CTECH: Latest Israeli Innovation & Technology News Feb. 27, 2023
Don’t give up on us, not yet. “’Israel’s stock’ has suffered and will continue to suffer painful blows in the coming months, but you should not short it. Israel will survive this autoimmune attack on its democracy,” writes Yoel Esteron. Read more
Behind the Dor: “I think of myself as number 1 at Check Point, in my world.” Dorit Dor won the Israel Defense Award at the age of 25, has been Gil Shwed’s number 2 at Check Point for over 25 years, and today lives in a house with four people and 11 degrees. Read more
BitSight shuts down Israel office, lays off entire team. The American cybersecurity company acquired Israeli startup VisibleRisk in September 2021 to set up a local R&D center, but has decided to close it 17 months later and lay off all 40 of its employees. Read more
Show me the money: Investors in Hub Security’s SPAC still haven’t deposited the money. The Israeli cyber company, which is supposed to merge with an American SPAC at a value of $1.28 billion, canceled Sunday’s shareholders’ meeting during which the change in the identity of the investors in the offering was set to be approved. The reason: the investors have not yet deposited the money. Read more
Mapping Israeli high-tech’s leading R&D engineers. Ahead of Calcalist’s “Developers at the Front” conference, the Mamram and Ofek alumni associations compiled a list of prominent development leaders in Israeli high-tech. Read more
Angola looks to Israel for inspiration in its higher education system. The African country is looking at Israel’s success to help its young locals “act in a global economy as citizens of the world.” Read more
Chain Reaction raises another $70 million for blockchain and privacy chip. The Israeli startup, which took its total funding to date to $115 million, aims to drive high-performance hardware for blockchain and privacy in data centers and clouds. Read more
What crisis? Israel’s software giants expect double-digit growth in 2023. Wix, Fiverr, and Global-e, which are all traded on Wall Street, presented good results for 2022 and very optimistic growth forecasts for 2023, which sent the shares of all three soaring. Read more
Boarding Pass | “The most important skill we can give kids is learning how to be adaptable.” Strive Math has raised a total of $1.4 million to help make education for kids more joyful and meaningful. Read more
Lemonade cuts losses, plans to raise premium prices. The company’s growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2022 was 116%, but despite revenues reaching $88.4 million, Lemonade still lost $63 million in the quarter. Read more
Alibaba Cloud launches in Israel. One of the world’s leading cloud service providers is now available in Israel through local company Sela, which also provides solutions from Microsoft, Google Cloud & AWS. Read more
High-tech leaders warn: “We’ll fall into an abyss from which we won’t be able to get out.” Gigi Levy-Weiss of NFX, Eynat Guez, CEO of Papaya Global, and Tal Barnoach, co-founder of Disruptive, told Calcalist that the extent of the economic disaster resulting from the judicial coup is not yet fully understood: “Israel managed to build a magnificent high-tech industry, but it can’t withstand everything. The move will harm the pocket and pension of every citizen.” Read more
The shekel continues to lose ground as fears of judicial coup in Israel continue to grow. The dollar continues to climb against the shekel, reaching its highest mark since 2019, while the euro has also risen. The rapid devaluation of the shekel is set to lead to inflationary pressure and the Bank of Israel will be forced to respond by raising interest rates even further. Read more
Synamedia sacks 200 employees, 12% of workforce. This is the second round of layoffs at the company, which parted with several dozen employees last November. Read more
She-VC | “We need a dual movement from both the industry and from women.” Merav Weinryb, VP & Managing Director, Europe & Israel at Qualcomm Ventures, sees things refreshingly different, believing the burden of change lies with both genders. Read more
The Wix fix: “We began implementing further cost efficiency measures; reduced headcount by 15%.” Wix laid off around 370 employees last week, most of them in support centers in the US. On top of the $150 million cost reduction plan announced in August 2022, the company is implementing an incremental $50 million of cost savings in 2023. Read more
Aaron Mankovski: Patience is key when doing business in Japan. The differences in business culture between Israel and Japan were the focus of the discussion at a meeting between entrepreneurs and investors from the two countries organized by Discount Tech, Shibolet law firm, and the consulting company Million Steps. “Israelis ask a lot of questions. Japanese, on the other hand, are silent,” said Yuta Iguchi, COO at Million Steps. Read more
Definitively fintech: “Fintech is the driver for everything we can think about.” In an in-depth interview, Ronen Assia, Managing Partner at venture group Team8 and co-founder of social investing platform eToro, talks fintech, the future – and even farming. Read more
Crypto security startup Chaos Labs raises $20 million in Seed funding led by Galaxy and PayPal. The Israeli startup provides protocols with custom and automated economic security tooling that verifies a protocol’s durability and stability in any market condition. Read more
Israel’s first space telescope to be launched by NASA in 2026. ULTRASAT, an ultraviolet observatory led by the Israel Space Agency and Weizmann Institute of Science, will investigate the secrets of short-duration events in the universe, such as supernova explosions and mergers of neutron stars. Read more
The fast & the spurious: Failures of Tesla, Amazon and Google testify to the motives behind the scenes. Tesla’s autonomous driving is causing accidents, Amazon is killing small merchants, and Google’s chatbot is wrong. The hasty launches and uncontrolled expansion indicate that it is not “innovation” that drives these companies, but short-term profits. Read more
Opinion | The Israeli government hereby declares war on… Israeli high-tech. Barak Eilam, the CEO of NICE, calls on the government to go through some deep soul searching and quickly reverse their decisions, for the prosperity of a strong Israel. Read more
Going with the Flow: Adam Neumann wants to solve the housing crisis with a monopoly. A strong demand for houses in the U.S. in a market that suffers from a severe shortage of supply was the starting point of the Flow project, led by the founder of WeWork. The problem: the thousands of apartments that the company purchased are intended for the upper-middle class for whom there are already relevant solutions. Read more
Liquidity Group reaches unicorn status with new $40 million investment from Japan’s MUFG. The fintech company, which provides unlimited unsecured, non-recourse, no-dilution growth capital, saw its valuation rise by 75% in less than a year to $1.4 billion. Read more
Digital assets unicorn Fireblocks firing 5% of staff. Fireblocks, which raised $550 million at an $8 billion valuation in January of 2022, is laying off a total of 30 employees. Read more
“Maintain no more than 6 months of shekel exposure,” VC firm Bessemer tells Israeli portfolio. “Our primary business concern is the continued weakening of the shekel and the smaller risk of foreign currency controls as the outflow of funds from Israeli banks continues to gather steam,” read the letter sent by Bessemer to its Israeli portfolio companies. Read more
She-VC | “If you think you will be qualified in two years it means you are already there.” Idit Muallem-Yedid, General Partner at Pitango, Israel’s largest VC, shares her many tips from her journey to the top. Read more
Lenovo establishing cybersecurity innovation center with Ben-Gurion University. The center will focus on zero-trust architecture innovation in hardware and below-OS security, as well as serve as a hub for the development of security solutions that will be incorporated into Lenovo’s ThinkShield. Read more
