July 17, 2014 | Intel announced that it will transfer 360 of its employees in Israel to Ireland for the period of 12-24 months. According to a “Globes” report, Intel originally planned to send only 60 Israelis to help the beginning of operations at the Dublin plant. The Israeli employees will relocated to Dublin together with their families. Intel is one of the pioneers in the Israeli high-tech sector, training future engineers and significantly contributing to the local Israeli economy.
News Briefs
July 17, 2014
Intel Announces The Transfer Of 360 Israel Employees To Ireland
July 16, 2014
Israeli Software Company JFrog Raises $7M
Israeli-American company JFrog, which provides software developers with a binary repository management solution, has raised $7 million to better software development and distribution. JFrog, based in Israel and California, is the creator of Artifactory and Bintray; the company that provided the market with the first Binary Repository solution and software distribution social platform. The company’s clients include Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, The Gap and more.
July 15, 2014
OurCrowd Raises $60M In Equity For 46 Companies In 16 Months
July 15, 2014 | OurCrowd, the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform, announced that it has raised $60 million in equity for 46 companies since its founding. Twenty of those companies raised more than $1 million each in investments, and four companies raised well over $3 million using the OurCrowd platform. OurCrowd’s roster of supported companies includes ReWalk, Consumer Physics (the creators of SCiO), BioCatch and Abe’s Market. CEO of OurCrowd Jon Medved stated, “We are proud to have raised these amounts in just 16 months since launching. These numbers demonstrate that our model works and can be effectively used for major funding rounds. The fact that OurCrowd has deployed more money for our companies than our Silicon Valley competitors proves that we are indeed at the forefront of equity crowdfunding innovation.” OurCrowd is a hybrid VC-equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors who wish to invest in Israel and global early stage companies.
July 15, 2014
Aorato Identifies ‘Highly Sensitive’ Security Flaw In Microsoft’s Active Directory
July 15, 2014 | Israeli cyber security firm Aorato announced the discovery of a critical design flaw in Microsoft’s Active Directory. The Microsoft software is widely used to provide network access, but the company asserts that the design flaw is known and that there are defenses in place to prevent identity fraud. Aorato discovered that passwords could potentially be changed by hackers due to bugs in Active Directory. “The dire consequences we are discussing–that an attacker can change the password–was definitely not known,” stated Tal Be’ery, Vice President of Research at Aorato. In addition, Aorato noted that about 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Active Directory making the problem “highly sensitive.” Aorato is an Israeli company specializing in Microsoft technologies with intimate knowledge of Active Directory from a cyber security perspective.
July 15, 2014
Israeli High-Tech Companies Raised $930 In Second Quarter of 2014
July 15, 2014 | According to the IVC Research Center, Israeli high-tech companies raised $930 million in the second quarter of 2014, the highest quarterly amount since 2000. The amount was raised by over 175 Israeli high-tech companies in Q2/2014, a 38 percent jump from the $673 million raised in the first quarter of 2014 and 109 percent above the $446 million attracted to Israeli tech in the second quarter of 2013. Each company averaged a financing round of $5.3 million in Q2/2014. The figures include a $135 million investment in Landa Digital Printing by Germany’s ALTANA Group.
July 15, 2014
Toonimo Web Cartoon Character Creator Raises $2.5M
July 15, 2014 | Israeli company Toonimo announced that it raised $2.5 million in funding. Toonimo offers animation services to websites and companies that want to instruct their visitors using a cartoon character that can guide them through the site and answer questions. Companies can customize the cartoon character they want on their site, decide when they should appear on the site, and decide upon their script. The entire cartoon character is contained in one line of code provided by Toonimo to its clients. The funding round was led by Tuvia Barak of Lux Partners. Toonimo was founded by CEO Ohad Rozen, the founder of Wilocity, which was recently acquired by Qualcomm, and CTO Dan Kotlicki.
July 15, 2014
FDA Set To Review Teva’s Asthma Rescue Inhaler
July 15, 2014 | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is set to review Teva Pharmaceutical Industries‘ drug application for the treatment of asthma, the albuterol multi-dose dry-powder inhaler (MDPI). According to a “Globes” report, the inhaler will be used to treat patients of 12 years of age or older for bronchospasm. Teva VP of Global Respiratory R&D Tushar Shah said, “If approved, albuterol MDPI would become the first breath-actuated dry-powder symptomatic and rescue inhaler available to asthma patients. As the current market-leader in asthma rescue inhalers, it is our hope that the new dry-powder innovation utilized with albuterol MDPI will help fill an unmet need in the existing asthma market.”
July 15, 2014
CloudCom Becomes The Sole Israeli Representative Of Magentrix
July 15, 2014 | Magentrix, a Canadian company specializing in self service portals for organizations and companies, announced that CloudCom will be its sole representative in Israel. The move strengthens CloudCom’s position in the market as the company by providing cloud storage solutions such as Zendesk and Box. CloudCom was founded by Israeli David Alush and is based in Ra’anana, Israel.
July 14, 2014
Apple Wins Emblaze Live Streaming Video Patent Lawsuit
July 14, 2014 | Apple won the patent trial against Israeli company Emblaze, finding that the former did not infringe the latter’s patent on live streaming video. Emblaze asserted in the case that Apple had forced major organizations and companies, like Major League Baseball, to adopt a live streaming video platform that infringed the company’s patent. The judge presiding over the case in San Jose, California found Apple not guilty of patent infringement following Apple lawyer Mark Fowler’s argument that Emblaze is a failed company going after Apple because of its success. Emblaze Group was founded in 1993 in Israel as a software company developing computer-based training, which today focuses its efforts on expanding live video streaming platforms.
July 14, 2014
French Company Dassault Systèmes Acquires SIMPACK
July 14, 2014 | Dassault Systèmes acquired the Munich-based company SIMPACK, a technology leader in multi-body simulation technologies and solutions. Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, is a world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions based in France. SIMPACK has over 130 clients in the automotive, energy, rail and aerospace industries including BMW, Daimler, Honda, Jaguar and Land Rover among others. The amount of the acquisition has not yet need disclosed. SIMPACK is based near Munich, Germany
July 14, 2014
ReWalk Files For $58M NASDAQ Public Offering
July 14, 2014 | ReWalk Robotics filed for an initial public offering on NASDAQ to raise $58 million, with a company value of $250-300 million after money. According to a “Globes” report, the company recently changed its name from Argo Medical Technology to the name of its major product, the ReWalk Exoskeleton, a device that allows paraplegics to walk upright. The device was invented by Dr. Amit Goffer whose startup Odin sold to Medtronic for $9 million in 1997 and who himself is paralyzed. The ReWalk device recently received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the sale of its device in the United States.
July 13, 2014
Yahoo Acquires RayV Streaming Video Platform
July 13, 2014 | The Israeli video streaming platform RayV was acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed amount. Rumors of the sale date back to May of this year, which became official this past Friday. The RayV team will join Yahoo’s Tel Aviv research and development team. Founded in 2005 as a competitor to Joost, RayV specializes in streaming high-quality video to computers and mobile devices. The Israeli startup has raised over $16 million to date.
July 13, 2014
Israel Chemicals And Dutch AkzoNobel Sign Collaborative Agreement
July 13, 2014 | Israel Chemicals and Dutch company AkzoNobel have signed an agreement to cooperate in the long-term production and marketing of vacuum salt and white potash. According to a “Globes” report, the two companies signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding calling for the production and marketing of 1.5 million tons of vacuum salt and 50,000 tons of white potash. Israel Chemicals has begun the construction of a production facility for the products at its mining facility in Suria mine, Catalonia, Spain.
July 13, 2014
Google Ventures Sets Up European Branch Set To Serve Israel As Well
July 13, 2014 | Google Ventures investment fund announced that it will open a branch in Europe that will have $100 million to invest in startups and ventures in the continent. Although Google did not explicitly mention Israel as within the scope of the venture fund, sources reported to “Globes” that Google will use the fund to invest in Israeli startups and companies as well. Google Ventures was launched in 2009 and currently works with over 250 companies in the United States. To date, the company has invested in startups like Uber, Nest, which was acquired by Google, Parse, which was acquired by Facebook, and the Secret social network among others.
July 10, 2014
IT Service Management Software ServiceNow Acquires Israel’s Neebula for $100M
The American co
mpany ServiceNow which offers a platform-as-a-service provider of IT service management software acquireed the Israeli automatic business service management (BSM) Neebula for $100 million.
Neebula’s flagship product, ServiceWatch, automates the discovery, mapping, and monitoring of IT-enabled enterprise services. This addition will become an integral part of the ServiceNow IT Operations Management portfolio. “Neebula is very excited to be part of the ServiceNow team,” said Yuval Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Neebula. “We had a vision to transform the ITOM market by automating the creation and maintenance of service models.
