Israel High Tech Scene July 2 – July 8

New Startups / VC Funding
Israel’s Aurora Labs Raises $63 Million For New Car Tech
Aurora Labs, an Israeli startup that develops remote software management, remote diagnostics, and over-the-air (OTA) updates for the automotive and IoT industries, secured $63 million through a Series C financing round led by Moore Strategic Ventures (“MSV”). This round brings the total investment in Aurora Labs to approximately $100 million.

Everything is getting more and more technological. Smart self-driving cars are coming and automakers are all adding new computer systems to… Read More Here

Israeli Startup’s AI Identifies Baby Discomfort And Tracks Growth
Israeli startup LittleOne.Care is developing an artificial intelligence product that continuously monitors infants’ actions so that emergencies and developmental failures can be identified in advance and diagnosis and treatment can be offered at early and critical stages.

The monitoring is done using a small device attached to the newborn baby’s clothing. It has no radiation, nor transmission, and it accompanies him around the clock without interfering with his daily routine… Read More Here

Voyantis Raises $19 Million For AI Platform
Voyantis, an Israeli startup that offers a prediction-based growth operating system, raised $19 million in Seed funding from such notable investors as Target Global, Square Peg, and Schusterman Family Investments. With this round, Voyantis came out of stealth mode and the company said that it will use the new funds for further development of its codeless Artificial Intelligence (AI).

This usually starts by tapping into the markets that are already out there and making your pitch. But how do you find these potential markets? How can a new business be sure that it is not wasting time and resources by pursuing the wrong markets or locations? This is where a company like Voyantis comes… Read More Here

Phytolon Raises $14.5 Million For Food Coloring Alternatives
Phytolon, an Israeli foodtech startup that develops fermentation-based natural food colors, raised $14.5 million in a Series A round of funding, led by DSM Venturing.

Startups working on new food products are not just all about meat and dairy alternatives, or ways to produce food from just a few copied cells and a 3D printer. Sure, there are all sorts of firms doing just that like Redefine Meat which applies its proprietary 3D printing technology, meat digital modeling, and advanced food formulations to produce animal-free meat with the “appearance… Read More Here

IPOs and Unicorns
Unicorn Next Insurance Latest Israeli Firm Making Big Layoffs
Israeli insurance company Next Insurance, which happens to be a unicorn, is just the latest firm in Startup Nation forced to make cuts. In a sign of the times, the company is laying off 150 of its people, or about 17% of its total workforce.

“It was a very difficult decision, but we are reducing the workforce to adapt to the worsening macroeconomic environment,” Next Insurance wrote in a statement. “In the last six years since we were founded, we have invested heavily in building our product base, increasing our customer acquisition channels and in 2021 we tripled the business. The company is on track to reach annual sales of well over $800 million in 2022. However, in reference to the company’s long-term vision… Read More Here

EToro Cancels IPO Plans – Drops Valuation Expectations By Half
eToro, the Israeli startup that offers its clients a trading platform, has finally scrapped its planned IPO and will instead try to raise another $1 billion. The decision to do so came after the deadline initial public offering eToro’s SPAC merger with the Betsy Cohen-backed blank-check company FinTech Acquisition Corp V passed. And it also follows an almost yearlong drama in which the company was forced to lower expectations for the now failed initial public offering a number of times.

In more bad news for eToro, word is that the new fundraise will only leave the company with a $5 billion valuation, $6 billion if it is lucky. The company’s… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
IBM Buys Israeli Startup Databand.Ai
IBM revealed that it has acquired the Israeli startup Databand.ai, a provider of data observability software that helps organizations fix issues with their data. The purchase price was not disclosed and the acquisition was sealed on June 27.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Databand.ai employees will join IBM Data and AI, further building on IBM’s growing portfolio of Data and AI products, including its IBM Watson capabilities and IBM Cloud Pak for Data… Read More Here

Walmart Buying Israeli Founded AR Startup MemoMi
Memomi, an augmented reality (AR) optical tech startup founded by Israelis, is set to be acquired by Walmart. The acquisition is expected to close in the coming weeks, and Memomi employees will join the Walmart Global Tech organization. But there is no word yet as to the purchase price.

Walmart is one of the world’s largest retailers with approximately 230 million customers who visit more than 10,500 stores and clubs under 46 banners in 24 countries and eCommerce websites around the world. With fiscal year 2022 revenue of $573 billion, Walmart employs approximately 2.3 million associates… Read More Here 

Other Business Stories
Bank Of Israel Raises Interest Rate 1.25 Percent
The Monetary Committee of the Bank of Israel (BOI) Monday announced a decision to increase the interest rate by 0.5 percentage points to 1.25 percent. The raise had been expected for some time and follows similar moves made in other countries.

In making its decision to raise rates the BOI cited a number of different factors, with inflation at the center. It said that inflation in Israel is above the upper bound of the target range, at 4.1 percent over the past 12 months… Read More Here

Israel High Tech Sector Suffers Along With The World From Crises And Instability
The high tech Israel Startup Nation seems to be hitting a bump in the road. Investments are down, planned IPOs have either been delayed or scrapped altogether and new investment rounds are also being delayed.

This is not so surprising since worldwide inflation is up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the rising price of oil. This means gas prices are up and so the costs of shipping by land sea and air of all raw materials and finished products… Read More Here

Bank Of Israel Reports $6 Billion Drop In Foreign Currency Reserves
The Bank of Israel (BOI) reported that Israel’s foreign exchange reserves at the end of June 2022 stood at $193.81 billion, a decrease of $5.998 billion from their level at the end of the previous month. The level of the reserves relative to GDP was 38.7 percent.

The Bank of Israel explained that the decrease was the result of a revaluation that decreased the reserves by approximately $6.739 billion… Read More Here

Elbit Systems Closes June With More Than $800 Million In New Deals
Israeli Defense contractor Elbit Systems closed out the month of June with three new business deals collectively valued at more than $800 million. The biggest of these deals was a new $548 million Contract to Supply Multi-Domain Combat Networked Warfare Capabilities to a Country in Asia-Pacific.

Under the contract, Elbit Systems will provide an integrated solution comprising of the ELBIT TIGER-X™ networking middleware; a TORCH-X based suite of airborne, land and ship-borne Command and Control applications; as well as advanced waveforms and a wide range of E-LynX™ Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems including airborne, vehicular, handheld, and shipborne configurations. The program will include extensive co-development efforts and transfer of… Read More Here

Pagaya Plummets As Shares Drop By 40%
Israeli fintech firm Pagaya is in trouble as its market cap is dropping by the hour. The newly publicly traded company’s stock has been sliding for days now and the holiday weekend did not seem to help it stem the tide.

The company’s shares began trading last week at $7, but as of Tuesday morning, they are in jeopardy of plummeting below the $4 mark. (American markets were closed on Monday for the 4th of July holiday). That would mean a loss of more than 40% of Pagaya’s value…. Read More Here