Israeli VC YL Ventures GP has announced the closing of its second investment fund, YLV II. Initially, the head of the VC, Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf, initially planned on raising $25 million, but expanded it due to over subscription, closing at $27.5 million.
The company launched its first fund in 2008, raising $30 million.
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Israeli startup Pebbles, which develops motion recognition technology, has completed an $11.5 million financing round. Calcalist reports that the round was led by SanDisk and Bosch.
Pebbles developed a sensor that can recognize individual finger motions and translate them into commands for controlling a range of devices.
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Israeli startup Superfish, which develops visual search tools, has announced the conclusion of a series D financing round, raising $10 million. Superfish has developed technology that can automatically analyze images and provide real-time results, with no need of text input. Superfish has raised $19.3 million to date.
Israeli startup Jifiti, which offers a platform for adapting the concept gift registry for everyday shoppers, has raised $2.5 million in seed financing. The company has also launched its app, which enables users to post gift registries and share them with friends.
Six weeks after closing the deal, internet giant Google has finally revealed the official sum it paid when acquiring Israeli social GPS startup Waze. In official documents filed by Google last Thursday, it was reported that the sum was lower than the previously estimated number of $1.03 billion.
Israeli startup Eyeview, which develops technology for segmenting and personalizing video content, has announced a successful financing round, raising $8.1 million from a private equity fund.
Eyeview’s platform allows advertisers to create custom-made commercial videos. The company gathers information about the user’s geographic location, the weather in the area and their browsing history and personalizes content accordingly.
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Israeli company InSightec, which develops MR guided Focused Ultrasound therapy, announced that its ExAblate system received approval of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) for non-invasive treatment of uterine fibroids.
ExAblate combines high intensity focused ultrasound waves and continuous MRI guidance and monitoring. The focused ultrasound energy is used to ablate or destroy the fibroids while the MRI images are used to plan and guide the therapy and monitor treatment outcome.
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Israeli digital printing company Scodix, which aims to “strategically lead the post press industry into the digital age,” has completed a successful financing round, raising $5 million. The round was led by Battery ventures. In January this year, the company raised $14 million in a financing round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Israeli researchers are up for a prestigious award from UNESCO and L’Oréal. The $100,000 grant is given each year to female researchers conducting groundbreaking studies. The Israeli L’Oréal-UNESCO acceptance committee announced that the two Israeli candidates are Natalie Zetoony of BGU, who is working on a way to manipulate bacteria using magnets and Adit Naor of TAU, who is studying genetic phenomena in halophilic archaea.
Israeli startup Kupoya, which develops a social platform for coupon distribution, has been acquired by Commerce International. Though the details of the transaction have not been fully disclosed, Geektime estimates the deal to be worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Israeli startup MobileSpaces, which develops security solutions for mobile devices, has announced the closing of a series B financing round, raising $8.6 million. The round was led by Israeli VCs Marker LLC and Accel Partners.
Israeli voice-recognition startup Beyond Verbal has announced the closing of a second seed financing round, raising $1 million. The company develops technology that can not only recognize what the speaker is saying, but also what the speaker is feeling.
The company’s first seed round was concluded last May and it has raised a total of $3.8 million to date.
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Israeli startup 365SCORES, which developed a 2nd screen app for sports lovers, is in the process of raising $3 million in a series B financing round. The company’s app offers users personalized, real-time scores, news and videos. The company has raised $1.2 million in a previous round.
Brazilian mobile company Vivo, which is part of telecommunication company Telefonica, has chosen Israeli backhaul provider Ceragon for its nation-wide LTE network. The Brazilian company aims to have LTE coverage throughout the country in time for the next World Cup, to be held in Rio in the summer of 2014. The deal signed is estimated at $6 million.
International Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli’s startup Mika Look has announced the closing of a financing round raising $1.2 million. Mika Look is an iPad app which presents high-resolution photos of models and allows users to purchase the items the model is wearing.
The startup was founded by Refaeli, fellow model and designer Elena Fesenko and her husband Sani Sanilevich.
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