Israel High Tech Scene March 6 – 12

Tel Aviv at sunset, Israel

New Startups / VC Funding
Autobrains Raises $120 Million For AI Auto Tech
Autobrains, an Israeli transportation field startup, added another $19 million to close its Series C investment round at a total of $120 million. The round, which was led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, began with $101 million raised in November. Autobrains uses artificial intelligence AI technology for assisted and autonomous driving.

Israel Startup Nation continues to be at the forefront… Read More Here

DataRails Raises $50 Million For Small Business Fintech Solutions

DataRails, an Israeli fintech startup that offers a financial solution designed for SMEs, has raised $50 million in a Series B round of investment. DataRails has now brought in a total of $105 million in investments to date.

SMEs are small and mid-sized businesses. Fintech is anything new having to do with using technology to improve the transfers of money, or payments. This includes just about everything like every time a person pays for something on line. DataRails, however, deals with financial filing, making it easier for smaller firms to handle all of that headache… Read More Here

Israeli Startup Cider Security Raises $38 Million
Cider Security, an Israeli cyber security startup that offers the AppSec Operating System, emerged from stealth Monday and revealed that it has raised $38 million in funding, with a recent Series A round led by Tiger Global Management. It is somewhat Ironic for a cyber security firm to say that it has “come out of stealth.”

Israel Startup Nation is best known for its cyber security firms, the most famous of which is Check Point, the company where former Mayor of Jerusalem and current member of the Knesset Nir Barkat made his fortune. But it is also known for its medtech startups too. Cider Security is the second Israeli startup to hit double digits in new investments so far in March… Read More Here

IPOs and Unicorns
Intel’s Mobileye Filed Confidentially for $50 Billion IPO
Mobileye, the Israeli company owned by Intel that develops automated driving systems, filed confidentially for its initial public offering IPO on Monday with the SEC. There is no word yet as to the details of the IPO, such as the price of the stock to be issued, but Reuters cited sources as saying that the company could end up with a valuation of $50 billion.

There is nothing unusual about a company going public. But the strange thing here is that this would actually be the second IPO for Mobileye. In 2014 the company held its first IPO on the NYSE, raising about $1 billion at a market cap of $5.3billion. At the time this made it the most successful Israeli IPO of all time. If the $50 billion figure holds then Mobileye will once again… Read More Here

StarkWare Israeli Super Unicorn Could Hit $6 Billion Valuation
StarkWare, an Israeli cybersecurity startup and unicorn that specializes in the development of solutions for enlarging blockchain capacity may soon hit a $6 billion valuation and become a full-fledged super unicorn. According to a report in Calcalist, the company will soon hit that valuation once it closes a new $100 million round of funding.

The news comes just five months after StarkWare first became… Read More Here

Axonius Now Double Israeli Unicorn with $2.6 Billion Valuation
Axonius, an Israeli cybersecurity startup, is now a double unicorn, or a super unicorn if you like. The company hit a $2.6 billion valuation after raising $200 million in a Series E financing round led by Accel. When added to its previous investments, Axonius has now raised a total of $395 million.

A unicorn is a startup which achieves a valuation of one billion dollars or more while still privately held. This nickname was coined because obviously such valuations are unusual for a company before an IPO and when… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
Nvidia Acquires Israel’s Excelero for $35 Million
Excelero, an Israeli startup that offers big data cloud storage, has been bought out by the American video giant Nvidia. While the terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, Israel’s Calcalist reports that the purchase price was $35 million.

NVIDIA, which is best known for its gaming and video cards, said that it will continue to support Excelero’s customers by honoring.… Read More Here

Other Business Stories
Ukraine FM Accuses El Al of Taking Russian ‘Blood Money’
El Al, Israel’s national airline, stands accused by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba of aiding Russia in bypassing international monetary sanctions imposed on the country in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, Kuleba said that El Al allows Russia to pay it fees by using Russia’s Mir network for international electronic funds.

Ukrainian officials have been singling out Israel for some reason… Read More Here

Israeli Firms Playtika and Fiverr Both Now Boycotting Russia
Playtika, Fiverr and Plarium are three Israeli companies that have now joined the growing list of private enterprises around the world to boycott Russia and block their services from that country, reports The Marker. The news comes as McDonald’s, Netflix, Nike and so many more big companies have suspended their Russian operations in the wake of that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Plarium and Playtika are both gaming companies… Read More Here

VPN Use Saves Russians from Boredom
It’s VPN to the rescue for the Russian public which is scared that it might be bored to death by all of the western sanctions that have been imposed on their country. Netflix and other content providers have cut off Russia, as have YouTube and many other websites that offer video content in one form or another. So the average Russian needs to use a VPN – a virtual private network – to access their… Read More Here