68% of Israeli startups taking legal and financial steps due to judicial overhaul. Over two-thirds of companies said they have taken such steps like withdrawing cash reserves, changing HQ location outside Israel, relocation of employees and conducting layoffs. Read more

J-Impact raises $22 million for sustainable investments. The new fund will be managed by Eran Sandhaus, a senior figure in the high-tech industry, alongside Oded Hermoni, the founder of J-Ventures, which was established in 2018. Read more

Abu Dhabi state fund’s bid to acquire Israel’s largest insurance company Phoenix fall through. The Phoenix announced that due to regulatory concerns the parties agreed to terminate the term sheet to purchase 25% for approximately $640 million. Read more

Fincom’s ‘Phonetic Fingerprint’ for e-commerce platforms. The company has recently raised $2 million for its AML Screening Solution. Read more

“We’re selling the normalization of menstruation and women’s bodies.” Co-founder and CEO of Modibodi Israel Chen Tamir on how Modibodi is addressing economic discrimination, period poverty and social stigma surrounding menstruation. Read more

Proptech startup Stoa slashes workforce after raising $300 million, uncertain future ahead. The company cut its workforce by 80% from around 100 employees to just 20 and said that “there are several deals on the table that the company is considering.” Read more

Spiritt takes Seed funding to $13.5 million for AI platform that builds apps through verbal descriptions. The Israeli startup’s platform allows individuals with no programming knowledge or access to programmers to independently develop end-to-end complex applications by verbally describing their ideas to the computer. Read more

Nitrofix raises $3.1 million Seed to produce ammonia from water and air. By using water as a source of protons instead of fossil fuels, the Israeli startup’s technology reduces the activation energy needed to combine nitrogen with hydrogen. Read more

CEOs of Israeli public companies speak out against judicial overhaul. “We, the CEOs of global public companies active in Israel and around the world, supporting the Israeli economy, view the current events in Israel with concern and call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to implement significant judicial changes only on the basis of broad consensus,” the CEOs wrote. Read more

CTalk | “Generative AI is a savior for high tech.” General Partner at Disruptive AI VC Yorai Fainmesser spoke to CTech at Calcalist and KPMG’s Work After Work event in Tel Aviv about the promise of Generative AI. Read more

Vesttoo investigation reveals $4 billion fraud involving fake letters of credit. Most of the allegedly forged letters were from a leading Chinese bank, which appears to have been unaware of the situation. Read more

Vesttoo’s top legal and financial executives leave the company amid alleged fraud scandal. The Chief Financial Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Interim Chief Legal Officer, Deputy Chief Legal Officer and Head of Structuring have all departed the startup embroiled in a fraudulent collateral crisis. Read more

“If the crisis extends longer, it will take us years to reverse the damage.” Gigi Levy-Weiss, General Partner at NFX, spoke with CTech as part of the project “Where do we go from here?”, which aims to examine how the Israeli VC industry is dealing with the crisis in the sector. Read more

FLORA Ventures raises $50 million to invest in sustainable agrifood tech. Gil Horsky and Esther Barak-Landes completed the initial raise with strategic partners including Haifa Group, Harel Group, and Sadot Kibbutzim, a co-op bringing together more than 185 Kibbutzim. Read more

GigaSpaces to hand out almost $14 million in dividends following Cloudify’s acquisition by Dell. Cloudify, which develops cloud orchestration solutions, spun off from GigaSpaces to become an independent company in 2017. Read more

Philip Morris acquiring Cannabis inhaler developer Syqe Medical for up to $650 million. The Israeli company’s main product is a metered-dose inhaler for pain reduction treatment using medical cannabis. Read more

Wing Cloud announces $20 million in Seed funding for open-source programming language. The language unifies cloud infrastructure and application code into a single programming model that works across AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, serverless, and more. Read more

“The challenges we are facing jeopardize the continued existence of the ‘miracle’ of Startup Nation.” Barak Regev, Country Director at Google Israel, was speaking at the National Economic Conference in Tel Aviv. Read more

“Anyone who believes that central banks should halt interest rate hikes lacks an understanding of history.” Head of Global Marketing Strategy at Clal Insurance, Amir Argaman, discussed the resurgence of global inflation at Calcalist and Bank Leumi’s National Economic Conference. Read more

Sometimes nightmares come true. “The damage to the State of Israel is accumulating, unbearably difficult, but we are still in the moments where, if the campaign of destruction ends within a few months, we will be able to rebuild the ruins,” said Calcalist Publisher Yoel Esteron. Read more