Startup Nation keeps on setting records. It is also adding new unicorns on seemingly a daily basis. These companies are startups that are valued at at least $1 billion. But being a unicorn these days is getting to be less and less of a special thing, at least in Israel. Maybe they will need to raise the definition of a unicorn from $1 billion plus to over $10 billion.
Either that or they will have to start calling them rabbits instead of unicorns.
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Startup Nation may soon be known as Unicorn nation.
There have already been three new ones so far in November alone. StarkWare is an Israeli cybersecurity startup that specializes in the development of solutions for enlarging blockchain capacity. The company just completed a $50 million round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. This round gave StarkWare a $2 Billion valuation.
Lusha, the crowdsourced data community for B2B sales and marketing professionals, hit unicorn status just a week ago when it raised $205 million in a Series B fundraising round. Lusha is now valued at $1.5 billion.
Also just seven days ago, Israeli startup OpenWeb, which offers a media readership engagement management platform, became a Unicorn. OpenWeb hit the coveted mark with a $150 million Series E financing round led by Insight Partners and Georgian Partners. OpenWeb has raised $220 million to date.
Now here are the five biggest unicorns in Startup Nation:
Rapyd, an Israeli global payments and fintech company, tops the list at a $10 billion valuation. Rapyd hit this milestone mark in August when the company completed a record breaking $300 million Series E financing round led by Target Global.
Rapyd describes its service as the fastest way to power local payments anywhere in the world, enabling companies across the globe to access markets quicker than ever before. Rapyd promises that businesses and consumers can engage in local and cross-border transactions in any market. The Rapyd platform is a unifying fragmented payment systems worldwide by bringing together 900-plus payment methods in over 100 countries. Rapyd’s investors include Stripe, General Catalyst, Oak HC/FT, Tiger Global, Durable Capital, Target Global, and Tal Capital.
Rapyd co-founders Arkady Karpman (right), Arik Shtilman, and Omer Priel (left). (Company PR pic)
Snyk, a startup in the field of cloud native application security, has reached a valuation of $8.5 billion. The company achieved the valuation with $300 million in new funding from a Series E financing round. The company has now raised a total of $770 million to date.
Snyk provides cloud native application security (CNAS) solutions which enable modern applications to be built securely, empowering developers to own and build security for the whole application, from code and open source to containers and cloud infrastructure.
Israeli fintech startup Pagaya has sealed the deal on an SPAC merger ahead of the company’s initial public offering. Pagaya is looking at an $8 billion valuation from its IPO.
Fintech is a term that refers to any new tech that assists with money transfers. It could be something designed for the use of banks, or a program that assists businesses in collecting payments.
Pagaya expects to take in $488 million in total from the merger, $288 million of which was already by the SPAC, and $200 million in PIPE investments.
Gong is an Israeli company which uses artificial intelligence to transform revenue teams. In June Gong raised $250 million in a Series E funding round led by Franklin Templeton. This brings the company’s total funding to $584 million, leaving Gong with a $7.25 Billion Valuation.
Founded in 2015 by CEO Amit Bendov and Chief Product Officer Eilon Reshef, Gong states that it enables revenue teams to realize their fullest potential by unveiling their customer reality. The patented Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform “captures and understands every customer interaction, then delivers insights at scale, empowering revenue teams to make decisions based on data instead of opinions.” Over 2,000 innovative companies like LinkedIn, MuleSoft, Paychex, PayPal, Shopify, Slack, Sprout Social, Twilio, and Zillow use Gong to power their customer reality.
And in October, Wiz, an Israeli cloud security startup, raised $250 million at a company valuation of $6 billion.
Assaf Rappaport CEO and Co Founder Wiz (Company Photo)
Wiz was founded in March 2020 by the team that led Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group and built the security stack in Azure. CEO Assaf Rappaport, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP Product Yinon Costica, and VP R&D Roy Reznik, have worked together for more than 15 years and previously founded Adallom (acquired by Microsoft for $320 million), which is now the #1 Cloud Access Security Broker in the market.
