News Briefs

An Israeli company behind a smart, emissions-saving air conditioner device has developed a new product that uses AI to optimize energy usage of indoor heating. 

Sensibo allows users to remotely set timers, control fan speeds and adjust the temperature of all units in their home, to reduce energy consumption and save money.

It is preparing to launch the new Sensibo Blaze, which uses a smart, self-regulating thermostat as well as cloud computing to determine the energy usage of indoor heating by measuring the temperature and humidity of the room.

It also detects indoor pollutants such as carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds including human-made, hazardous chemicals like benzene and toluene. 

The new system integrates ChatGPT, which helps the user with recommendations based on individual behavior patterns, for example for timed automatic heating .

The company says it aims to launch Blaze in European markets by the end of the year. 

“Sensibo has already enhanced hundreds of thousands of homes globally, ushering in smart climate control that reduces energy consumption and emissions,” said Ran Roth, CEO and co-founder of Sensibo.

“It’s now time for European homes, which dedicate a significant portion of their energy use to heating, to embrace a smart solution for a better climate.

“I believe in making every home a haven of comfort, even amidst the chill of European winters. Sensibo Blaze has the power to transcend climatic challenges. At Sensibo, we are committed to a better climate by melding innovation with thermal comfort within every European home.”

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Students at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have just completed a three-day long hackathon, in which they developed AI platforms to detect the early signs of suicidal ideation in social media activity. 

First place in the competition went to the creators of a system that would use data gathered from social media to alert loved ones when someone is struggling with mental health, so that they would be more sensitive to the signs that precede acts of self-harm. 

The hackathon was part of research conducted by Technion students Shir Lisak and Ilanit Sobol, who are exploring how to recognize suicidal behaviors online.

Several welfare organizations joined the event, including Data for Good Israel, which uses AI to support social impact; ERAN, Israel’s emotional first aid service; and Gila’s Way, a nonprofit that offers education on mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

The event was funded with the help of the Israel Data Science Initiative (IDSI), Technion Social Hub and Tech-AI.

“People put more of themselves on social media than they realize,” said Prof. Avigdor Gal from the Technion’s Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences.

“In a three-day hackathon, students of the faculty tackled the challenge, looking for ways to recognize suicidal ideation and offer assistance. The hackathon is always dedicated to helping with a specific social issue,” he said.

“We cannot be blind to society around us, what is done with the tools we develop, how the data we collect is used. Our values must be part of the work we do.”

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An Israeli startup will be bringing its burger-grilling robot chef to the US for the first time, starting with the campus of the University of Denver. 

SavorEat has developed a robot that grills plant-based burgers according to customer requests in under four minutes. It is the first Israeli food robotic company to ever market its product in the US.  

Now, the Rehovot-based startup has partnered with Sodexo, a global food services and facilities company, to bring its technology to the US market. It is the first Israeli food robotic company to ever market its product in North America.  

SavorEat’s autonomous burger-grilling process first involves loading cartridges of hamburger, turkey, pork or seafood mix into the robot chef, which shapes and prepares the meal. The consumer orders their burger through an app, which personalizes their meal by asking how hungry they are, whether they want more fat or more protein and whether they prefer it juicy or well-done. 

The process saves around 7.275lbs of carbon dioxide emissions and and 7,300oz of water per patty by cooking personalized patties that only produce the specified amount of plant-based meat needed on demand.

The company decided to first launch its robot chef in Colorado due to the state’s progressive technological advancements, the tendency to make healthy dining decisions, and its high proportion of flexitarian eaters. 

“By partnering with a legacy company like Sodexo, which encourages innovation and is at the forefront of adopting food tech to serve students worldwide, SavorEat can extend its reach and bring our Robot Chef to the US market,” said Racheli Vizman, CEO and Co-Founder of SavorEat.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to be the first Israeli food robotic company in the meat alternative sector to launch in the USA and to offer the growing flexitarians’ target audience in the USA, almost 50 percent of the population, new, healthy, and personalized alternatives (without any animal-based ingredients),” she said.

“Partnering with Sodexo gives us a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to penetrate the market among a highly relevant target audience, the Y generation, who are also considered early adopters consumers. We could not ask for a better partner with which to mark our US debut.”

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An Israeli venture capital firm has raised $175 million for its dedicated healthcare fund, which it will use to invest in healthtech, life sciences and foodtech and ag-tech startups. 

Pitango VC has already used some of the capital from the new Pitango HealthTech II fund to invest in Nevia Bio, which is developing an AI platform to assist in the early detection of women’s health diseases, and QuantHealth.ai, which creates AI-led clinical trial simulations to accelerate and de-risk drug development. 

The firm, which is based in Herzliya in central Israel, has previously invested in startups such as Laguna Health, developer of an app that helps patients recover at home following their discharge from the hospital; and CLEW, an AI-platform that enhances a hospital’s ICU capacity by providing staff with current and predicted patient conditions across units.

“Despite the global and local macroeconomic challenges, the healthcare sector continues to show resilience and growth,” said Ittai Harel, Managing Partner at Pitango HealthTech.

“Recent events such as the pandemic, decentralization of healthcare, and value-based care, have resulted in unprecedented openness towards the adoption of new technologies,” he said.

“We’re launching this new fund to continue to back entrepreneurs and invest in companies that are revolutionizing the healthcare industry.”

The Pitango HealthTech Fund invests in companies that are at a range of stages of development from seed to commercial stage. Since 1993, Pitango has invested in over 250 companies and seen more than 85 either become publicly traded companies or acquired by strategic players. 

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An Israeli startup that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose cancer has unveiled a new solution that will help pathologists detect the specific treatments that will benefit breast cancer patients most. 

Ibex Medical Analytics’ Galen Breast HER2 platform can accurately determine the expression in cancer slides of the protein HER2, which is responsible for the proliferation of breast cancer cells. 

The platform uses AI to analyze the slides, identify the tumor cells and rapidly calculate the HER2 score of the tissue. The results are highlighted for the pathologist, who can review them and make a final decision as to what cancer treatment is best for each patient. 

Traditionally, pathologists evaluate HER2 in tumor samples visually, which may result in varied interpretations. The Galen Breast HER2 scoring system quantifies the sample’s expression of the protein into four standard categories to help the pathologist make a more accurate decision.

The technology was developed and validated by Ibex in collaboration with AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish multinational biotechnology company, and Daiichi Sankyo, a Japanese pharma company. 

“We are committed to providing pathologists with the most comprehensive AI platform as they implement digital pathology,” said Issar Yazbin, VP Product Management at Ibex Medical Analytics.

“In addition to HER2, we are now able to support full review of breast biopsies and excisions, distinguish between multiple types of invasive and non-invasive cancer, detect more than 50 malignant and non-malignant morphological features, and provide the underlying technology for automated quantification of additional prognostic and predictive breast biomarkers such as Ki-67, ER and PR.”

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An Israeli cybersecurity firm has established a new center to help it combat viruses and malware that are powered by advanced artificial intelligence. 

CyberArk, headquartered both in Petah Tikva and Newton, Massachusetts, protects sensitive information across businesses and cloud platforms. It set up its Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence to explore new ways of embedding AI into its existing products, so as to overcome increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. 

The center also works with CyberArk Labs, the company’s research arm that is dedicated to discovering emerging trends in technology and information security, and nurturing innovative ideas into powerful new security solutions. 

CyberArk Labs has been researching the new ways cyber attackers can use generative AI, and together with the new center, will advance their own use of this tool to improve security for the company’s 8,000 customers. 

“The establishment of our AI Center of Excellence is a natural progression of our product strategy,” said Peretz Regev, chief product officer of CyberArk.

“One of our goals is to better enable customers to utilize in-product AI-based capabilities to create advantages for their defensive strategies. We see great potential for AI and its ability to influence use cases associated with areas like policy optimization, risk reduction and threat detection.”

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An Israeli renewable electricity firm is forming a joint venture with one of the country’s natural gas suppliers to provide clean energy to households and small businesses. 

The partnership between Enlight Renewable Energy, which finances, develops and constructs clean energy power plants, and Electra Power, a leading company in the Israeli gas market, will use each of their advantages to establish a new supplier of cheap electricity.

This follows the decision to open up the Israeli electricity market to competition from January 2024, allowing independent suppliers and energy distributors to compete for the first time with the state-owned Israel Electric Corporation, which previously held a monopoly on the sector.

With a competitive electricity market, customers are expected to have more control over how much power they consume and what they pay for it.

“The Israeli electricity market is evolving, ushering in a new era of competition with the Israel Electric Corporation for the direct supply of electricity to consumers,” said Gilad Yavetz, CEO of Enlight.

“This move empowers Israeli households to access the country’s abundant solar resources and choose cheaper and greenhouse gas-free electricity,” he said.

“Enlight has decided to enter this strategic market, which generates an annual turnover of approximately 10 billion shekels [approx. $2.6 billion] in the residential sector alone, and Electra Power was the natural choice as our partner for this venture given their extensive reach to hundreds of thousands of households, billing capabilities, and a strong track record of delivery in customer service.”

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Thirty Israeli climate-tech companies, ranging from promising startups to well-established companies, have been chosen to represent the country at the United Nations’ 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai.

The COP conferences are international conferences on the climate held each year in a different location. Government representatives, private institutions and members of the academic world gather to address climate change, setting goals to combat it, sharing scientific and technological advances and negotiating policy. 

The 30 companies, representing diverse fields from energy and water to green construction and food technology, were chosen in order to showcase Israel’s advanced climate technologies and to promote international collaboration on the climate crisis.  

The government’s Israel Innovation Authority oversaw the selection process, with its “technology expert evaluators” choosing from more than 200 applicants. 

More than 100,000 people – including dozens of heads of state – are expected to attend COP28 in Dubai, which runs from November 30 to December 12. Also in attendance will be representatives from the private sector, civil society, the financial world, academia, and the media.

The Israeli companies that will present their innovations include Daika Wood, which creates a plastic-like material from wood waste; HomeBiogas, which turns organic waste into clean energy for cooking or heating; ANINA Culinary Art, which turns “ugly” vegetables into nutritious, capsule-packed meals; and Xfloat, which is developing highly efficient solar panels that float on water.

“We believe that by showcasing Israeli climate-tech innovations on the international stage, we can provide excellent exposure for these pioneering companies and foster collaborations, inspire others, and leverage Israel’s leadership potential in the global climate arena,” said Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority.

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Israel and Japan are advancing their innovation cooperation as part of a drive to expand their $3.3 billion commercial relationship. 

Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat met this week in Tel Aviv with his Japanese counterpart Yasutoshi Nishimura to sign an agreement formalizing a bilateral “understanding of economic and innovation ties.” 

The signing followed a series of discussions between Barkat and senior Japanese officials, including the digital transformation minister and finance minister.

“There’s vast potential for Japanese businesses to invest in Israel and enhance trade with one of the world’s leading economies,” said Barkat. 

“The persistent strengthening of our trade relations in recent years is a testament to the mutual commitment to pushing our economies forward,” he said.

“My ambition is to deepen the bond between Israel and Japan, recognizing the massive untapped potential, and I am keen on collaborating closely with Minister Nishimura to achieve this.”

Barkat also announced an official visit to Japan next month, during which he will lead an Israeli business delegation and meet Japanese government officials and business representatives.

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American basketball superstar Steph Curry is among the investors in a $50 million funding round that has just been raised by an Israeli cybersecurity startup.

UpWind Security develops a security platform that protects cloud infrastructure in real time, and is already working with dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

The funding was raised by Sheva, a VC fund established by Israeli former basketball player Omri Casspi, and Penny Jar, a VC fund backed by Curry and other investors. 

UpWind, which is based in Tel Aviv, has raised a total of $80 million in the 11 months since its inception, and is now valued at $300 million. It will use the funds to increase their workforce, which currently stands a 70, within a year. 

This isn’t the first time an NBA player has invested in an Israeli startup. Last year, basketball superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo invested an undisclosed sum in Tel Aviv-based Antidote Health, which provides affordable healthcare online. 

UpWind was founded by Amiram Shachar, who previously founded Spot.io, a cloud service and management optimization company. In 2020, Spot was sold to American data storage company NetApp for $450 million.

“In the past year, we worked with hundreds of CISOs and security engineers, to get a mile-deep understanding of their biggest security challenges and priorities,” said Shachar.

“Through this process, we discovered major hurdles facing security teams and understood that the right, most complete way to solve them is at runtime,” he said.

“Upwind is shifting the paradigm of cloud security and redefining CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) with runtime insights.”

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Five Israeli scientists have been awarded grants from the prestigious European Research Council, the European Union’s organization that funds groundbreaking scientific and technological research. 

The researchers all hail from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and will use the funds to advance in their respective fields. 

The five assistant professors are:

Assaf Zinger from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, who is engineering nanoparticles that mimic human breast milk for oral medicine that could not otherwise be distributed evenly throughout the body;

Yuval Shagam from the Faculty of Chemistry, who plans to apply research into molecular physics to quantum-controlled chemistry experiments and information technology;

Charlotte Vogt, also from the Faculty of Chemistry, who is researching metal nanoparticle-based catalysts, which could shift reliance away from fossil fuels and create more sustainable industrial processes;

Hila Peleg from the Faculty of Computer Science, who is developing algorithms to improve programmers’ ability to write correct code quickly; and

Ben Engelhard from the Department of Neuroscience, who is working on a theory that learning is triggered by dopamine, and researching how the brain learns complex tasks. 

“It is part of our mission to give early-career talent the independence to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven research that can shape our future,” said ERC President Professor Maria Leptin. 

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An Israeli firm will be implementing its cybersecurity solution at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (CVG) International Airport to prevent air travel threats. 

Cyber 2.0 has developed a cybersecurity system that provides “total defense” against the spread of cyber attacks within an organization’s networks by isolating the attack and blocking it from spreading. 

Now, it has been selected by the BIRD Foundation (the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development), which encourages cooperation between Israeli and US tech companies, to implement its solution across the CVG airport systems. 

After an extensive R&D period, Rishon Lezion-based Cyber 2.0 has created a system for the airport that will display potential risks and abnormal activities within its digital infrastructure, and prevent cyber attacks in real time. 

Airborne systems now heavily rely on advanced digital infrastructure, which makes engines, navigation systems, safety protocols and communication vulnerable to cyberattacks. Breaching one of these systems could lead to the loss of control over an aircraft mid-flight. 

The company intends to implement this solution in other airports around the world over the next 18 months. It has also worked on a unique maritime cybersecurity system at Ashdod Port in Israel. 

“From the moment we presented the capabilities of our system to the airport personnel in Kentucky… the idea was born to carry out a dedicated development for airports around the world as well,” said Cyber 2.0 CEO Sneer Rozenfeld.

“We believe that the potential in this field is enormous, and we are working to position Cyber 2.0 as the ultimate solution for preventing cyberattacks at airports and seaports worldwide.”

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Greece and Cyprus are planning to use Israeli artificial intelligence capable of early detection of dangerous wildfires. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this week with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in Nicosia to discuss preventative measures on the spontaneously occurring blazes. 

The meeting took place on the heels of a recent and massive wildfire in northeastern Greece that destroyed more than 93,000 hectares (230,000 acres) of land. It was the largest single blaze in a European Union country since the year 2000, and claimed the lives of 20 people. 

The three leaders discussed using AI systems for the early detection of wildfires, as well as ways to better coordinate firefighting efforts. Mitsotakis believes that Greece could be a suitable environment to demonstrate the efficacy of the Israeli AI. 

“We are already talking to Israel about AI-based solutions that will offer us early detection capabilities,” Mitsotakis said, according to the Associated Press.

Netanyahu also said that the discussions had involved how to move “well beyond” reactive action on wildfires and the ways in AI systems can be used for early detection.

“This is really one of those areas where when we say we’ll do it better together, there’s no question that that’s the case,” he said.

The three also delved into harnessing natural gas discoveries in Israeli and Cypriot waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, the leaders expressed interest in developing an undersea electricity cable stretching 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) that would link the power grids of Israel, mainland Greece, and Cyprus. 

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An Israeli car security startup is collaborating with multinational automation giant Siemens on software to protect vehicles. 

C2A Security works with automotive companies throughout the entire development process, ensuring that the carmakers have digital control over every line of code from planning to production, and even after the vehicles have rolled off the factory floor.  

The Jerusalem-based company will connect its EVSec platform with Siemens’ Polarion software, which automates the management of systems engineering projects. This will allow users of Polarion to draw on security data from the EVSec Platform. 

The companies say that this will enable the development of more secure software and comply with current and developing regulations in the field. 

“With stricter regulations around security going into effect, it’s imperative to understand the implications of software and hardware changes on automotive systems,” said Piyush Karkare, Global Director of Automotive Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries. 

“Bringing Polarion together with C2A Security’s EVSec platform addresses this by providing a 30,000 feet view of products, but with the ability to see component-level vulnerabilities, their effect on compliance, and feeding back into the design phase of the product lifecycle,” he said. 

“By connecting Polarion ALM for software development with the EVSec Platform to create a one-stop shop for product security management and automation, customers will have the best set of tools to enable the delivery of secure software, at scale, while helping them adhere to industry regulations and standards,” said C2A Security CEO Roy Fridman.

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Israeli researchers have developed artificial intelligence capable of finding drug combinations for cancer treatments that are significantly more powerful than using each individual drug alone. 

There are cancer treatments that already employ combination therapy, where different drugs work together in synergy to combat a tumor more effectively than they would individually. 

Scientists at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have found drugs that are not only more powerful against tumors when combined, but that also chemically self-combine their nanoparticles to produce an even greater effect.

The resulting nanomedicines are highly effective at targeting cancer cells and fighting tumors, while being less toxic to the patient and causing fewer side effects. 

The researchers have developed an AI that predicts which drug duos can chemically self-assemble or join together to form nanoparticles.

It does so by gathering information about biological synergy from published articles, compiling the pairs of drugs into a comprehensive database, and then pairs drugs based on their potential to create nanoparticles together. 

The AI has proposed 1,985 drug combinations for 70 types of cancer thus far. 

One example of the model’s abilities is a highly effective drug pair for treating head and neck cancer that it discovered. The two drugs, Bortezomib and Cabozantinib, are already approved for cancer treatment – the former for blood cancers, and the latter for liver, kidney, and thyroid cancers. The combination of the two was proven effective and produced fewer side effects than using either of the drugs individually.

“The development of meta-synergy on the nanometric level is a very complex challenge,” said Prof. Yosi Shamay, of the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. 

“It necessitates the introduction of (at least) two drugs simultaneously into the same delivery system that would lead them to the desired destination in the body. Our research has shown, both in a computational demonstration and in live experiments, that the combination we proposed indeed leads the drugs to the tumor and releases them there — and that this therapy is very effective in treating the disease,” he said.

The results from a study analyzing the efficacy of the AI were published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

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