News Briefs

July 29, 2014 | Tango mobile messaging platform released a new application called Tango Music Pix, which allows users to share photos along with a song. Each user can send 30-second long slideshows to their friends featuring images and a song, which Tango automatically edits. A number of similar slideshow-creating platforms are steadily gaining popularity, including Sharalike and Flipagram which are platforms for sharing music and photo slideshows on Instagram. Founded in 2009, Tango is a mobile messaging service with more than 200 million registered users worldwide.

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July 28, 2014 | The Israeli company V-Gen, a developer and manufacturer of fiber lasers was acquired by US company Newport Corporation for an undisclosed amount. V-Gen is expected to have sales in the range of $15-20 million within the first twelve months after the transaction closes. The terms of the deal are set to close in the third financial quarter. According to Newport Corp. Senior VP and General Manager of Spectra-Physics Lasers Group David Allen, “”V-Gen has a strong track record of growth and profitability and we expect the acquisition to be accretive to our earnings immediately following the closing. We welcome the V-Gen team to Newport and look forward to their positive contributions to our Spectra-Physics Lasers Group.” V-Gen was founded in 1998 and is the leading supplier of pulsed fiber lasers with over 50 employees worldwide.

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July 28, 2014 | Mapi Pharma, which was scheduled to complete a $37 million financing round by the end of last week, has published a revised prospectus for $20 million. As a result the company value for the IPO was lowered to $120 million after money. Aegis Capital is leading the IPO along with Chardan Capital as the second underwriter. Mapi Pharma is headed by CEO Ehud Marom and manufactures complicated-to-procedure raw materials for generic drugs and has a technological platform for delayed drug release.

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July 27, 2014 | Intigua, a company specializing in providing companies with ways to manage their IT operations in public and private clouds, raised $10 million in Series B funding. The round of funding was led by Intel Capital with existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Cedar Fund. The company has now raised a total of $21 million to date. Intigua will use the funds to continue working on its product and to expand its sales and marketing operations. Intigua is an Israeli company headed by CEO Shimon Hason that is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

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July 27, 2014 | Creators of the newspaper-styled homepage for Mac users, Genieo raised $34.1 from Israeli company Somoto Inc., an Israeli company that monetizes software downloads and installations. Somoto will pay Genieo the stated price in stocks and cash. Genieo is a private company founded by Sol Tzvi and Jacob Tenenboem specializing in providing Macintosh users with a recommendation engine that automatically updates its content according to personal interests.

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July 27, 2014 | Atox Bio, an Israeli company developing therapeutics for serious infections, announced that it raised $23 million in an investment round led by SR One with participation by Lundbeckfond Ventures and OrbiMed Israel. The funds will be used by Atox Bio to begin late stage clinical trials of AB1o3, a therapy treatment for Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infections or “flesh-eating bacteria,” as well as other serious infections. The AB103 immunomodulator was discovered by Prof. Raymond Kaempfer and Dr. Gila Arad.

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July 27, 2014 | The Israeli company BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics is expected to receive a $5 million grant from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The funds will go towards conducting trials on its product in conjunction with the University of Sao Paolo, according to “Globes.” The company has yet to respond to the reports, which are not yet official. BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics specializes in developing stem cell therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.

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July 27, 2014 | The Israeli flat panel display solutions company Orbotech announced that the TFT LCD panel maker Nanjing CEC Panda LCD Technology chose the company as a vendor for its newest product. Orbotech will be in charge of the inspection, testing and for selling repair equipment for Nanjing’s Gen 8.5 flat panel display in Nanjing, China. Nanjing China placed orders totaling $55 million with Orbotech in the first and second financial quarters of 2014. “Nanjing CEC Panda has selected Orbotech as its vendor-of-choice and has opted for three of Orbotech’s most innovative products in AOI, test and repair”, said Orbotech FPD Division President Gil Oron. Founded in 1981 by Dr. Shlomo Barak, Orbotech is an international developer and producer of automated optical inspection and related imaging and computer-aided manufacturing systems.

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July 27, 2014 | According to a report by “Bloomberg News,” the Israeli company SodaStream is in talks with an unnamed investment firm for sale. As a result of the report, the share price of SodaStream stocks shot up sharply on Wall Street. The “Bloomberg” report also noted that the talks are on an acquisition price of $40 a share. SodaStream is the creator of the home soda machine and is based in Lod, Israel.

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July 23, 2014 | Check Point Software Technologies, a world leader in securing the Internet, announced its financial results for Q2/2014, the second financial quarter of 2014. “We had a fantastic second quarter. Total revenues from products and software blades subscription delivered 10 percent growth, which was driven by strong demand across industries and business segments. We saw a nice up-tick in customer wins across the board with several very large customer contracts,” said Gil Shwed, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Check Point Software Technologies. Check Point reports a total revenue of $363 million, compared to $340 million in total revenue in the second quarter of 2013. Check Point is a world leader in securing the Internet, providing customers with protection against all kinds of threats.

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July 23, 2014 | The TV Format Fund, created by Alon Dolev and the Rubicon Business Group six months ago, will invest $55 million in TV shows for their sale aboard. The fund hopes to capitalize on the recent success of Israeli TV pilots like “Homeland” by investing in new pilots being launched in Israel and selling them aboard, much like a venture capital firm in the world of high-tech. Dolev’s fund raised the initial funds from Rubicon, an investment group with stated interests in the finance, tourism, insurance and leisure, and hopes to bring in new investors, Dolev told Reuters. In addition, Dolev asserts that he hopes to invest in between 12-14 new shows each year. “We can return 60-100 percent of the investment from selling options,” Dolev said.

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July 23, 2014 | Mobile messaging leader Tango announced two new initiatives to expand the company’s gaming publishing business. One is a $25 million Tango Global Games Fund and the other is the appointment of Jim Yang to vice president of games publishing. The Tango Global Games Fund will be predominately used to support the company’s new publishing strategy. Tango is a free mobile messaging service with more than 200 million registered users that continues to enhance its platform with innovative content for game developers, advertisers and others. Tango was founded in 2009 by CEO Uri Raz and CTO Eric Setton and is headquartered in Mountain View, California with offices in Beijing, China and Austin, Texas.

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July 23, 2014 | The cross-platform language learning solution Lingua.ly announced that it has launched a free iOS application to make it even easier to learn new languages. The iOS app follows an existing Android and web application for the company’s platform that allows users to type and paste words in 18 languages in order to receive translation, along with lessons that help users remember what they’ve translated. Currently, Lingua.ly supports Russian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew, among other languages. According to company CEO and co-founder Dr. Jan Ihmels, “The availability of Lingua.ly on iOS confirms our commitment to provide an open and free language learning solution for users around the globe.”

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July 23, 2014 | TipRanks, a stock analyst ranking company, closed Round A funding after raising $3 million. The investors in the company include former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer, Cornell professor Roni Michaely and angel investor John Nakamura, among others. TipRanks ranks over 6,500 stock analysts and bloggers according to their rate of success with financial advice, average returns and consistency. The company employs machine learning techniques and natural language processing algorithms to scan the Internet and measure the performance of anyone who gives investment advice online. TipRanks was founded in 2012 by CEO Uri Gruenbaum and CTO Gilad Gad with $700,000 in seed money after realizing that there are not enough public information for investors on the track records of advisers and experts who provide financial advice online.

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July 23, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, the Mobileye initial public offering on Wall Street will be valued at approximately $3.8 billion after money. The original prospectus was for a valuation between $3.5-5 billion, making the actual valuation at the lower end of estimates. The company will offer 8.325 million shares at a price of $17-19 per share. The offering will most likely take place in two weeks, when the stock will be traded under the ticker MBLY on the New York Stock Exchange. Mobileye was founded in 1999 and has developed a camera-based system to mount on vehicles in order to aid in collision prevention.

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