CTECH – Israel’s Latest Technology and Innovation News
We asked: ‘What was the biggest moment for you this year?’ (Part One) It’s been a crazy year of ups and downs – and Israel’s tech ecosystem is here to answer the question on everyone’s mind. Read more
What need do we have for ‘Neo Banks’? They’ve attracted the attention of everyone from Warren Buffet to Amnon Shashua – but why? Read more
The fairytale story of a $500 million payday. No one expected that
Haim Torpiashvili, who moved to Israel from Georgia at the age of 10 and saw his parents struggle to make ends meet, would achieve a half a billion-dollar exit with his twin brother at the age of 30. Read more
Analysis | Israeli unicorns paying painful price for SPAC fine print.
Seven of the nine Israeli companies to have completed a SPAC merger to date are trading at a lower valuation than that with which they entered Wall Street. Read more
SPAC devaluations are not a cause for concern, says Evercore. Neil Shah has been involved in some of the world’s biggest SPAC deals – and he’s telling us not to worry. Read more
Big-Tech 50 invests close to $4 million in three new late-stage
Israeli startups. The partnership has 14 late-stage Israeli companies, some already unicorns, in its portfolio, as part of its goal to give the retail market exposure to private tech startups. Read more
SpaceIL issues international call for experiments to send aboard
Beresheet 2. Unlike its predecessor, the next Israeli lunar spacecraft will feature experiments onboard. Call is open to all countries. Read more
Hour One CEO wants you to “go and create”. The Israeli startup’s
AI-based video production platform transforms your text into video, using computer-generated characters based on real people. Read more
$100,000 up for grabs for cutting edge foodtech endeavors. Registration for Calcalist and Tnuva’s foodtech 2021 startup competition, which in its four years has helped many companies to find their place at the table, is closing this Thursday. Read more
New unicorns in Israel growing at an unprecedented rate. The report by the Viola investment group showed that the level of business traction required to become a unicorn is falling over time and that the “time-to-unicorn” parameter has significantly decreased over recent years. Read more
Millions of passwords stolen by cybercriminals exposed by activist
hacker. An explosive database with millions of login passwords to countless websites, including to a security company’s “safe” was discovered by Noam Rotem. Read more
Margalit Startup City Galil opens ahead of Foodtech ‘revolution’. The
International Foodtech Center marks the official arrival of Galilee onto Israel’s high-tech scene. Read more
What I Learned | How we made developers love security. “From the
moment we committed to being user-focused, aligning with the developers that use our product has been of prime importance. This created trust and a great go-to-market for our product,” writes Idan Tendler, former CEO of Bridgecrew and current VP DevSecOps at Palo Alto Networks. Read more
Appointments | Qualitest announces Anbu Muppidathi as its new CEO. Muppidathi will be replacing Norm Merritt, who has been CEO since 2018. Read more
20-Minute Leaders | “I think that moving toward balance is a life
mission in so many levels.” Speaking with Michael Matias, Chen Sagiv
explains how attitudes in the medical field have shifted in the last few years. Read more
Playtika entering home design market with $600 million acquisition of Reworks. The Israeli gaming company believes the purchase of the maker of hit design entertainment app Redecor will contribute approximately $30 million to its 2021 revenue. Read more
Fintech startup PayEm comes out of stealth with $20 million Series A. The Israeli company has developed a global spend and procurement platform that captures requests, invoices, creates bills, schedules, and sends payments to anywhere in the world. Read more
Connecteam inks $117 million office deal. Working from home? The panic in the high-tech sector to acquire real estate continues as Israeli startup signs 15-year lease for 11,500 square meter office space as part of the Da Vinci building project in Tel Aviv. Read more
Foretellix raises $32 million for autonomous vehicle testing platform.
The Israeli company said it is experiencing a rapid increase in demand for its platform coming from leading OEMs and Tier1s developing ADAS and AV products, both on and off-road. Read more
Smart farming: Fieldin raises $30 million in Round B. The Agtech
company helps commercial farmers by turning their lands into autonomous, smart farms. The fundraising effort was led by Fortissimo capital. Read more
Millennium Food-Tech to set up U.S Food-Tech Innovation Center for the American Market. Portfolio companies will have access to an American property for 12 months rent-free to help with U.S market entry. Read more
Anima raises $10 million to turn design into code. Running bootstrapped until last year, the Y-Combinator-backed startup says it is onboarding 30,000 designers and developers per month. Read more
Appointments | Ifat Bechor appointed as CEO of Unistream. The former Birthright Israel head of business development and innovation in North America said she is “proud of the privilege” to lead Unistream, which promotes entrepreneurship among youth. Read more
IKEA investing $22.5 million in Israeli fintech startup Jifiti. The Israeli company facilitates white-labeled point-of-sale financing solutions for banks, lenders, and merchants which deploy buy now pay later programs. Read more
No-code platform developer Walnut secures $15 million in Round A. The round, which was led by Eight Roads Ventures, will help the Israeli startup to scale up its operations and bring in new hires. Read more
OwnBackup acquires RevCult to enhance platform with proactive data security. The announcement follows the news of two other acquisitions and comes in the same month as its $240 million Series E funding round. Read more
Spotlight | Datricks CEO: Customers get an X-ray view into their
company. The company offers AI-based software that connects to an organization system, mines its financial data, and flags issues. “We revolutionized the way organizations do internal audits.” Read more
Cellebrite coming to Nasdaq in upbeat mood despite suffering SPAC hit. Investors redeemed $410 million of a total $480 million that was meant to be raised by the Israeli digital intelligence company that begins Wall Street trading on Tuesday at a $2.4 billion valuation. Read more
Israel Space Agency selects Ramon.Space’s computing payload for
upcoming mission. The space tech startup will provide its computer software-defined digital processor solution for an unnamed Israel Space Agency mission scheduled for early 2022. Read more
Melio raising hundreds of millions of dollars at $4 billion valuation.
The Israeli fintech company completed a $110 million round at a $1.3 billion valuation this January, but according to a report by The Information it is set to triple its valuation in new funding round. Read more
Opinion | Musings on the gig economy Post-Covid: The genie is out of the bottle and doesn’t want to go back. Organizations that do not
seize the opportunity and harness freelance talents as assets will miss out on a slice of the expert manpower pizza pie, writes Ariel Halevi. Read more
Check Point acquiring Avanan for $300 million, its biggest purchase
in over a decade. The cloud-email security vendor has developed a patented application-programming interface (API) solution to stop email threats before they arrive in the inbox. Read more
Israel’s DSPG to be acquired by Synaptics for $600 million. The local
audio system manufacturer will be bought at a price of $22 per share, 18% higher than its trading value this past Friday. Read more
Israeli medtech company CartiHeal to be acquired for $500 million by Bioventus. The American orthobiologics company announced that it has activated its option to purchase the Kfar Saba-based company by transferring an initial $50 million. Read more
illumigyn signs MoU to deploy 2,500 units of its “gynecology
endoscope” cloud platform in UAE. Gynescope Systems is a cloud-based platform that provides an end-to-end gynecological imaging service. Read more
Attempting a ‘data detox’ in today’s digital world. Using Mine’s platform, I tried to reclaim my data spread across hundreds of websites over 10 years. Read more
HiCenter’s startups raise NIS 17 million in 6 months. The group is
looking to add new startups to its IN-VENTech program that are interested in building their company in Haifa. Read more
Opinion | Hitting a moving target: Time is running out in the race to
secure connected devices. “Securing this kind of market requires strong working relationships between regulators and manufacturers – across all industries – and willingness amongst vertical leaders to collaborate and share their standards and knowledge with one another,” writes Asaf Karas, CTO Security of JFrog. Read more
