Israel High Tech Scene January 20 – January 27

Tel Aviv at sunset, Israel

Israel High Tech Scene January 20 – January 27

New Startups / VC Funding
Despite War Israel Startup Nation Leads In Cybersecurity As Silverfort Raises $116 Million
Silverfort, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that provides a Unified Identity Threat Protection platform, raised $116 million in Series D funding. The company has now raised $222 million.

So, Silverfort has proven that not only does Israel Startup Nation continue to be the leader in developing cybersecurity tech, but also that after more than three months of fighting in Gaza the country has not slowed down, nor have investors been scared off… Read More Here

Israel’s Bluewhite Proves Startup National Israel Still Active With $39 Million Raise
Bluewhite, an Israeli startup and autonomous farming technology company with a platform that provides Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) enabling farms to run themselves autonomously, just raised another $39 million. The firm has now raised a total of $89 million in investment to date and with this latest raise Bluewhite shows that Israel Startup Nation is still open for business despite the ongoing war in Gaza, but, more importantly, that Israel is still a center for agricultural innovation.

Israel Startup Nation is big on agtech. It boasts startups like CropX, which provides water solutions for farmers, Equinom, which offers plant based… Read More Here

Can An Israeli Startup Compete With Pfizer? GeneNeer Hopes So
GeneNeer Ltd., an Israeli biotech startup that is engaged in the enhancement of crops, raised $1 million in a Seed funding round to support the acceleration of its technology for rapid crop seed innovation. The funds will be used to expand the company’s research and development into its methods for enhancing gene editing and gene discovery and, as its founder boasts, will someday be as big as biotechnology giants like Pfizer.

How will this happen? Well, GeneNeer develops what are known as genetically modified organisms (GMO). These can be new strains of seeds for all manner of crops that could produce more with less effort and less water… Read More Here

Cybersecurity Keeps Startup Nation Moving During Gaza War – Torq Raises $120 Million
Torq, an Israeli cybersecurity startup, is one of a few such firms that are proving Startup Nation Israel is still open for business despite three months of war in Gaza. After the start of the Iron Swards War investments in Israel dried up and the Shekel plummeted in value. But in the last month, things have picked up again.

And cybersecurity firms continue to lead the way.

Torq, which calls itself the security “hyperautomation” pioneer, had 300% revenue growth and 500% customer growth in its third year of operation… Read More Here

Israel’s Pluri Makes Breakthrough with Cell Based Coffee
Pluri, an Israeli biotech company that transforms cells into “solutions that promote global well-being and sustainability,” is making history by launching a cell-based coffee business. Pluri says this will revolutionize the coffee industry.

Pluri’s cell-based coffee product is designed to address the growing global demand for sustainable, high-quality coffee at mass-scale production, without the harm to the environment that comes from the massive production of various crops. The massive breeding of animals like cattle for food causes environmental problems due to all of the waste they produce… Read More Here

Israeli Startups Sequence and Prompt Security Make Small Raises
Prompt Security, an Israeli startup that offers generative AI security for enterprises, raised $5 million in a Seed round of funding led by Hetz Ventures with participation from Four Rivers and angels including CISOs at Airbnb, Elastic, and Dolby. And its fellow Israeli startup Sequence, which offers users the ability to visualize their cash flow, came out of stealth with a $5.5 million raise led by Aleph.

Founded in 2022, people can create ports in Sequence and connect their incoming funds to it. People can connect their existing bank accounts, credit-cards, financial apps, or Crypto wallets. Sequence integrates with thousands of financial institutions. Sequence brings together all bank accounts, credit cards, savings funds, investments, and more into one platform, providing an intuitive and… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
Bill Ackman and Wife Neri Oxman Buy 5% Stake In Tel Aviv Stock Exchange
Bill Ackman, the billionaire activist investor who runs Pershing Square Capital, and his wife Neri Oxman have acquired a 5% stake in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange TASE for $17 million. Ackman and his wife made the purchase themselves. It was not a Pershing Square Capital move.

The acquisition came as the TASE made a secondary offering of 17,156,677 ordinary shares at an offering price of 20.60 Shekels ($5.6) per share… Read More Here

Startup Nation Israel Continues Wartime Comeback as Minute Media Buys America’s STN Video
In much needed good news for the war ravaged Startup Nation Israel Minute Media, an Israeli sports content technology startup and a unicorn, has acquired North American sports content distributor STN Video. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Calcalist reported that it was worth as much as $150 million.

So far January has shown that even after more than three months of fighting in the Iron Swords War against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, Israel Startup Nation is still strong. It was only natural that in the first couple of months after the barbaric Hamas massacre of October 7, things would slow down for Israel… Read More Here

Steven Mnuchin Looks to Acquire Israel’s Phoenix Agencies
Steve Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital is reportedly in talks to acquire a 25% stake in Israel’s Phoenix Agencies insurance company for more than $235 million. If such a deal goes through it would give Phoenix an estimated $950 million valuation.

Phoenix Holdings currently has an 80% stake in Phoenix Agencies… Read More Here

Other Business Stories
J.P. Morgan Gives Israel Much Needed Thumb’s Up as Gaza War Continues
J.P. Morgan Chase just gave Israel Startup Nation a Huge thumbs up as the country is still embroiled in the war against Hamas in Gaza after more than three months of fighting. The American banking giant is still backing Israel as a high-tech and investment center.

First, J.P. Morgan announced plans to expand its Israel Tech Center Located in Herzliya. And this at a time when major American firms like Google and HP are making layoffs… Read More Here

Major Layoffs Hitting Israel Startup Nation from SolarEdge to Strauss Group
Israel Startup Nation is seeing massive layoffs. SolarEdge, HP Indigo and Strauss Group are all letting blocks of people go after a stay of execution was in place due to the Iron Swords War in Gaza.

The layoffs are not the result of a financial crisis caused by the war. They would have come anyway, but the Israeli firms did not want to enact them in the wake of the Barbaric Hamas attack of October 7. So, the act that they are coming now could actually be a good sign as it suggests that Israelis are ready to move forward… Read More Here

Israel First Nation to Allow Marketing of Cultured Meat – Greenlights Aleph Farms Steaks
Israel made history when it authorized its alternative food startup Aleph Farms, which boasts Leonardo DiCaprio among its investors, to market lab grown or “cultivated meat” in the country. The move made Israel the first country in the world to allow for the marketing of such an alternative to animal-based products. Until today, only plant-based meat alternatives have been marketed.

Usually, the world waits for the US to make its decision on such matters before doing so. Only after the FDA greenlights something for human consumption in America do other countries follow suit. But in recent years Israel… Read More Here

Israel’s Bright Data Wins Big in Court Against Facebook/Meta
Israeli data collection company Bright Data won big in court against Meta/Facebook in a case dealing with data scrapping. And the court’s ruling is not just a victory for Bright Data, but for everyone and could have serious repercussions in the future for big firms like Facebook and Google.

Meta has sought a summary judgment from the court in its case claiming that Bright Data had basically stolen its data through the process of data scraping. But Bright Data countered that the information it used is general information collected from all over the web and not proprietary… Read More Here