Israel High Tech Scene March 9 – March 15

Tel Aviv at sunset, Israel Startup Israel

Israel High Tech Scene March 9 – March 15

New Startups / VC Funding
Microsoft Expands Partnership With Israel’s Deci.AI At Open.Ai’s Expense
Microsoft is looking to Israel’s Deci.AI as an alternative to Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Globes reported that sources “close to the matter” said Microsoft is expanding its collaboration with the Israeli deep learning company that utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build AI.

Deep learning is a machine learning technique that teaches computers to do what comes naturally to humans: learn by example… Read More Here

To Help People In Grief, Israeli Startup Empathy Raises $90 Million
Israeli startup Empathy offers people an emotional service that helps families navigate the journey they face after losing a loved one. The need for such a service should not be underestimated. The company brought in $47 million in a Series B funding round, which brought its total capital raised to date to $90 million.

Empathy is at the center of what it means to be human. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
Wiz Buys Fellow Israeli Firm Gem Security For $350 Million
Gem Security, an Israeli cybersecurity startup founded by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces’ vaunted 8200 cyber intelligence unit, was acquired by fellow Israeli startup Wiz, an Israeli unicorn that offers an API security platform, for $350 million.

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… Read More Here

American Cybersecurity Giant Zscaler Buys Israeli Startup Avalor For $350 Million
Avalor, an Israeli cybersecurity startup, is being bought out by American cybersecurity giant Zscaler for $350 million.

Cybersecurity is more important than ever, which is why they are really bringing in the money these days. And investors certainly have reason to believe that cybersecurity will bring them their best return on investment when it comes to Israeli firms. Security is almost synonymous with Israel Startup Nation. Hackers are not only motivated by money or politics. They often just like being malicious. So even small companies need to be on their guard and be sure to properly protect their systems. In recent months two different Israeli companies were… Read More Here

Other Business Stories
ICL Group Could Soon Lose Dead Sea Concession
The exclusive right to the lucrative mineral deposits in the area of the Dead Sea in Israel could be up for grabs. ICL Group LTD, an Israel-based global specialty minerals company, currently holds the rights, that are based on concessions granted before the State of Israel even came into existence in 1948, and the Dead Sea Concession Law of 1961. The concession will come to an end in 2030 and Israel’s Ministry of Finance is already laying the groundwork for bids on the rights.

Everyone by now knows that the Dead Sea is drying up and in danger of disappearing altogether. Its waters have been receding from their old shoreline for years now and there is even a gap in the middle that separates the Dead Sea into northern and southern parts. Pipes were connected to bring water from the… Read More Here

Israel Is A World Leader In Arms Exports
Israel is one of the world’s largest arms exporters, something that should come as little surprise. According to a report released by SIPRI – the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israel was the world’s ninth largest exporter of arms from 2019 – 2023. The USA was, of course, the largest arms exporter in the world.

While the U.S had a 42% share of the global arms industry, Israel’s was just 2.4%… Read More Here

Israel Sees Increased Deficits Due To Gaza War
Israel’s Finance Ministry reported that the country’s national budget deficit over the past 12 months hit 105.3 billion Shekels ($30 billion). This figure is equal to 5.6% of the country’s GDP, which is high.

It is not surprising that Israel saw an increase in the budget deficit, as well as in its debt, over the past year. This is because of the ongoing Iron Swords War against the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. The war was sparked by the barbaric terrorist massacre enacted by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023… Read More Here

Israel Gets First Ever Stablecoin – Bits Of Gold
Bits of Gold, an Israeli crypto financial services company, received authorization to launch Israel’s first ever stablecoin. The Israeli Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority authorized a pilot program for the new digital currency called BILS.

Bits of Gold said that this is a “first of its kind move in Israel to literally integrate digital currencies into the Israeli economy” and that anyone with internet access will be able to use the BILS stable shekel to “store value and perform financial transactions, even without the need for a traditional… Read More Here

IPOs and Unicorns
eToro, the Israeli startup that offers its clients a trading platform, is looking towards an IPO – an initial public offering. While no timetable has been set and no specific exchange mentioned, eToro CEO Yoni Assia told the Financial Times that it would be in the U.S. and that the company expects to come away with a $3.5 billion valuation.

“Retail investors in the UK and Germany want to trade US stocks,” Yoni Assia told the Financial Times. “We see that UK clients might trade also UK shares, but very few of our global clients would trade UK shares. Something in the US market creates a pool of both deep liquidity and deep awareness for those … Read More Here

Cyera To Hit $1.5 Billion Unicorn Valuation For Cloud Data Security
Cyera, an Israeli startup offering cloud data security, is set to become a unicorn, tripling its valuation to $1.5 billion. Business Insider reported that this will come in a new round of funding in which Cyera expects to raise as much as $200 million.

As enterprises increase their adoption of cloud services, they must ensure that data is democratized to deliver insights and secured against new and rising threats. Cyera’s data security platform discovers, classifies, and develops deep context of sensitive data on top of Google Cloud’s secure, trusted infrastructure.
Israel Startup Nation is best known for its cyber security… Read More Here

Science
Israeli Scientists Find Out How Viruses Become ‘Nasty’
Israeli scientists have uncovered new information about how exactly viruses choose to be nasty or not: they use our body’s own immune systems to get stronger. Researchers from the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University say they have deciphered a novel complex decision-making process that helps viruses involved in this. In a new paper, they describe how viruses co-opt a bacterial immune system, intended to combat viruses like themselves, in this decision-making process.

The study was led by Polina Guler, a PhD student in Prof. Avigdor Eldar’s lab … Read More Here

Israeli Scientists Find Connection Between Sand Ripples On Mars And Earth
Scientists from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev say they may have determined what causes sand ripples, a phenomenon that occurs on both Mars and the Earth.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev physicists Prof. Hezi Yizhaq and Prof. Itzhak Katra and their colleagues from Denmark, Germany, Italy, China, and the US reported in a cover article published in Nature Geoscience that one unified theory could explain their formation on two different planets of our solar system… Read More Here