May 2, 2016 | The Danish Ministry for Higher Education and Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have announced the establishment of a new innovation center in Israel. The new center brings the total number of Danish innovation hubs around the world to seven; Munich, New Delhi, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Silicon Valley and now Tel Aviv. The center will give Danish research and education institutions and Danish companies easier access to leading knowledge environments and relevant partners in Israel .The innovation center will be located at the Danish Embassy in Tel Aviv and is expected to open in fall 2016.
News Briefs
May 02, 2016
Danes Open Tel Aviv Innovation Center
May 02, 2016
HackIDC Student Hackathon Opens Friday
May 2, 2016 | A 36-hour student hackathon called HackIDC will be held at Israel’s IDC Herzliya this week (May 6-7), where 250 students will compete to create an innovative technology. Students will work in teams of up to five people for thirty-six hours to create a web, mobile, or hardware product. The panel of judges is excepted to include some of Israel’s most renowned entrepreneurs: Dov Moran, Gil Shwed and Prof. Amnon Shashua. As Israel’s leading student hackathon, the annual event provides participants a unique opportunity to build something new and exciting, together with coding and design enthusiasts.
May 02, 2016
Cancer Fighter Biocancell Raises $6M
May 2, 2016 | Israeli cancer treatment drug developer Biocancell announced a $6 million financing round from US investors. Biocancell also announced the recruitment of a US CEO: former Ariad senior VP and chief medical officer Frank Haluska. The company also intends to register for trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange and raise tens of millions of dollars there. The company was founded in 2004 by Prof. Avraham Hochberg, a professor of molecular biology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
May 01, 2016
JFrog Expands In Israel, California
May 1, 2016 | Israeli-American company JFrog, which provides software developers with a binary repository management solution, is hiring 100 new employees. Based in Israel and California, 50 of the new hires are for its Israel office in Netanya and the rest for its Silicon Valley office. JFrog’s clients include Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, The Gap and more.
May 01, 2016
Hainan Launches First Israel Flights
May 1, 2016 |China’s Hainan Airlines has launched its first ever direct flight to Israel, linking Beijing with Tel Aviv. The new service will now run three times a week, departing the Chinese capital every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 0155 and arriving at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport at 0810. The return flights will leave Tel Aviv at 1535 and arrive in Beijing at 0555 the next morning. Hainan Airlines will deploy an Airbus A330 aircraft on the new route, configured with 36 flat-bed seats in business class and 178 seats in economy. Hainan Airlines becomes the first Chinese carrier flying direct to Israel, and a second airline operating the Beijing-Tel Aviv route, following El Al, Israel’s national carrier.
May 01, 2016
China’s Kuang-Chi Launches Israel Fund
May 1, 2016 |Chinese corporation Kuang-Chi is launching an international innovation fund based in Israel to invest in companies worldwide. The “Kuang-Chi GCI Fund & Incubator” will be the first Chinese fund of its kind, combining investment in early to mid-stage Israeli and global companies with incubation by Kuang-Chi. The newly established fund has an initial $50 million and is planned to grow to $300 million within the next three years. Founded in 2010 by five distinguished Chinese scientists who returned to China after earning advanced degrees at Duke, Oxford, and Cambridge universities, Kuang-Chi is a global innovation group with operations from China to North America, Europe, Africa and Oceania. Acting through public companies, private holdings and research institutes, the group’s value exceeds $10 billion.
April 27, 2016
Citigroup Invests In Israeli FinTech Startup BlueVine
April 27, 2016 | Israeli FinTech startup BlueVine, an online provider of financing to small businesses, announced it has received a strategic investment from Citigroup’s venture capital arm Citi Ventures. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed. This investment comes on the heels of a $40 million financing round led by Menlo Ventures, which closed three months ago. BlueVine was founded in 2013 by Nir Klar and Eyal Lifshitz.
April 26, 2016
Parking App Polly Launches In Paris
April 26, 2016 | Israeli parking app Polly has launched in Paris, France, potentially helping 4.5 million Parisian drivers daily to find a parking spot. “Polly The Parking Fairy” aims to eliminate the frustration associated with finding a parking spot in the big city. The free mobile app emulates driver behavior and guarantees a parking space – whether in a lot or on the street – within 11 minutes of cruising. Polly comes into action as drivers approach their destination, displaying a personalized map and turn-by-turn navigation directions through nearby streets with the greatest chance of finding on-street parking. The route is based on statistical information about streets with the highest parking turnover. The app was created by Israeli startup sPARK, which was founded in 2012 by Zohar Bali and Eran Balter.
April 25, 2016
Startup Preempt Security Raises $8M
April 25, 2016 |Cyber security company Preempt Security has closed $8 million in Series A funding. General Catalyst Partners led the round with participation from well-known security leaders and innovators, including Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh Loonkar, the founders of Trusteer, and Paul Sagan, the former CEO of Akamai Technologies. The financing will be used to expand marketing and sales efforts, and accelerate product development. With offices in San Francisco and Ramat Gan, Preempt Security was founded in 2014 by global security and networking experts. The team has deep roots in security with a large component of the team from Unit 8200, the elite intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces.
April 25, 2016
Smartphone Startup Sirin Raises $72M
April 25, 2016 | Sirin Labs, a new high-end smartphone manufacturer, has raised a $72 million seed round from Israeli Singulariteam founder Moshe Hogeg, Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, and the Chinese social networking service Renren to launch a new, secure smartphone. The phone will be revealed in May at Sirin Labs’ flagship store in London. Sirin, a stealth startup almost three years in the making, aspires to combine both the safety of a military-grade device and the features of an everyday phone. Headquartered in Switzerland, most of Sirin’s day to day operations are managed from the company’s offices in Tel Aviv (R&D and operations) and in the Swedish city of Lund where they are assembled by Sigma Connectivity.
April 25, 2016
VC Fund LionBird II Raises $40M
April 25, 2016 | Israeli venture capital fund LionBird II will soon make an initial closure of $40 million in funding. The fund is the second by the LionBird group, which invests in digital health and financial services companies. The company is led by brothers Chaim and Itschak Friedman, who founded STARLIMS and sold it to Abbot in 2010 for $123 million. Another partner in the fund is former Abbot executive VP diagnostic products Ed Michael of the US. The first LionBird fund raised $20 million in 2013, and invested in companies like Tyto, Sweetch, Fundbox, Telesofia, and Genome Compiler. The Friedman brothers and Michael will invest 15-20% of the amount, as they did in the first fund.
April 24, 2016
Four Hebrew U. Faculty Elected To AAAS
April 24, 2016 | Four Hebrew University faculty members are among the 213 new members to have been elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS). The academy includes some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, as well as civic, business, and philanthropic leaders. The Hebrew University faculty selected are Prof. Robert Benny Gerber, The Saerree K. and Louis P. Fiedler Chair in Chemistry, in the Institute Of Chemistry; Prof. Sergiu Hart, The Alice Kusiel and Kurt Vorreuter University Professor, and Professor of Mathematics and Economics, in the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality; Prof. Menachem Magidor, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, in the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, and a Former President of the Hebrew University; and Prof. Zeev Sternhell, The Leon Blum Professor Emeritus of Political Science, in the Department of Political Science. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 8, 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of America’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world. Current Academy research focuses on higher education, the humanities, and the arts; science and technology policy; global security and energy; and American institutions and the public good.
April 24, 2016
Israeli Startup Brayola Raises $2.5M
April 24, 2016 | Israeli startup Brayola, a new online service that helps women find bras that fit, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from HDS Capital and FirstTime Capital. The company is also unveiling its own marketplace, leveraging inventory from brand partners to help women not only find the right bra, but take action on that item directly from the Brayola website. Founded in 2013 by Orit Hashay, the company reports that their conversion rate is around 5.5 percent and their return rate is lower than 8 percent.
April 21, 2016
Online Fraud Prevention Startup Forter Raises $32M
April 21, 2016 | Israeli online fraud prevention company Forter has closed $32 million in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Series B investors Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Headquartered in San Francisco, the company maintains its development center in Tel Aviv. Forter helps retailers prevent identity fraud, internet fraud and phone fraud and offers an automated, real-time Decision as a Service solution for online merchants. The company, which was founded in 2014 by CEO Michael Reitblat, COO Liron Damri and Chief Analyst Alon Shemesh, has raised $50 million with this latest financing round and has tripled in size since its founding.
April 21, 2016
13 Israeli Startups In Red Herring’s Top 100 List
April 21, 2016 | Every year since 1996, the innovation magazine and news service Red Herring chooses the 100 most promising tech companies, with separate contests for the United States, Europe and Asia. This year 13 Israeli startups from a variety of fields (Life Sciences/Biotech, Cloud, Medical Devices, Big Data/Storage, Venture Capital/Investing, Web/Internet) made the the 2016 Red Herring Top 100 Europe list: Accellta Ltd, CloudEndure, CropX, HeadSense Medical, ICS2, Leverate, moblin, Optimal Plus, OurCrowd, Privatequity.biz, Shadow Technologies, Stratoscale, and Zebra Medical Vision. Over the past five years, more than 200 Red Herring winners from around the world have achieved exits, including the Israeli navigation app Waze, which made the Red Herring 100 in 2010.
