June 23, 2014 | Israeli-created recipe collection application Kitchenbug raised $1 million from angel investor Dr. Nissim Levy. The application’s founders hope to use the funds to launch their application in Seattle, Washington, according to a “GeekTime” report, and to enhance the social aspects of the application. Kitchenbug is a smart recipe collector that also reports on caloric intake and nutritional information.
News Briefs
June 23, 2014
Recipe Collection App Kitchenbug Raises $1M
June 23, 2014
Andreessen Horowitz Invests $90M in Tanium Cyber Security Startup
June 23, 2014 | Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm based out of California, invested $90 million in Tanium, a cyber security firm established by Technion graduate David Hindawi and brother Orion Hindawi. Tanium is an enterprise security and system management startup that allows IT to control an entire network using natural language and a search engine-like interface. It is the first investment by Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm established in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, in Tanium. Tanium was founded in 2007 by brothers CEO David Hindawi and CTO Orion Hindawi.
June 23, 2014
Ness Israel Acquired By Hilan Tech For $42M
June 23, 2014 | The Israeli company Hilan Tech acquired Ness Technologies Israel for $42 million according to a “Globes” report. The net sale is $32 million as Ness Israel must have $10 million in working capital before closing. When the deal is closed, Ness Israel CEO Shachar Efal will acquire 10 percent of the company. The deal is expected to significantly boost Hilan’s business as Ness Israel has an annual turnover of NIS 700 million while Hilan Tech reported revenue of NIS 430 million in 2013. Ness Israel is part of the global IT services provider Ness Technologies.
June 22, 2014
Qoros Unveils New Sedan Design Concept Authored By Intern
June 22, 2014 | The Israeli-Chinese automobile manufacturing company Qoros, headquartered in Shanghai unveiled its newest sedan design concept, the Qoros 9. The state-of-the-art sedan was designed by company intern and Coventry University School of Art and Design student 29-year-old Jihoon Seo from Korea when we was working as part of the Qoros Design Team. Jihoon was given instructions to design a car for 40-50 year-old professionals living in urban environments with a projected release date of 2020. One of the most unique features of the car is that it doesn’t have traditional door mirrors, but rather a high-definition rear-view camera. Qoros is a joint venture between the Chinese automotive company Chery and Israel Corporation that began in 2007 and just last year released its first car model, the Qoros 3, in the Geneva Motor Show.
June 22, 2014
Content Customizing Platform Dynamic Yield Raises $12.25M In Funds
June 22, 2014 | The customized ‘ad-server’ for content Dynamic Yield announced that it raised $12.15 million. Dynamic Yield creates customized and A/B tested content at all times and is already making deals with some of the notable names in the news industry, providing them with customized ‘ad-server’ content, modifying images and titles to maximize engagement. The company was founded in 2011 by Liad Agmon and Omri Mendellevich and since has raised over $14 million in funds from Bessemer Venture Partners, The New York Times, ProSienbenSat.1 Media AG and Innovation Endeavors, headed by Eric Schmid
June 22, 2014
Mobileye Files For US IPO, Hopes To Raise $100M
June 22, 2014 | The Israeli creators of collision-warning technology Mobileye filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Thursday, with hopes to raise up to $100 million. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were the underwriters for the offering. Mobileye specializes in producing technology based on cameras and sensors that are already used in more than 3 million BMW and General Motors vehicles to help prevent collisions. The company was founded in 1999 by Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram and is currently valued at more than $1.5 billion.
June 22, 2014
Webydo Web Designer Raises $7M
June 22, 2014 | The Israeli-run website design site Webydo raised $7 million in a Series B funding round. The funding round was led by OurCrowd, Magma Capital Partners and other unnamed strategic investors from the U.S. and U.K., and brings Webydo’s total funding to a sum of $9.7 million. According to CEO Shmulik Grizim, Webydo will use the new batch of funds to improve website-designing software and to develop additional tools to expand its community cloud platform. Webydo was founded in 2008 by Grizim and Tzvika Steinmetz as an online tool to generate beautifully designed websites without any need for prior programming knowledge.
June 19, 2014
Schmidt To Israeli CEOs: “Exploit Talent Here,” In Israel
June 19, 2014 | During a recent visit to Israel, but not in his capacity as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt had some words of wisdom for Israeli entrepreneurs, “Globes” reports. In a meeting with a small group of entrepreneurs, Schmidt spoke as one of the founding members of venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors, stating that he believes Israeli entrepreneurs and CEOs should remain close to their home development centers. “You should exploit the talent here and if necessary, hire an American manager to run the US branch. The Israeli CEO should stay close to the development center, because that is the most important thing.”
June 19, 2014
Driver Service Uber To Open Tel Aviv Office
June 19, 2014 | The popular private driver service Uber has already rented out office space in Tel Aviv and is looking to hire a manager, “Calcalist” reported. The American company will reportedly rent office space in the SOSA compound in southern Tel Aviv. Uber is set to be a major competitor to the Israeli taxi-ordering application GetTaxi, founded by Shahar Waiser and Roi More in 2009, which now offers its services in New York City, Moscow, St. Petersburg and London.
June 19, 2014
Israeli App Yo! Raises $1M
June 19, 2014 | The Israeli-created application that is quickly going viral announced that it raised $1 million investments. The application that launched on April 1st, 2014 as part of an April Fool’s Joke has been deemed the ‘next Snapchat’ due to its simplistic, but fun feature that allows you to simply send a ‘yo’ to any one of your mobile contacts. The application is currently available on iOS and Android.
June 19, 2014
Lexifone Call Translation Service Raises $2M
June 19, 2014 | The automated phone conversation translator Lexifone announced that it raised $2 million from a New York State owned fund, Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist and private investors. According to a “Globes” report, the Office of the Chief Scientist granted the company NIS 3.5 million for the development of their translation product. Lexifone’s technology allows two people speaking different languages to have a phone conversation, directly translating the conversation into the user’s language of choice. The service is able to translate to English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Russian and Hebrew. The company was founded in 2010 by CEO Ike Sagie.
June 19, 2014
Zerto Disaster Recovery Company Raises $26M
June 19, 2014 | The Israeli disaster recovery company Zerto raised $26 million in series D financing, “Globes” reports. The latest financing round was led by Harmony Partners that was joined by investors Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, RTP Ventures and US Venture Partners. The company hopes to use the funds to develop its new Cloud Fabric initiative that allows for workload mobility in hybrid clouds and to maintain its independence. Since Zerto was founded in 2009 by CEO Ziv Kedem, it has raised over $60 million including the current financing round, and has opened offices in Herzliya Pituach, Boston, Reading, UK and Australia.
June 19, 2014
Mantis Vision Mobile 3D Company Raises $12.5M
June 19, 2014 | The company responsible for bringing 3D technology to mobile devices, Mantis Vision raised $12.5 million from investors Qualcomm, Samsung, and Flextronics. The investment was made through Qualcomm’s venture capital firm, Flextronic’s hardware venture Lab IX, Chinese Sunny Optical Technology as well as Samsung. Mantis Vision hopes that the investment will help the company implement its breakthrough MV4D technology platform. Mantis Vision’s 3D technology is also being used by Google to develop the 3D sensing smartphone in Project Tango. Mantis Vision was founded in 2005 by Amihai Loven, Gur Arie Bittan and Eyal Gordon and has raised a reported $25 million in investments to date.
June 19, 2014
LikeBillions And Matrix Announce New Strategic Partnership
June 19, 2014 | Emerging Israeli R&D company LikeBillions announced that it will engage in a strategic partnership with the leading information technology company in Israel, Matrix. The partnership will help support LikeBillion’s expansion to Europe and North America. LikeBillions has developed technology for use in customer service that allows phone calls to synchronize between the browser of a website visitor and a company’s representative.
June 18, 2014
SanDisk Acquires Fusion-io For $1.1B
June 18, 2014 | The Israeli-American flash drive maker SanDisk reportedly purchased competitor Fusion-io for approximately $1.1 billion. Fusion-io is the provider of flash memory for Facebook and Apple, which has Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist, and will reportedly strengthen SanDisk’s hold on data centers. SanDisk is an Israeli-American multinational cooperation that is the major designer and producer of flash drive devices and a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company based out of Silicon Valley, California.
