News Briefs

January 21, 2015 | The preference and trends-based advertising solutions company Taykey announced that it received $15 million in new funding. In addition, the company released a new marketing platform that automatically discovers and activates trends according to age and interest. The $15 million investment comes from Eric Schmidt’s venture arm Endeavors, as well as SoftBank Capital, Sequoia Capital, Marker LLC and Tenaya Capital. The company has seen impressive growth, growing almost 600 percent since January 2013 while serving Fortune 500 companies like AT&T, Disney, Marriott, MasterCard and others. Taykey was founded by Amit Avner in 2009.

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January 21, 2015 | Microsoft will acquire the Israeli startup Equivio for approx. $150-200 million according to reports. Equivio develops a text analysis software that is able to analyze various texts from a collection of documents, like emails. The company’s algorithm is used by companies to provide support in analyzing documents, particular law firms and organizations like the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Trade Commission, Deloitte and KMPG. Microsoft already has plans to integrate Equivio’s software into its Office 365 package. Raising only $500,000 from private investors, Equivio was founded in 2004 by Amir Milo, Yiftach Ravid and Warwick Sharp.

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January 21, 2015 | Ravello Systems raised $28 million in the company’s third round of funding, bringing total capital raised by the company to $54 million. The funding round for the Israeli company was led by Qualcomm incorporated through its venture capital arm Qualcomm Ventures as well as SanDisk Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Vintage Investment Partners. Ravello’s system allows enterprises to achieve a balance between public and private cloud resources. Ravello was founded in 2011 by the team that founded the KVM hypervisor, President Benny Schnaider and CEO Rami Tamir.

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January 21, 2015 | One of the world’s largest cloud file-sharing platforms, Dropbox, has acquired Israeli company CloudOn, a company that has developed platforms for mobile document editing. CloudOn’s platform allows for users to edit documents on any of the widely used cloud sharing platforms – Google Drive, Dropbox, Box etc. Founded in 2009 by Jay Zaveri, Milind Gadekar, and Meir Morgenstern, CloudOn raised $26 million in funding before it was acquired by Dropbox, serving over 9 million users, according to the company. With news of the acquisition, the company will reportedly shut down their service for two months, and will not accept new users. In addition, according to a TechCrunch report, CloudOn’s Herzliya offices will now become Dropbox’s first offices in Israel.

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January 21, 2015 | The mobile app marketing platform AppsFlyer announced that it raised $20 million in Series B funding. The company’s NativeTrack platform is used by developers, brands and agencies to launch campaigns that encourage app downloads and tracks in-app activity. Companies can then use the information collected by the NativeTrack platform to tweek software development, user experience and other factors to optimize the usage of their mobile apps. According to company CEO Oren Kaniel, the new funds will be used to further develop NativeTrack and its software features, as well as to open local offices in a number of countries and to possibly pursue an ‘acquisition,’ he reported to VentureBeat. The Series B funding round was led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, together with Magma Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital, and is added to the $18 million raised by the company to date.

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January 20, 2015 | The Israeli company providing contact-free patient monitoring, EarlySense, announced that it completed a $20 million financing round. The round was led by Samsung Ventures, which invested $10 million of the amount, along with Pitango Venture Capital, Welch Allyn, JK&B, Proseed and Noaber. EarlySense is a medical device company based in Ramat Gan, Israel that develops patient monitoring systems. The company is currently headed by CEO Avner Halperin.

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January 20, 2015 | Professor Yosef Shiloh from Tel Aviv University was awarded the first Olav Thon prize for natural sciences and medicine. Prof. Shiloh, a researcher investigating the genetics of cancer, will be awarded NIS 1.3 million (approx. $331,700) at a ceremony held in Norway on March 5th. The prize, worth 5 million Norwegian Krones, was established by the Norwegian billionaire and real estate tycoon Olav Thon, the richest man in Norway, who decided to donate all of his money to philanthropic projects focusing on education and the sciences.

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January 20, 2015 | The Israeli-founded startup insert announced that it raised $5 million in seed funding. The company, which will remain in stealth mode until its releases its beta platform for mobile application developers, raised the funds from Shlomo Kramer, the co-founder of Check Point, Imperva and Trusteer, as well as from Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh Loonkar, the co-founders of Trusteer. Insert hopes to allow app-owners to leverage the power of their mobile assets, making the most of their mobile applications. According to the company, the funds will be used to hire employees in order to complete the beta version of insert. Insert was founded by serial entrepreneur and company CEO Shahar Kaminitz, the founder of Worklight.

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January 20, 2015 | The Israeli company Visualead, the creator of Visual QR code technology, announced that it secured Series B funding from China’s Alibaba Group. In addition to raising funds, Visualead and Alibaba Group entered into a strategic cooperation agreement according to which Alibaba will use Visualead’s patents and technology across their ecosystems. Visualead will reportedly use the funds (an undisclosed amount) to develop the next generation of ‘Offline to Online’ (O2O) technology. Alibaba’s investment in Visualead is the first investment by the Chinese ecommerce giant in an Israeli company.

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January 19, 2015 | RealMatch, the recruitment advertising platform that’s based on performance, announced that it raised $8 million in Series C funding. The Series C-1 round, led by Edison Partners, and with participation from Carmel Ventures and Orix Ventures, brings RealMatch’s total funding to $26 million. RealMatch claims that its algorithms are able to identify individuals that are suitable for a position posted by an employer, assessing their performance and experience based on a resume uploaded by job seekers to the platform. RealMatch was founded in 2007 by Gal Almog and is currently headquartered in New York City.

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January 19, 2015 | Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Philips have launched a new venture called Sanara Ventures. The company will be a platform for the growth of medical device companies in Israel, aiding them in their progress from the earliest stages until the company goes international. The goal of Sanara Ventures, which will be headed by CEO Assaf Barnea, a business consultant for the World Bank, will be to provide answers and assistance to global challenges in the health sector.

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January 18, 2015 | The Israeli company innovating technology to make invasive gastric surgery procedures less invasive, Medigus, announced that it will extend its contract with Chinese company Sinopharm. Sinopharm, which is owned by the Chinese government, announced that the agreement will be extended because regulatory approval for Medigus’s system has yet to secured. According to the new agreement, adding on an agreement signed two years ago, Sinopharm will be the exclusive distributor in China of Medigus’s Muse system for four years after approval is obtained. Medigus is a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

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January 18, 2015 | The 3D printer company Stratasys, which acquired Israeli company Objet in 2012, introduced a new 3D printer that prints dental materials. Objet Eden 260VS Dental Advantage 3D printer is set to meet the production needs of mid-sized dental labs and mid-to-large sized orthodontic labs. “Stratasys is fully committed to the digital dentistry market. The Objet Eden260VS Dental Advantage brings supremely accurate 3D printing technology to any dental lab seeking to benefit from the future of digital dentistry and orthodontics,” says Stratasys global dental director Avi Cohen. Stratasys, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of 3D printers, merged with Israeli company Objet in 2012 and since the Israeli company’s technology has been integral in the development of the company’s latest technologies.

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January 18, 2015 | The global aesthetic device company Syneron‘s UltraShape® was chosen as the ‘Best Body-Contouring Treatment’ by “NewBeauty” Magazine in the 2014 Beauty Choice Awards. UltraShape is an ultrasound-based treatment that claims to destroy fat in the abdominal area and to be the first non-invasive ultrasound treatment to do so. The company, founded by Shimon Eckhouse in 2000, is headquartered in California with research and development offices in Israel.

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January 18, 2015 | This year’s ‘Genesis Prize,’ bestowed annually by the Genesis Philanthropy Group, chose actor Michael Douglas as this year’s winner. Often dubbed as the ‘Jewish Nobel Prize,’ the ‘Genesis Prize,’ a $1 million prize, is awarded annually by the Israeli Prime Minister in Jerusalem. The prize was inaugurated last year as a partnership between the Israeli prime minister’s office, the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the chairman of the Jewish Agency. Douglas will reportedly use the prize money to promote inclusiveness and diversity in Judaism.

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