventures is funded by the Steinhardt Foundation, the Schusterman Foundation and the Paul Singer Foundation, with the cooperation of other leading groups such as Ernest & Young and the Rise Community.
Israeli Baby Monitor Startup Nanit Raises $6.6M
June 16, 2016 | Israeli baby-safe smart monitor developer Nanit has raised a $6.6 million seed round of financing, led by Mark Suster at Upfront Ventures with participation from RRE, 645 Ventures, Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Flex, and Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures. The company has also launched its Baby-Safe smart monitor that uses machine learning to provide sleep insights camera vision. Nanit provides comprehensive sleep reports that measure a baby’s behavior throughout the night without requiring any kind of wearable component. The camera has been uniquely designed to track and analyze baby sleep patterns using smart algorithms and an elegant design solution with the highest safety standards. With offices in New York and Ramat Gan, Nani was founded by CEO Assaf Glazer, Tor Ivry, and Andrew Berman.
Abbi Takes First Place At Israel’s Mobile Summit Startup Contest
June 16, 2016| Israeli startup Abbi, a marketing solution for mobile developers aimed at significantly growing user click rates, was awarded first place in the Startup Competition at the Israel Mobile Summit 2016. Over 50 startups applied to compete in the competition, with seven reaching the final round. Second place went to Pixoneye, an Israeli startup harnessing the potential of image understanding on mobile devices to provide customers with the ultimate key to capture consumer’s ever-changing needs. Reporty, a startup connecting civilians to emergency services, whose chairman is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, took third place in the contest. First place winner Abbi won a trip to China to participate in GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai later this month. First place winner Abbi also won $2,500 from Performance Revenues and Applause which will go towards marketing and product testing. The panel of expert judges included representatives from IBM, Applause, ClickBakers, Performance Revenues, StartApp, AppsFlyer, and AppAnnie.
Video Marketing Startup Eyeview Raises $21.5M
June 16, 2016 | Video marketing technology company Eyeview today announced it has received $21.5 million in Series D financing led by new investor Qumra Capital. Existing investors Marker LLC, Innovation Endeavors, Nauta Capital, Gemini Israel Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the financing round. Eyeview has raised $56.8 million to date including the latest financing. Eyeview strives to fuse the effectiveness of TV video branding with the efficiency of digital personalization, Eyeview was founded in 2007 by Oren Harnevo, Tal Riesenfeld and Gal Barnea, is headquartered in New York, and has development offices in Tel Aviv.
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Augmented Reality Company Lumus Raises $15M
June 16, 2016 | Israeli augmented reality startup Lumus Ltd., has raised $15 million in financing from Chinese investors. The investment was led by Shanda Group, a global private investment group, along with Crystal-Optech, a leading Chinese photo-electric component manufacturer. Based in Rehovot, Lumus develops high-end transparent near-to-eye displays for augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and smart eyewear. Lumus will use the funding to scale up production of its market-leading, patent-protected optical technology for the emerging consumer market. Lumus develops and sells transparent displays to companies working on developing consumer and enterprise AR solutions.
Cyber Intelligence Startup Sixgill Launches, Raises $5M
June 15, 2016 | Sixgill, a ‘cyber intelligence’ SaaS startup that analyzes the Dark Web, has just launched publicly and is announcing that it has closed a $5 million funding round led by Elron, an Israeli holding company dedicated to building technology companies. The new capital will not only be used to launch, but also to further develop the Tel Aviv-based startup’s technology to be able to detect and defuse cyber-attacks and sensitive data leaks originating from the Dark Web before they occur. Specific to this is the ability to provide clients with a heads-up via real-time alerts. Sixgill was founded by Elad Lavi and Avi Kasztan in 2014 and is based in the northern part of Israel in Yoqneam Illit.
Online Therapy Platform Talkspace Raises $15M
June 15, 2o16 |Talkspace, a New York City-based provider of an online therapy platform, raised $15 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Spark Capital, Soft Bank, Metamorphic Ventures and TheTime. In conjunction with the funding Jeff Crowe, Managing Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, joined Talkspace’s Board of Directors. The company will use the funds to continue to grow operations. Talkspace provides the Unlimited Messaging Therapy program, which connects people with a licensed therapist on the web or via mobile apps featuring the ability to audio and video messages to enable users to have closer relationships with their therapists. To date, the platform has provided 300,000 people with a mental health care from almost 1,000 specialists. Talkspace is powered by IBM’s Watson, a platform that uses semantic analysis to determine things about users’ personalities. Talkspace was founded by Israelis Oren and Roni Frank in 2012.
Safer Driving Startup Nexar Raises $10.5M
June 15, 2016 | Israeli startup Nexar, a platform that hopes to influence how people drive, announced the end of their Series A round, bringing in $10.5 million in funding. The round was lead by new investors Mosaic Ventures and True Ventures, with seed backers Aleph and Slow Ventures taking part as well. Coupled with their initial funding, this round brings the company to a total of $14.5 million raised. Co-founded by CEO Eran Shir, the former manager of Yahoo’s Creation Innovation Center in Israel, and CTO Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, Nexar uses smartphones to create an AI-backed vehicle-to-vehicle network that works to predict and prevent accidents.
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Israeli Startup Nuro Secure Messaging Raises $2.6M
June 15, 2016 | Israeli startup Nuro Secure Messaging has closed a $2.6 million financing round. Erez Kreiner, former director of Israeli security in Europe and director of Israel’s National Cyber Security Authority, participated in this round that will help Nuro accelerate its go-to market strategy and grow its product offerings to its growing list of international customers in industries as diverse as finance, healthcare, law and advertising. The Tel Aviv-based startup is a cognitive enterprise-grade secure group-messaging and collaboration platform designed for employees and external partners for corporations, government agencies and the military to communicate in a controlled and compliant private messaging environment. The company was founded by executive chairman J.R. Smith, the former CEO of AVG Technologies, CEO Eran Pfeffer, and CMO Omri Sigelman.
Cisco Invests $15M In Israeli Startup Elastifile
June 14, 2016 | Cisco Systems has invested $15 million in Israeli storage software start-up Elastifile, bringing total investment this year to $50 million. Elastifile, which helps enterprises scale out primary storage, has said the additional funds would enable it to aggressively market its technology that enables customers to expand the number of applications they can deploy on flash. In January it raised $35 million in a second private funding round led by existing investors Battery Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
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Israeli AR Startup Meta Raises $50M
June 14, 2016 | Meta, the creators of augmented reality goggles, announced that it raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. Industry sources estimated that the current round values the company, after money, at $300 million. Meta makes an AR headset/glasses of the same name, as well as software to run on it. The company plans to use the money to continue building out its technology, developing apps, expanding into new markets like China, and working on the next generation of its headset, the Meta 3. Meta was founded in 2012 by Raymond Lo, Ben Sand and Meron Gribetz and is based out of California.
