News Briefs

June 29, 2014 | The ReWalk exoskeleton, a device that helps paraplegics walk, announced that its life-changing device was certified by the FDA in the United States. The device, which straps on to the user’s legs and involves the use of crutches to allow those usually confined to wheelchairs to traverse various indoor and outdoor environments, costs about €52,500 ($72,000) in Europe. The US pricing for the device has yet to be revealed. The ReWalk device was created in 2011 by Israeli company Argo Medical Technologies’ founder Dr. Amit Goffer, who himself is a quadriplegic.

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June 26, 2014 | The Israeli-created application Parko that helps you find a parking spot raised $1.1 million in a recent seed funding round for its API. Angel investors SparkLabs, Global Ventures, OurCrowd as well as European angel investors participated in the financing round, which also put Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver on Parko’s board of directors. The application uses crowdsourced data to help drivers find parking spots in busy urban settings and commands your navigation system to show you how to get there.

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June 26, 2014 | The German specialty chemicals group Altana signed an equity financing agreement with Landa Corporation of Israel for a sum of 100 million euros ($135 million). The sum will give Altana a minority stake in Benny Landa’s Landa Digital Printing (Landa Nanography). The funds will go towards the completion of development of nanography, the water-based digital printing process that Landa Corporation specializes in. Landa Corporation was founded by Israeli-Canadian entrepreneur Benny Landa in 2002 after he sold his digital printing business Indigo to HP for $830 million.

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June 26, 2014 | Dune Medical Devices, a company specializing in removing breast tumors in one swift surgery, raised $21 million. The current financing round was led by Kraft Group and Canepa Advanced Healthcare Fund. Approximately $14 million of the total investment will go directly to the company, while the remaining $7 million will be transferred to the company in October 2014. Dune Medical Devices’ product, the MarginProbe, was approved by the FDA in the beginning of 2013. It specializes in identifying if all of cancerous parts of a breast tumor have been removed in surgery in real time, during the surgery. Dune Medical Devices was founded in 2002 and is a privately held company with offices in the US and Israel.

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June 25, 2014 | The platform that transforms social networks into television channels, Stevie, unveiled new versions of its mobile application that support Google Chromecast. The new feature will allow users to jump between their mobile social network feeds to viewing the social content on their television with the tap of a button. Stevie is an application available on Google Play and iOS founded in 2011 by CEO Yael Givon and CCT Gil Rimon. In 2012, Stevie raised $1.5 million from Hong Kong based venture capital firm Horizons Ventures, a fund that has invested in Spotify, Facebook and Siri.

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June 25, 2014 | The Israeli digital marketing company Matomy Media Group acquired a majority ownership of Munich-based domain monetization company Team Internet, increasing its stake from 20 percent to 70 percent. While the value of the deal was not disclosed to the press, the 70 percent of the company was previously valued at nearly $19.3 million, according to “Geektime.” Matomy acquired its first stake in Team Internet in August 2012. Team Internet provides services in the direct navigation search market, reaching more than 100 million unique users each month. Matomy Media Group is a leader in the digital marketing world that helps clients like American Express, Experian and Zynga acquire new customers.

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June 25, 2014 | EverythingMe released its contextual launcher yesterday on a global scale following worldwide requests for the application. The app is currently only available for Android phones through Google Play. CEO of EverythingMe Ami Ben-David decided to release the application in countries that previously didn’t have access to it after the app stirred up a lot of buzz in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Brazil. EverythingMe’s unique platform for Android teaches devices to deliver the proper applications, tools, contacts and information to the user according to the time, their location and habits. EverythingMe was founded in 2010 by Rami Kasterstein, Ami Ben-David and Joey Simhon, is currently based in Israel and has received over $37 million in funding to date.

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June 25, 2014 | The cyber attack detection company Cyber-Ark announced to “Globes” that it filed for an IPO to raise up to $75 million. The underwriters of the IPO are J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, William Blair, Oppenheimer & Co, and Nomura Securities International. Cyber-Ark specializes in providing enterprise software to detect cyber attacks on privileged accounts. The company was founded 15 years ago by CEO Udi Mokady and since has earned $70 million in invests from its largest partner, Jerusalem Venture Partners.

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June 25, 2014 | The biotechnology company MacroCure reportedly will file for a Nasdaq public offering to raise several tens of millions of dollars on Wall Street. According to a “Globes” report, the IPO is being underwritten by Credit Suisse Group, Jefferies LLC, Oppenheimer & Co and Nomura Securities International. MacroCure, based in Petah Tikvah, has developed a method for treating wounds using white blood cells taken from donor blood. According to the company, their Curexell treatment showed a 90 percent reduction rate in patients with deep wound infections.

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June 25, 2014 | The leading content discovery platform Taboola was chosen by NBC Sports Digital, a division in the NBC Sports Groups, for an exclusive, multi-year strategic partnership. The partnership will use Taboola’s personalized content recommendation service to boost website engagement and to improve monetization on 16 of their websites, including NBCSports.com, GolfChannel.com, and Rotoworld.com among others. Taboola’s content-recommending algorithm examines context, browsing history, geographic location, social media trends and collaborative filtering, sending on average 350 million unique visitors to recommended webpages each month. Taboola was founded by CEO Adam Singolda in 2007 and is currently headquartered in New York City. The content-recommending service also has an R&D center in Israel and offices in London and Bangkok.

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June 24, 2014 | Mellanox Technologies announced today (Tuesday) that it will acquire the privately-held company Integrity Project. The amount of the acquisition remains undisclosed and the deal is subject to come closing conditions, but is expected to close in the coming months. Mellanox Technologies hopes to use Integrity Project’s skills to expand its software development capabilities in a cloud-data system. Mellanox is a provider of Ethernet and InfiniBand computer network switches and is headquartered in California and Israel. The Integrity Project is an outsourcing software company headquartered in Israel.

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June 24, 2014 | The Israeli audio status social network HearMeOut reported that it raised $500,000 in private investments. The social network hopes to use the new funds to expand its service internationally, to the United States in particular. HearMeOut allows its users to record 42 second statuses, similar to tweets or short Facebook statuses, for all their friends and followers to hear. The application was launched for iOS three months ago and is anticipated to launch on Google Play soon.

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June 24, 2014 | The viral application Yo! announced yesterday (Monday) that it was hacked over the weekend by three Georgia Tech students who succeeded in retrieving user’s phone numbers. Now, following the hack, Yo! has decided to hire one of the students to work with the company to improve security and prevent future hacks. Yo! is an application that allows its users to simply send ‘Yo!’ to their contacts, created by Or Arbel, Moshe Hogeg of Mobli and Phil Hars in a record-breaking time of 8 hours. On Thursday the company announced that it raised $1 million in funding, after which the app quickly went viral and was downloaded by hundreds of thousands of iOS and Android users.

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June 24, 2014 | Israeli pharmaceutical company Neurim Pharmaceuticals reported the completion of an initial efficiency trial of its drug Circadin for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, together with existing treatments of the disease. Circadin is currently sold as drug for the treatment of sleeping disorders, based on the delayed release of melatonin. Because melatonin levels are low in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the company decided it would be worthwhile to see if Circadin could help Alzheimer’s patients control the effect of some of the symptoms together with standard methods of treatment. Neurim Pharma was founded by CTO Prof. Nava Zisapel, with the main investors of the company being Nava herself and Yehuda Zisapel. Today, Circadin is sold in over 40 countries for the treatment of sleep disorders.

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June 23, 2014 | Israeli app customer predictive analytics company Rewardpod raised $1 million to continue its growth from Israeli entrepreneurs and angel investors. Rewardpod provides technology that helps app developers improve their customer acquisition and monetization using predictive analytics, scoring app users in real time according to their likelihood to spend. Founded in 2013 by CEO Ze’ev Rozov and CTO Ehud Zaguri, Rewardpod currently has offices in Israel and London.

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