News Briefs

July 9, 2014 | Social feedback platform GetYou raised $1.1 million in seed funding. The Israeli application was launched this past Tuesday and aims to give social feedback by providing a platform that allows users to judge others’ profiles and receive feedback on their own. Founded in 2013, the startup raised the funds from RDSeed and Wix founder Avishai Abrahami.

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July 9, 2014 | DSP solutions provider Ceva acquired French company RivieraWaves for $19 million. RivieraWaves is a privately-held company that creates solutions for wireless connectivity IP for WiFi and Bluetooth technologies. Ceva hopes that RivieraWaves will expand the company’s licensing and royalty revenue base tby improving the service of devices like smartphones, tablets and small cells. The acquisition will also allow Ceva to extend its domain into the sectors of wearable technology and Internet of Things devices in the home and car. According to ABI research, Ceva’s addressable market is set to reach 35 billion connected devices by 2020.

Ceva was founded in Israel but is headquartered in Mountain View, California with design centers in Israel, Ireland and sale and support offices in Europe, the United States and Asia.

 

 

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July 9, 2014 | Applitools, a platform that allows cloud-based automated visual testing of web and mobile applications, raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Magma Venture Partners. Applitools platforms allows users to automate application tests that usually would be conducted manually, seeing how the app would appear on a browsers, devices and more.

Applitools was founded by CEO Gil Sever and Vice President of R&D Adam Carmi.

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July 9, 2014 | Matomy Media Group raised a total of $70 million following their initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange. Following the offering, the digital ad company was valued at $347 million. The offering closed just after one day at a price of 227 pence ($3.89), with Matomy offering up 21 percent of the company to new investors.

Matomy was founded in 2007 by Ofer Druker and is controlled by Ilan Shiloach and specializes in digital and mobile advertising.

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July 9, 2014 | Top Image Systems acquired the American cloud-based data and document management solutions company eGistics for $18 million. According to the agreement between the two companies, Top Image Systems will pay half of the sum in cash and half in company shares. eGistics, based in Dallas, Texas, provides advanced image and data solutions that enable businesses to streamline storage, management and the delivery of information.

Top Image Systems specializes in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Business Process Management (BPM) solutions and is a Mobile Imaging Platform (MIP) provider. The company was founded in 1991 by Executive Chairman Izhak Nakar and is currently publicly traded on NASDAQ and the TSE.

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July 9, 2014 | Perion application development platform will partner with cloud-based security company CYREN. Perion hopes to use CYREN’s online security services to expand Perion Codefuel’s, Perion’s software monetization solutions unit, suite of browsing and security applications.

Perion, formerly IncrediMail, is a global consumer software company founded in 2000 by Yaron and Ofer Adler.

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July 8, 2014 | Two Israeli-founded navigation applications, Waze and Moovit, have been working hard to provide users at the World Cup in Brazil with all of the information on how to arrive at the games on time. According to a “Forbes” report, now the government of Brazil is making use of the popular navigation applications to discover information about the passengers and drivers on the roads. According to the Brazilian government, the goal is to manage traffic on the roads and between pedestrians using Waze, the Google-owned automobile navigation application, and Moovit, a public transportation navigation application. The Brazilian Government is also considering tracking a cycling application called Strava to monitor how bikers are traversing the city.

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July 8, 2014 | Israeli company Orbotech has signed an agreement to acquire UK-based SPTS Technologies Group from European private equity group Bridgeport and others for $370 million. SPTS specializes in the production of etch, deposition and thermal processing equipment for the microelectronics industry. Orbotech, the producer of automated optical inspection equipment based in Yavne, Israel, hopes to accelerate its growth, to move up the electronic value chain, and to increase its presence in Europe and North America following the purchase.

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July 8, 2014 | The share price of Camtek rose by more than 22 percent on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange yesterday (Monday) in anticipation of the launch of the company’s newest semiconductor inspection and metrology platform. The company will launch the Eagle semiconductor inspection and metrology platform today at the Semicon West tradeshow in San Francisco. Headed by CEO and Chairman Rafi Amit, Camtek provides automated solutions to enhance production processes in the industries of semiconductor fabrication and packaging and in the printed circuit board and IC substrates industry (nanotechnology).

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July 8, 2014 | The cancer treatment drug developer Biocancell has plans to raise $28.8 million in a rights issue. Biocancell’s majority shareholder Clal Biotechnology Industries announced that it will buy about $14.4 million in shares, which is likely to dilute the value of the company’s shares. Currently, Biocancell’s stock is being offered at NIS 2.4 a share. A year and a half ago, Clal Biotechnology was in talks with Biocancell to move towards acquisition, but withdrew its proposal after Biocancell decided to license its most advanced product for the treatment of bladder cancer to a different company. Founded in 2004 by Prof. Avraham Hochberg, a professor of molecular biology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is currently headed by CEO Jonathan Burgin.

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July 8, 2014 | After signing a $500 million agreement with pharmaceutical company Bayer HealthCare last year, Compugen announced that it received its first payment of $1.2 million for reaching a cancer immunotherapy milestone. The $1.2 million is only a fraction of the nearly $30 million in milestone payments that Comupgen is set to receive from Bayer. The collaboration between Compugen and Bayer is aimed at developing and commercializing therapeutic antibodies originally discovered by Compugen.

Compugen was founded in 1993 by Eli Mintz, Simchon Faigler, and Amir Natan as a drug discovery company, but also engages in the development and marketing of bioinformatics software platforms.

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July 8, 2014 | The Israel-US Binational Industrial R&D Foundation (BIRD) announced that it will invest up to $9 million in 11 new projects in the areas of 3D printing, agro-technology, information security, and homeland security, among others. During a meeting of the BIRD Board of Governors $8.9 million in funding was approved for 11 new cooperative projects between American and Israeli companies. The companies will also be able to receive private sector funding, putting the total value of all of the projects at about $25 million. Some of the cooperative projects include those between ColorChip, based in Yokne’am, and Gigoptix, based in San Jose, as well as between Genome Compiler and Amyris, Stratasys and Graphene Technologies. The BIRD Foundation looks to promote collaboration between Israeli and American companies in various technological fields for the purpose of joint product development.

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July 8, 2014 | Israeli company Orgenesis, a leader in the fields of cellular therapy and re-generative medicine, signed an agreement with Belgian company MaSTherCell to produce a treatment for diabetes. The Orgenesis subsidiary in Belgium, Orgenesis SPRL, signed an agreement to scale the manufacturing of insulin-producing liver cells to combat diabetes in preparation for Phase I and Phase II clinical trials. Founded by Israelis but now based in the United States, Orgenesis is a development stage company that seeks to cure Type I Diabetes through cellular therapy and regenerative medicine, a process called ‘trans-differentiation.’

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July 7, 2014 | The Office of the Chief Scientist, a branch of the Ministry of the Economy, announced that it will invest NIS 70 million in the development of Israel’s chip production sector. As the number of Israeli-based chip companies diminishes, the Chief Scientist announced that NIS 70 million will be invested over a period of five years in order to revamp the sector with new academic research and industrial bodies. The money will go towards the leading Israeli chip companies which include  CEVA, Sargon, EZChip and more, encouraging them to work together to reboot the Israeli chip sector.

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July 7, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, Israeli heart valve company Mvalve raised $15 million from Boston Scientific, and international medical device developer, manufacturer and marketer. Mvalve is developing a solution for leaks in the mitral heart valve and in order to complete its product, received a $15 million loan from BSC International Holdings, a member of the Boston Scientific group. Sources reported to “Globes” that BSC obtained an option to acquire Mvalve for up to $200 million. Mvalve was founded in 2012 by Maurice Buchbinder, the inventor of the technology, and CEO Assif Stoffman.

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