News Briefs

August 17, 2014 | The Israeli startup ClarityRay was acquired by Internet giant Yahoo! for between $15-$25 million. ClarityRay is a Tel Aviv-based startup that allows publishers to identify fraudulent advertisement. ClarityRay is expected to maintain its operations in Israel with clients that include a number of leading content websites and Fortune 500 companies. ClarityRay was founded in 2012 by CEO Ido Yablonka, CTO Guy Pitelko and VP of R&D Vadim Zak.

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August 14, 2014 | The provider of voice and video news summaries Wibbitz announced that an update in its services, adding natural voice as an option for their automatically generated news videos. The Wibbitz technology, which scans through the text of an article in order to create a minute-long video summarizing the article with pictures and effects, launched Version 3.o of their application yesterday (Wednesday) that will feature natural voice in the videos. Wibbitz was founded by Israelis Zohar Dayan and Yotam Cohen and has seen investments from Li-Ka Shing’s Horizons Ventures, lool ventures, Initial Capital and Kima Ventures since the company was founded in 2011.

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August 14, 2014 | The digital media services provider RRsat Global Communications Network signed a seven-year agreement with Cisneros Media, one of the largest Spanish-language content producers in Latin America. RRsat will provide Cisneros Media with a full playout and global distribution services for the company’s PayTV channels, including Venevision Plus, VmasTV and VePlusTV. A new RRsat playout station will also be established at Venevision Studios in Miami, Florida. RRsat was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Lod, Israel.

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August 14, 2014 | The Israeli online trading company Plus500 announced that it has reached a market cap of $1 billion and seen growth in revenue and profits. The company completed the first half of the year with a 138 percent spike in revenue and a net profit growth of 249 percent to $59 million. Plus500 is a company engaging in contracts for difference (CFDs) online trading of goods, shares, indices, foreign currency, and exchange traded funds (ETFs). The company was founded in 2008 and currently operates in over 50 countries, based out of the United Kingdom.

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August 14, 2014 | The Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems was awarded with a $80 million contract to supply an unnamed Latin American country with Command, Control, Computer & Communications (C4I) systems. The project will extend over three years and will be part of the Latin American country’s military extensive modernization efforts. The C4I system will play an information role in emergency situations, facilitating a real-time operational picture for military forces.

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August 14, 2014 | Israeli medical device company Medgius announced that the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will incorporate the company’s micro ScoutCam 1.2 into its Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot (VIPIR) tool. The ScoutCam 1.2 is the world’s smallest video camera used for both medical and other applications favored for its high image quality, customizable optics, waterproof material and adaptability to extreme temperatures. The VIPIR is a maneuverable robotic inspection tool being tested as part of the Robotic Refueling Mission and the ScoutCam 1.2 is being used to provide visual inspection capabilities in space. “Our partnership with NASA is a powerful testament to the technological versatility of micro ScoutCam 1.2,” said Medigus CEO Chris Rowland.

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August 14, 2014 | The online car buying and selling platform that launched this spring Beepi is in talks to raise nearly $50 million in venture capital. The company hopes to raise funds at a $200 million valuation, according to a source involved in the talks. After Beepi launched its online automobile marketplace in April, the company raised $5 million in a funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. Beepi’s website allows car owners to enter the basic information about the vehicle they want to sell, then providing a quote that the site promises is always higher than the dealer’s trade-in prices.

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August 14, 2014 | RedHill BioPharma, an emerging Israeli biopharmaceutical company focusing on the treatment of inflammatory and gastrointestinal diseases, has acquired an option for a Phase II pancreatic cancer drug RP101. RedHill acquired the cancer-treating drug from Dresden, Germany-based company RESprotect GmbH, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Society. According to RedHIll, RP101 has completed Phase I and II clinical trials and has been granted the Orphan Drug designation for the treatment of pancreatic cancer by the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

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August 14, 2014 | The 360° app quality company Applause announced that it will partner with Crittercism, a leader in mobile App Performance Management (mAPM). Through the partnership Applause will combine its mobile app testing tools and services with Crittercism’s comprehensive suite of app performance management solutions in order to spur mobile growth for businesses. As a result of the partnership, Applause and Crittercism customers can manage pre- and post-development performance on their mobile apps. Applause is an Israeli company that was originally launched in 2008 as uTest. Since, the company has become a leader in the app quality revolution with their testing services, software tools and analytics.

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August 13, 2014 | The Israeli taxi ordering application GetTaxi announced that it raised $150 million in funding to start the service in New York for corporate customers. A rival company of popular U.S. services Uber and Lyft, GetTaxi has already expanded out of Israel into major European cities like London where it operates a black cab service. To date, GetTaxi has raised $210 million in funding. “Although competition is ripe everywhere, we think a conservative scenario is that GetTaxi becomes the leading player in Russia and Israel,” Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd., the Swedish fund manager that contributed $25 million to the funding round, said in a separate statement. Founded in Tel Aviv in 2010 by Shahar Waiser and Roi More, GetTaxi is used as a taxi service for personal and corporate uses in 24 cities including London, Moscow, and now, New York (under the name Gett).

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August 12, 2014 | Tel Aviv-based startup JoyTunes announced that it raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Aleph Venture Capital and in participation with Formation 8. JoyTunes has developed a music teaching application that shortens the process for children and adults learning to play music. JoyTunes was created by CEO and co-founder Yuval Kaminka together with his former music instructor Roey Izkovsky and his brother Yigal Kiminka. JoyTunes how has 3.5 million organic downloads in the App Store and over one million songs are played through its app each week.

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August 12, 2014 | According to a “Calcalist” report, Taboola is currently raising between $80-90 million in order to reach a $1.5 billion valuation. Most of the investments are likely to come from private individuals and not public companies. The investment round is also expected to be the largest since the company was founded in 2007 by Adam Singolda, a move that some believe will precede the company going public on NASDAQ and define its value. Taboola is a content recommending service for websites without accessing users’ personal information.

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August 12, 2014 | The creators of the viral application Yo! announced the release of a new version of the app. The newest version of the application created by Or Arbel and Moshe Hogeg will allow users to create profiles, add pictures next to their user names, link attachments and to have access to the Yo Index, containing all of the different Yo alerts users can receive. In addition, the Yo team added hashtags, allowing users to ‘Yo’ the hashtags if they agree with them, very much like a Facebook ‘like.’ The Yo application, which until this point only let its users send ‘yos’ to their friends, became an instant sensation two months ago following its release.

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August 12, 2014 | The Glowing Plant company, a synthetic biology startup responsible for the creation of glow-in-the-dark plants will be the Y Combinator seed accelerator’s first biotechnology startup. Glowing Plant hopes to build functional plants for the home that could work to repel insects or work as air fresheners. The project was presented in a viral Kickstarter campaign that raised the company $484,000. The technology uses the Genome Compiler, an Israeli-invented platform that allows scientists and enthusiasts to experiment with genetics, in order to create the glowing properties of the plant.

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August 12, 2014 | According to a Money Tree report published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, venture capital firms invested over $465 million in Israeli high-tech in the period from January to June 2014. The report also notes that investment is up 25 percent from the corresponding period in 2013 and that the Israeli companies raised $233 million in the second quarter of 2014 alone. The average for investment in the second quarter was $6.3 million in high-tech companies, up from $6.1 million in the year’s first financial quarter.

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