Tel Aviv at sunset, Israel Startup Israel
Israel High Tech Scene May 16 – May 22
New Startups / VC Funding
New Israeli Startup Superlegal Uses AI To Help Small Businesses With Contracts
Superlegal is an Israeli startup that offers the first AI platform for legal contract review for small and medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”) and the only AI solution authorized to practice law in the US. The firm raised $5 million in a seed funding round, co-led by Aleph and Disruptive AI fund. The high volume and intricate nature of contracts in the construction industry make legal review and negotiation a major hurdle. For example, the construction sector… Read More Here
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Israeli Startup Finout Offers FinOps Platform
Finout is an Israeli startup offering a FinOps platform that calls itself the FinOps-for-enterprise company. The company raised $26.3 million in a Series B funding round led by Red Dot Capital. Finout’s complete FinOps platform is now used by global brands, including Lyft, the New York Times, Choice Hotels, Wiz, Tenable, and Appsflyer. The funding brings the total raised by Finout to $45 million.
FinOps is a combination of operational framework and cultural shift designed to help organizations get the most value out of cloud computing. It’s not just… Read More Here
Mergers and Acquisitions
Israeli Cybersecurity Behemoth CyberArk Acquires Venafi For $1.4 Billion
CyberArk, one of Israel Startup Nation’s biggest successes in the cybersecurity field and now a publicly traded corporation worth more than $10 billion, entered into an agreement to acquire Venafi, a firm in the field of machine identity management, from Thoma Bravo. The deal is worth $1.4 billion – $1 billion in cash and approximately $540 million in shares.
The explosion of machine identities in cloud-based environments creates a complex challenge for security. The sheer number of machine identities… Read More Here
Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Buys Israel’s Priority Software
Priority Software, an Israeli provider of mission-critical business software, is being acquired by Stephen Schwarzman’s private equity firm Blackstone. While the details of the acquisition have not been revealed, it will reportedly leave Priority Software with an $8 billion valuation.
Blackstone is an alternative asset manager with more than $1 trillion in assets under management including global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, infrastructure, life sciences… Read More Here
Other Business Stories
Standard And Poor’s (S&P) Gives Israeli Economy Gloomy Forecast
The global credit rating agency S&P (Standard and Poor’s) reported that it expects the Israeli economy to see a slow recovery. This would be even after the war against Hamas comes to an end.
In its report, S&P pointed to an estimate of Israel’s first-quarter GDP released by the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on May 16 it said was “broadly in line with our latest economic projection. We maintain our below-consensus… Read More Here
Is Israel Falling Behind In The AI Race?
Israel may be known as Startup Nation for all of its high-tech success stories, but it is apparently lacking in one very important and newly expanding field – Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is what the researchers from RISE Israel, in collaboration with Google, say their study determined.
It’s a bit hard to swallow. The idea that Israel, a country known for innovation in just about every aspect of life, from agriculture to defense, seems absurd. Especially in… Read More Here
Joonko Goes Junk – O, Declares Bankruptcy
Joonko, an Israeli startup that offered a human resources service that aids firms in reaching their diversity recruiting quotas, has finally gone bust. The firm which reportedly raised as much as $0 million filed for bankruptcy in Delaware after a year of turmoil.
It will not be so difficult to dismantle what is left of Joonko considering that the company already let go of all of its employees. Ilon Band, who took over… Read More Here
Billionaire Ronald Perelman Forced To Sell Fortune In Art
Billionaire businessman Ronald Perelman may not be a billionaire anymore. He was forced to sell $1 billion worth of art pieces that he owned in order to cover a debt.
Bloomberg reported that Ronald Perelman made the sale because lenders including Deutsche Bank AG demanded repayment of loans after his shares in the cosmetics firm Revlon plummeted in value. The shares were used as collateral on… Read More Here
Politics
Norway, Spain, And Ireland Recognize Palestinian State
The government of Norway on Wednesday declared its recognition of Palestine as an independent state from 28 May. The governments of Spain and Ireland followed soon after.
In response, Israel has recalled its ambassadors to the countries. Norway also… Read More Here
Salman Rushdie Says Hamas Would Make Palestine A ‘Taliban State’
Salman Rushdie, the world famous (some might say infamous) author, issued a dire warning about what a future Palestinian state would be like should it be ruled by Hamas. In an interview with Germany’s Bild magazine, Rushdie said that should this happen then it would be nothing better than yet another “Taliban state.”
Rushdie only recently recovered from a murder attempt. In 2022 in Chautauqua, New York, Salman Rushdie was attacked by a man who rushed… Read More Here
Minister Of Defense Gallant Condemns Call For War Crimes Charges
Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Tuesday issued a scathing condemnation of the announcement that arrest warrants against both himself and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crime” Israel has allegedly committed during its Iron Swords War against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, calling for “unequivocal” rejection of any such move.
On Monday, The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor, Karim Kahn, officially requested arrest warrants be issued for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant on charges of… Read More Here
Benny Gantz Issues Ultimatum
Benny Gantz, a former Defense Minister and current member of Israel’s special war cabinet, fired another shot at Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government when he issued an ultimatum Saturday night. In a public press conference Gantz, who is also a former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, gave Netanyahu a June 8 deadline to establish a formal plan for what will come in a post-Hamas Gaza.
In making his announcement, Benny Gantz made some harsh comments about the Netanyahu government, accusing Israel’s Prime Minister of putting himself… Read More Here
Science
Did Israeli Archeologists Find Evidence Of Ships In The Negev Desert
A Byzantine-period church wall revealed in the Negev has something unusual on it. The wall, from 1,500 years ago, has a display showing contemporary ships; even though, the Negev is a desert and the church is not located near any body of water.
The Israel Antiquities Authority conducted the excavations in the Bedouin town of Rahat, located north of Be’er Sheva. The excavations are part of a Rahat neighborhood expansion program led by the Authority for Development and… Read More Here
