CartiHeal, a privately held medical device company, announced it has raised up to $10 million, including $5 million in cash and $5 million in options. Half of the sum was raised from the holding company Elron, and the remainder from previous investors, Accelmed and Access Medical Ventures. According to the company, the proceeds will be used to accelerate the development of CartiHeal’s technology portfolio and support ongoing clinical studies. Founded in 2009, CartiHeal develops proprietary implants for the regeneration of cartilage and bone disorders following sports injuries, trauma or degenerative joint changes. lt is a spin-out of the Department of Biotechnology Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
News Briefs
July 09, 2012
Medical Device Co ‘CartiHeal’ Raises $10M
July 09, 2012
‘RDD Pharma’ Raises $7.15M For Anal Drug Delivery
RDD Pharma, a developer of intra-anal drug delivery devices that deliver a drug to the anal canal, has raised $7.15 million in a financing round led by OrbiMed Advisors LLC. RDD Pharma was founded in 2009 at the Ofakim Hi-Tech Ventures incubator and is based in Ofakim, Israel. The company also develops a drug for the treatment spinal cord injury related fecal incontinence. RDD Pharma completed a proof of concept trial in healthy subjects in Israel and met with the FDA on the protocols for further clinical trials.
July 03, 2012
Finisar Acquires ‘RED-C’ For $44M
Finisar Corporation announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire RED-C Optical Networks, a provider of state of the art EDFAs, Raman and Hybrid amplifiers, and optical monitoring devices for all network segments. Finisar will pay in cash approximately $23.7 and up to to $20 million payable in cash or in shares to stockholders and certain RED-C employees, based on milestones over the next 18 months. Founded in 2000, RED-C has over 140 subsidiary employees, all of whom are located in Israel.
July 03, 2012
App Recommendation Startup ‘youAPPi’ Secures $1M
youAPPi, a cross-platform app recommendation company, announced it has raised $1 million in seed funding. youAPPi’s patent-pending smartAPP technology analyzes users’ apps and preferences, in order to match more relevant apps available. The system supports iOs, Android and Windows mobile operating systems and all web-enabled devices. The company is based in Raanana, Israel.
July 03, 2012
E-commerce Co ‘Commerce Sciences’ Raises $1.8M
E-commerce personalization company Commerce Sciences has raised $1.8 million in seed funding from Innovation Endeavors, Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and angel investors – technology news website TechCrunch reported. According to the report, the company is currently in private beta and is hoping to emerge from stealth mode, a company’s temporary state of secretiveness, in the next few weeks. Commerce Sciences, founded in 2011, is Palo Alto and Israeli-based.
July 02, 2012
Intel Buys Israeli Medical Device Co ‘IDesia’
Intel Corporation acquired IDesia Biometrics, a medical device company from Caesarea, Israel. IDesia, founded in 2004, develops heart-based biometric technology that allows personal computers, mobile phones and gadgets to personally recognize heartbeats. According to Israeli website Globes, the company has raised $7 million to date from French-US venture capital fund Partech International and Aladdin Knowledge Systems.
July 02, 2012
Employee Referral Management Co ‘Zao’ Secures $1.3M
Zao, an employee referral management platform, announced that the company secured $1.3 million in capital in its first funding round. Zao plans to use the proceeds to accelerate product development and expand its US presence. Zao helps companies hire employees by providing a platform that enables workplaces to create a job opening, set a reward amount and forward the posting to their social network and track referrals and applicants. The company was founded in 2011 by the Israeli Ziv Eliraz.
June 28, 2012
FIMI Raises Largest Ever Private Equity Fund In Israel
Private equity fund FIMI has completed the fundraising for its new fund, FIMI 5. It has raised $800-900 million, thus creating the largest ever fund raising round by an Israeli investment fund. Founded in 1996, FIMI has created a track record of over 65 major transactions valued at more than $1.5 Billion. The fund is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
June 28, 2012
‘Compugen’: Positive Results For Cancer Treatment Protein
Compugen announced positive results for its trial of CGEN-15022, a membrane protein that was discovered by the company, as a treatment of multiple cancers such as liver, colorectal, lung and ovarian cancers. According to the company, the results indicate the potential of the protein as a compelling drug target for treatment of these cancers through monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy. Compugen is a product discovery company focused on therapeutic proteins and monoclonal antibodies, based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
June 27, 2012
‘Bonus Biogroup’ Closes $1M Investment
Bone regeneration company Bonus Biogroup announced two investments in the company from private investors, in the amount of 4 million NIS (approximately $1 million). The biotechnology company, based in Haifa, Israel, recently managed to develop human bone from stem cells in a laboratory.
June 27, 2012
Repository Manager ‘JFrog’ Raises $3.5M
Israel based startup JFrog has raised $3.5 million in a series A funding round led by Gemini Israel Funds. The company develops repository management solutions for the software market. It is most known for its product Artifactory, a binary repository manager available as open-source, Pro and Cloud based versions. JFrog, founded in 2008, has previously raised $1.5 million. It is based in Netanya, Israel.
June 27, 2012
Canada And Israel Sign Agreement On Energy Cooperation
Canada and Israel signed a new agreement on energy cooperation. The Ministry of Natural Resources in Canada announced that the agreement will strengthen ties and increase bilateral relations on offshore development, new sources of oil and gas supplies and renewable energy. Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, and Dr. Uzi Landau, Israeli Minister of Energy and Water Resources, signed the agreement in Tel Aviv, Israel.
June 26, 2012
Video Recommendation Platform ‘Taboola’ Raises $10M
Video recommendation platform Taboola.com announced that it has raised $10 million in Series C financing led by Marker LLC. Existing investors Evergreen Venture Partners and WGI Group also participated in the round. According to the company, “proceeds will be used to implement the company’s international growth strategy and invest in its product range for Taboola’s top tier digital publisher partners.” Taboola, founded in 2007, is headquartered in New York City with R&D in Israel.
June 26, 2012
‘Seagate’ And ‘DensBits’ Sign Strategic Agreement
Seagate Technology, the provider of hard disk drives and storage solutions, and DensBits Technologies, the developer of the Memory Modem, announced a strategic agreement for the development of low-cost, high-performance Solid State Drives (SSD) for the consumer and enterprise markets. In addition, Seagate has made an undisclosed equity investment in DensBits. The company, founded in 2007, improves the reliability of flash memory chips and is based in Haifa, Israel.
June 26, 2012
‘Soluto’ Wins Microsoft’s BizSpark Partner Of The Year
The Israeli startup Soluto was chosen as Microsoft’s BizSpark Partner of the Year in the 2012 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools. According to Microsoft, nearly 3,000 entries were collected from more than 100 countries in all categories. The award finalists and winners were selected based on their commitment to customers, their solution’s market impact and exemplary use of Microsoft technologies.
