The Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah – begins at sundown Friday night. The year 5783 will end and 5784 will begin. Here is the Jewish Business News list of the top 5 stories about Israeli unicorns – startups with at least a $1 billion valuation – for 5783. Israel is not called Startup Nation for nothing.
Tel Aviv University Number Two Worldwide In Making Unicorns
In August, Tel Aviv University in Israel ranked second overall on a list of the most successful universities around the world to produce new unicorns. The survey was compiled by Stanford University Business School Professor Ilya Strebulaev. And it makes sense that the survey came out of Stanford as it leads the world by far in unicorns established at 310. While Tel Aviv University came in second, it was a very distant second with just 43, or 267 fewer than Stanford. Oxford University came in third on the list with just 33… read more here
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Wiz Becomes World’s Biggest Cybersecurity Startup with $10 Billion Valuation
In February, Wiz, an Israeli cloud security startup and a unicorn, became a super unicorn and the world’s biggest cybersecurity startup when it hit a $10 billion valuation. The new valuation came with a $300 million raise in a Series D funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and existing investors Greenoaks Capital Partners and Index Ventures. Wiz also became the fastest SaaS company to achieve a $10 billion valuation.
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.
Unfortunately, along with all of Startup Nation Israel, Wiz has been having problems in 2023 and may not be worth as much anymore… read more here
Cato Networks Became Fastest Firm To Hit Centaur Status
In November 2022, Cato Networks, an Israeli startup and unicorn that provides the world’s first Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform, became a member of the super elite club of companies known as Centaurs, having annual recurring revenue of $100 million. This came just five years after Cato had only $1 million in revenue, making it the fastest growing enterprise network security startup. A Centaur is basically any startup that brings in at least $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Cato Networks, which has raised over $550 million to date, first became a unicorn in November 2020. The company specializes in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) for cloud-based services. And cloud-based security service firms are exploding these days as everything is moving into the cloud, from software as a service – MS Office is moving that way – to online servers to hold an organization’s data, sparing it the cost and trouble of housing its own servers
Founded in 2015 by Shlomo Kramer, one of the founders of Check Point and Imperva, and Gur Shatz Cato Networks provides a single-vendor SASE platform, converging Cato SD-WAN and a cloud-native security service edge, Cato SSE 360, into a global cloud service. Cato SASE Cloud optimizes and secures application access for all users and locations everywhere. Using Cato, customers easily replace costly and rigid legacy MPLS with modern network architecture based on SD-WAN, secure and optimize a hybrid workforce working from anywhere, and enable seamless cloud migration… read more here
TripActions Hit $9.2 Billion Valuation
In October 2022, TripActions, an Israeli startup and a unicorn that offers travel tech solutions, increased its valuation to $9.2 billion after the company raised $300 million in new investment. The raise is a combination of $154 million in equity from new and existing financial investors and a $150 million structured capital transaction led by Coatue.
Founded in the US by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, TripActions helps businesses get the best out of their employees travel expenses and services. The company says that it allows users to build, manage and scale a corporate travel and expense T&E management programs with ease. It promises to let firms get their employees the “best booking experience with unrivaled inventory, powerful personalization and 24/7 global travel agents paired with frictionless expense management so they can focus on being there, not getting there.” read more here
Israeli Unicorns Looking Abroad For New Hubs In Wake Of Judicial Reform Controversy
A number of Israeli unicorns are looking outside of their own country for new places to have centers for innovation and so forth. Israel’s Kan 11 television news reported that Cyprus and Greece are in the running for such a new hub, with Spain and Italy possibly also interested. This is all due to the ongoing political drama in Israel over the judicial reforms being promoted by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The opposition in Israel’s Knesset calls the reform plan a “threat” to Israel’s democracy. The government, in turn, maintains that its program is intended to “restore” democracy in Israel as Israel’s Supreme Court, it maintains, has appropriated too many powers for itself over the years and is not elected by the public as the Knesset is.
Also, many Israel firms are taking their money out of the country out of concerns that the reforms could harm Israel’s economy. Many experts have said that should the judicial reforms pass then the world would lose faith in Israel’s democratic stability and so investors would not be as likely to invest there… read more here
