News Briefs

German incubator hub:raum, a part of telecommunication giant Deutsche Telekom, is partnering up with Israeli accelerators TheTime and The Junction. The cooperation is aimed at Israeli startups wishing to go after the European market, as an alternative to the US market.

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Israeli startup Whitesource, which offers an open-source-license management platform, has raised $1 million in a series A financing round. The round was led by Israeli VC Peregrine Ventures.

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Israeli startup Vodio, which developed a platform for smart personalized video content consumption, has announced that it has raised $800,000 and is launching an Android app. The company’s platform, previously available only for iOS users, uses information from social media to customize video content conveniently organized for the user.

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Israeli desalination company Desalitech has concluded a successful series C finacing round, raising $5 million. The round was led by Liberation Capital, who also led the company’s previous financing round.

Desalitech has developed a desalination system which turns saltwater into drinkable freshwater. The company claims that they can reduce desalination costs by up to 60 percent, reduce energy consumption by 30 percent and reduce waste by 70 percent.

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Israeli startup Dispop, which offers a crowdsourcing platform for companies seeking design services has launched today after raising $600,000 in seed funding. The platform enables companies to submit briefs for ad campaigns and compare different submissions by designers before selecting one and paying for them.

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Israeli startup Idomoo, which developed a platform for easily creating personalized videos for companies, has closed a $9 million financing round, led by Marker. TechCrunch reports that Idomoo’s platform is being used by TIM Cellular in Brazil, Portugal Telecom and Generali, the global insurance company – serving tens of millions of videos in 16 different languages.

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Israeli startup Telesofia Medical, which specializing in creating personalized videos for making medical information clear and accessible, has raised $1 million. The company uses information given by the physician and the pharmacist to automatically generate a video which explains the instructions for using the medication in a simple manner.

Telesofia Medical is part of Microsoft’s Azure acceleration program for Israeli startups.

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Israeli startup Intuitive User Interfaces, which develops gesture recognition hardware, has raised $15 million. Calcalist reports that the round was led by Deutsche Telekom with participation from existing investors.

According to the company, Intuitive User Interfaces’ technology for mobile phones is based on understanding and predicting which actions users want to perform in various situations, and enabling those actions simply and instantaneously via one touch experience.

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Israeli charity Tmura will receive a whopping $1.5 million donation from the recent acquisition of Waze by Google. Tmura asks early stage startups to donate options to be exercised when the company goes public or is acquired.

Tmura will distribute the funds to several educational and youth NGOs selected by Waze. In its ten years of operation, Tmura has received a total of $9 million in exercised options, with Waze being its biggest contributor to date.

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Google has officially announced that it has come into agreement to acquire Israeli social GPS startup Waze. In previous reports, the deal was estimated at $1.3 billion. The acquisition concludes a long spree of rumors, according to which the company was approached by Apple, then Facebook, before finally being acquired by Google.

 

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One of Israel’s leading design schools, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, has received a hefty sum from the Cleveland-based Jewish Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. The school will receive $25 million.

According to Cleveland Jewish News, the funds, announced yesterday, will be directed towards the construction of the school’s new downtown campus, scheduled for completion in 2017.

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Fosun Group, the second largest investment corporation in China, is looking to expand its activity in Israel. Over the next two months, the group will reportedly open Israeli offices that will be responsible for locating potential investments and cooperation possibilities with Israeli companies. The Fosun Group will focus on companies in the medical devices, pharmaceutical and ecommerce industries.

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2012 proved to be a record year for Israeli Biomed companies, raising a record $503 million. The figure is a 23 percent increase from 2011. The data, reported on Globes, was gathered by IATI, IVC and KPMG. 26 percent of all funds raised by Israeli technology companies in 2012 were raised by Biomed companies.

Photo: IITA Image Library

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Israeli endoscopy company Eon Surgical, which was founded four years ago at the RADBiomed Accelerator, is being acquired by American company Teleflex for an undisclosed sum, estimated at tens of millions. Eon Surgical develops endoscopic procedures which enable surgery using a single incision, which make for a quick healing process and less scar tissue.

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Israeli startup Askem, which is developing a crowdsourcing-based visual question answering platform, has raised $550,000 in seed funding. The company says that it will use the funds to further develop its app and to distribute it to a broader market.

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