CTECH Latest Israeli Innovation & Technology News June 6, 2024
SAP acquiring digital adoption platform WalkMe for $1.5 billion. The Israeli company was valued at less than $880 million on Tuesday, meaning the offer of $14 per share represents a 45% premium. Read more
Cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms lays off 30% of staff. The difficulty in securing significant investment over the past year, coupled with a marked decrease in investor interest in alternative protein and cultivated meat, led to the layoffs. Read more
Fintech company Pagaya cutting around 20% of workforce in second round of layoffs. The Nasdaq-traded firm is laying off 100 employees in total and is continuing to reduce its presence in Israel. Read more
Music to their ears: Pop hit-producing brothers harness the power of AI. After two big exits with high-tech companies, and after producing some of the biggest music hits of the last few years in Israel, the Antebi brothers are ready to connect the two worlds, and make musical technology, or technological music, with AI tools that should make each of us a music producer. Read more
Marketing analytics unicorn AppsFlyer eyeing Wall Street IPO. The Israeli company is aiming to raise $300 million in the offering later this year or early next year, according to a report by Bloomberg. Read more
Tenable in advanced negotiations to acquire cyber startup Eureka. The deal is valued at tens of millions of dollars, with the Israeli startup having several offers before ultimately moving forward with Tenable. Read more
For Israeli economy, no substitute for high-tech dominance. The high-tech sector’s contribution rate to the country’s GDP of 20% is significantly greater than that of the USA at 9% and Russia’s dependence on gas and oil at 16%, according to a report by the Innovation Authority. However, the diversity of the working population in the high-tech sector remains low, with 65% being non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. Read more
“One of the beautiful things about Israeli high-tech is that we are all committed to delivering.” As part of Calcalist and Poalim Tech’s Growth+ initiative which connects experienced entrepreneurs with early stage startups, Yevgeny Dibrov from Armis Security and Matan Nataf from Rapydo have been meeting and sat down with Calcalist to discuss growth in a challenging environment. Read more
Intel pins AI comeback hopes on Israel-developed Lunar Lake chip. “Lunar Lake is more efficient in artificial intelligence performance compared to what most of the competitors have today,” Arik Gihon, the architect of Lunar Lake at Intel, told Calcalist. “It’s able to perform more operations per second than any other processor (for laptops) today, including the Qualcomm processor. And it’s completely Israeli.” Read more
High-tech salaries continue to rise, break new ground. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the average high tech salary rose to a record NIS 35,870 ($9,710), in comparison to the national average salary which decreased by 4.2% to NIS 13,493 ($3,652). Read more
Who’s behind the Israeli startup blacklisted by Meta and OpenAI? According to an investigation published by Meta, Stoic, founded by Ido Stossel, operated a network of hundreds of fictitious Facebook and Instagram accounts in the US and Canada. OpenAI reported that Stoic used its generative artificial intelligence models to produce content for influence campaigns against Hamas and Qatar, in favor of Israel, and also in favor of the Histadrut. Read more
OrCam cuts almost half of workforce in second round of layoffs in four months. Amnon Shashua’s startup is laying off 100 employees, primarily in marketing and sales, four months after cutting 50 jobs. Read more
Bar Ilan University receives 1B shekel anonymous donation to promote Deep Tech research. The American donor, who chose to remain anonymous, donated the money to recruit dozens of researchers in Deep Tech, in what is the largest donation that the university has ever received, and the second largest donation in Israeli academia history. Read more
Biolojic Design lands drug discovery collaboration with Merck potentially worth up to 346 million euros. The partnership will leverage Biolojic Design’s AI-driven discovery platform to design therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and immunological disorders. Read more
NFX’s fast track for new startups: answer within 9 days, money within 3 weeks. The NFX fund launched a unique investment route in April for emerging startups, promising an answer within 9 days, and money within 3 weeks. 402 companies passed the initial screening, and five have already been selected, receiving $20 million in funding. Three more are expected to receive funding totaling $6 million depending on reaching certain milestones or completing an establishment process. Read more
After falling 86% from its peak, Arbe is coming to Tel Aviv in search of fresh funding. The chip developer for the autonomous vehicle industry was listed on Nasdaq three years ago at a valuation of half a billion dollars. Since then, it has burned through $100 million and emptied its coffers. The solution? Raising debt in Tel Aviv. Read more
May 2024 in Israeli tech funding: $1.46 billion in 19 deals. Thanks to the biggest funding round in Israeli tech history courtesy of Wiz, local startups raised over $1 billion for a second straight month. Read more
Nvidia partners with Israeli startup RGo Robotics to enable intelligent robots with GenAI-powered autonomy. Combining RGo’s perception engine with Nvidia’s compute and algorithms is set to allow mobile robots to better perceive and understand the world around them, to carry out complex and versatile tasks safely and productively, and to effectively communicate with humans and other machines. Read more
OpenAI cracks down on Israeli “for-hire threat actor” Stoic. OpenAI announced that it thwarted five influence operations in the past three months, including efforts by the Israeli company Stoic, labeled as a “for-hire threat actor,” which targeted audiences in North America and Israel. Read more
The dirty secret behind data backup. The tech giants are relentless in urging us to back up photos, emails, files and other data that we will never use. A service that started out as free is currently bringing them billions of dollars a year and also polluting the environment in the process. Read more
“China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are leveraging ChatGPT for their needs.” Sherrod Degrippo, Director of Threat Intelligence Strategy at Microsoft, warns that software is fragile and explains why an old router is the most dangerous home device. Read more
Three kilometers from Gaza: Israeli startup poised to lead AI chip cooling revolution. In the industrial area of Sderot, in a building that was attacked on October 7, ZutaCore is developing “low-tech” to save high-tech: a direct-to-chip, waterless, dielectric liquid cooling solution. Read more
Gauzy hoping for $350 million valuation in Nasdaq IPO. The nanotech company is aiming for a pre-money valuation of only $282 million in next week’s IPO, well below the $400-500 million valuation it initially hoped for. Read more
Unicorn Trax founders to retire from daily operations, retain board positions. “While this decision was not made lightly, we are thrilled to continue our journey with Trax as board members (in the same board capacity as today) while also focusing on innovative initiatives that have emerged amidst the current geopolitical challenges in Israel and our entrepreneurial passions,” wrote Joel Bar-El and Dror Feldheim, who founded the retail tech startup in 2010. Read more
Sightful unveils latest screenless laptop. Is spatial computing finally a reality? The startup’s Spacetop G1 device offers a 100-inch AR workspace that helps boost productivity for on-the-go workers. Read more
Most promising Israeli startups: 5 cyber companies to watch in 2024. Oasis Security, Astrix Security, Backslash, Zenity, and OneLayer were the highest-ranked cyber companies in this year’s list of the 50 most promising Israeli startups. Read more
