October 7, 2015 | The Israeli social sports network 90min announced that it raised $15 million in Series D funding in a round led by ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. Existing investors Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital and Gemini Ventures also joined in the round. The latest funding brings 90min’s total funding to $39 million. 90min was founded in 2011 by Assaf Peled.
News Briefs
October 07, 2015
90min Raises $15M In Series D Funding
October 07, 2015
Jordan Valley Semiconductors Acquired For $53M
October 7, 2015 | The Israeli company Jordan Valley Semiconductors was acquired by US-company Bruker Corp. for $53 million. Jordan Valley Semiconductors provides solutions for measuring production processes in the microelectronics industry. Jordan Valley Semiconductors was founded in 1982 by CEO Issac Mazor.
October 07, 2015
Forbes Launches Under 30 Summit In Israel
October 7, 2015 | Forbes will hold its first Under 30 Summit EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) in the Israeli cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The conference will be held on April 3rd as an offshoot of the annual Forbes Under 30 Summit held in Philadelphia. “We look forward to bringing our successful Under 30 Summit to the EMEA region, and there is no better place than Start-up Nation, where innovation is at the core of everything that is going on,” stated Forbes editor Randall Lane. The opening ceremony of the conference will be held in Tel Aviv and the final days of the conference will be hosted in Jerusalem.
October 07, 2015
Morphisec Raises $7M In Series A Funding
October 7, 2015 | The Israeli cyber security company Morphisec announced that it raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Jerusalem Venture Partners, GE Ventures, Deutsche Telekom, Portage Advisors and Israeli equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. The latest funding brings Morphisec’s total funding to $8.5 million. Morphisec was launched in 2014 as part of JVP’s Cyber Labs in Beer Sheva.
October 07, 2015
ProQuest To Acquire Ex Libris For Estimated $500M
October 7, 2015 | ProQuest has signed an agreement to acquire Ex Libris Group, a provider of library automation solutions, for an estimated $500 million. The capabilities of ProQuest and Ex Libris span expertise in print, electronic and digital content, as well as solutions for library management, discovery and research workflows. After closing, ProQuest and Ex Libris will form a distinct business unit called Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company. This unit will be led by Matti Shem-Tov. Ex Libris was founded in 1986 by Azriel Morag, though it began as a Hebrew University library management project in 1980.
October 06, 2015
Logz.io Raises $8M In Series A
October 6, 2015 | Logz.io, the next generation cloud predictive log analytics company, announced the closure of their Series A fundraising round, bringing the total amount raised to $8 million. The round was led by Israeli VC firms, 83North (formerly Greylock-IL) and Giza Venture Capital. The company will use the funding to fuel additional product development and build sales, marketing, and support teams. Founded by Tomer Levy and Asaf Yigal in 2014, Logz.io uses unique crowd sourced machine learning algorithms to help customers find the needle in the haystack in their log data.
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October 06, 2015
YouNow Raises $15M
October 6, 2015 | The “live” social network YouNow announced that it raised $15 million in funding led by Venrock and Oren Zeev, together with Comcast Ventures. This brings total funding in the company to $30 million. YouNow is a social network that allows users to chat live with their contacts. YouNow was founded in 2011 by Adi Sideman, and is based in New York.
October 06, 2015
Facebook Chooses Israeli Satellite To Provide Internet To Sub-Saharan Africa
October 6, 2015 | Facebook has announced that it will use Israeli Aerospace Industries’ AMOS-6 communications satellite to provide Internet access in sub-Saharan Africa. The announcement comes as part of Facebook’s initiative internet.org to provide Internet access to those whom have never had access to the world wide web. Facebook has partnered with the French satellite company Eutelsat, which in turn will cooperate with Israeli company Spacecom, to operate the AMOS-6 satellite above Africa. Spacecom, which is owned by Shaul Elovitch, is expected to earn some $95 million from the operation of the satellite.
October 04, 2015
Teva Acquires Rimsa For $2.3B
October 4, 2015 | Teva Pharmaceutical Industries announced that it will acquire the Mexican pharmaceutical company Representaciones e Investigaciones Médicas, S.A. de C.V, commonly known as Rimsa. The deal is valued at $2.3 billion. The acquisition is set to make Teva a leading pharmaceutical company in Mexico and Latin America. Teva is headed by CEO Erez Vigodman.
October 04, 2015
BigPanda Raises $16M
October 4, 2015 | The Israeli company BigPanda announced that it raised $16 million in a round led by Battery Ventures together with Sequoia Capital and Mayfield. BigPanda’s software helps deal with IT issues. As part of the investment, Battery Ventures partner Scott Tobin has joined BigPanda’s board of directors. BigPanda was founded in 2012 by company CEO Assaf Resnick and R&D VP Elik Eizenberg.
October 04, 2015
Dome9 Security Raises $8.3M
October 4, 2015 | The Israeli cloud security startup Dome9 Security announced that it raised $8.3 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by ORR Partners together with new investors JAL Ventures, Pinnacle and Lazarus Israel Opportunity Fund and existing investor Opus Capital Ventures. Dome9 will reportedly use the investment to grow its sales and marketing divisions and to expand its product portfolio. Dome9 Security was founded in 2010 by Zohar Alon and Roy Feintuch.
October 04, 2015
New Fund To Invest In Israeli, US Security Cos.
October 4, 2015 | The first US Secretary of Homeland Security and the Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge announced that his newly founded global venture capital firm Ridge Global Capital Group will invest in homeland security technology in the US and Israel. “In a global age, geographic borders become transparent, hostile actors become invisible and no boundaries exist between physical and virtual threats. That is why there is a growing demand for innovative security solutions,” said Gov. Ridge. Ridge Global Capital was co-founded together with high-tech entrepreneur Ben Harel, who will focus on growth-stage Israeli, US and European companies in the fields of cyber security, homeland security and public safety.
October 01, 2015
Israeli Teams Big Winners At iGEM 2015
October 1, 2015 | Israeli universities stole the show at the international iGEM competition. The Technion Israel Institute of Technology took first place for the Best Application as well as awards in the Best Presentation, Best Applied Design and Best New Basic Part categories. Ben Gurion University in the Negev also took first place in the Best Health and Medicine Project category. In addition, the BGU’s “Overgraduate” team was first runner-up in the overall competition – marking the first time that an Israeli team has made it to this stage of the iGEM competition. This is the 12th annual iGEM competition put on by the non-profit iGEM Foundation committed to the education, competition and advancement of synthetic biology.
October 01, 2015
El Al Takes First At APEX’s EXPO Event
October 1, 2015 | El Al Airline’s travel startup acceleration program “Cockpit” took first prize at the Airline Passengers Experience Association (APEX) competition. El Al received the award for “Best Achievement in Passenger Experience 2015”. The prize was presented at the “Oscars” of the aviation world, APEX’s EXPO event and marks El Al’s first win in the competition. The Cockpit program was launched in May 2015 as a digital travel and aviation hub meant to encourage entrepreneurship and startups in these fields.
October 01, 2015
Altice To Raise $2B For Cablevision Acquisition
October 1, 2015 | Patrick Drahi’s communications company Altice will reportedly raise $2.02 billion to help finance the acquisition of Cablevision Systems. Altice reports that it has already raised $8.6 billion of the new debt that is required to acquire Cablevision. Altice was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Luxembourg.
