Israel High Tech Scene October 30 – November 5

Tel Aviv at sunset, Israel Startup Israel

New Startups / VC Funding
Apiiro Raises $100 Million
apiiro, an Israeli startup that boasts that it is the industry’s first Code Risk Platform in the area of DevSecOps, raised $100 million in a Series B round of funding led by General Catalyst with participation by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins.

The raise comes not long after it was revealed that a possible buy out of apiiro by Palo Alto Networks fell through over differences regarding Apiiro’s valuation.

The apiiro platform is deployed and used across… Read More Here

Sepio Raises $37 Million For Risk Management Platform
Sepio, an Israeli startup that offers an asset risk management platform, helping customers see, assess and mitigate the risk of all known and shadow IT assets at any scale, raised $22 million in a new series B round of funding led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). The raise brings Sepio’s total investment to date to $37 million.

Sepio’s Chairman is Lane Bess, who made headlines for his trip to space aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin’s New Shepard. He contributed to this round through his foundation Bess Ventures. Other investors included Citi Ventures, Stanford University, World Trade Ventures and market leaders including Slavik Markovich and Intercontinental Exchange’s CIO Mark Wassersug.

Founded in 2017, Sepio boasts that it has created the first asset risk management platform that operates on asset existence rather than activity. Using physical layer asset DNA profiling, Sepio says that the company’s solution… Read More Here

Valence Raises $32 Million For Cyber Security
Valence, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that offers a SaaS security remediation platform, Raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Microsoft’s M12 venture fund. The company only came out of stealth mode one year ago and now its total investment to date has reached $32 million. So Valence is showing that ta least cyber security firms are still in need and are raising new money, rather than firing people like many Israel Startup Nation firms have done recently.

Founded by Yoni Shohet, CEO, and Shlomi Matichin, CTO, Valence provides comprehensive visibility into the mesh of business application integrations and automated workflows, while identifying and mitigating associated risks and enforcing policy controls.

Valence calls itself the first Business Application Mesh security company, focused on managing the risks from third-party integrations… Read More Here

Airovation Technologies Uses Carbon Emissions To Make Glass
Airovation Technologies is a new Israeli startup that offers air purification and carbon capture solutions, with a new innovative way to make glass while also clearing the atmosphere of greenhouse gas emissions. The company uses the carbon emitted by the use of energies and “recycles” it to make glass.

So, imagine that we could recapture all of those greenhouse emissions and use them to make things. Imagine if we could combat the climate crisis by cleaning the atmosphere of all of that excess CO2? But then what would we do with all of that CO2? Well, Airovation Technologies can make many products out of it, from glass to fertilizer. Heck, maybe… Read More Here

Israel’s Cuspa Medical Offers New Heart Valve Device
Cuspa Medical, an Israeli medtech startup, offers a first-of-its-kind heart valve repair device that the company boasts will save over 10 million patients the world over who suffer from heart valve insufficiency who do not have an effective alternative today. Cuspa’s implant seals heart valves in a minimally invasive procedure, avoiding an invasive open heart surgery and providing immediate symptom relief to the patient.

Israel Startup Nation may best be known for its high-tech innovations and cyber security firms, but it is also known for its medical and scientific advancements. Israeli researchers are at the forefront of new cancer treatments. Israeli startups like NeuroSense Therapeutics is working on a new technology that utilizes artificial intelligence AI to detect ALS, also…. Read More Here

Revuze Raises $34 Million ForMarket Research Tech
Revuze, an Israeli startup that offers real-time consumer insights, raised $12 million growth investment led by PSG. Revuze has now raised a total of $24 million to date.

Basically, Revuze offers a new kind of market research service, one that uses the latest tech. Just the term market research alone makes people yawn. Most businesses, especially small businesses, do not have the time, the money or the inclination to deal with it. And it also takes… Read More Here 

IPOs and Unicorns
Israel Startup Nation IPOS And Unicorns From October
October is never a big month for IPOs and investments. And with the global financial crisis, this was no different for Israel Startup Nation, but there were a few exceptions including new unicorns.

On the IPO front, after a few setbacks, Mobileye finally held its Initial Public Offering (IPO) with a $16.7 billion valuation. This was far short of the $50 billion that its parent company Intel originally expected. Mobileye raised $861 million from the IPO.

TripActions, an Israeli startup… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
Israel’s Emza Sold To Synaptics For $10 Million
Emza Visual Sense, an Israeli firm that offers ultra-low-power AI visual sensing solutions, was acquired by Synaptics Incorporated a publicly owned San Jose, California-based developer of human interface hardware and software. While the purchase price was not disclosed, Calcalist estimated the deal to be worth $10 million. Emza was acquired from its current parent company, Taiwan-based fabless semiconductor company Himax Technologies.

Based in Giv’atayim, near Tel Aviv, the Emza team will become part of Synaptics Israel, in Herzliya.

So, some deals like mergers and acquisitions are still getting done at a time in which the world is experiencing a global…. Read More Here

Other Business Stories
HP Shutters Israel’s Scitex, Lays Off 60
Scitex is the latest in a long line of Israeli firms forced to make cutbacks recently, only this time the cuts are being made by a foreign parent company, Hewlett Packard (HP). HP will now fire 60 of the employees of its subsidiary and will fold the company into its Indigo Division.

Indigo has offices in Ness Ziona and Kiryat Gat.

October has seen a cascade of business failures for Israel Startup Nation characterized by multiple rounds of layoffs, So, Scitex is just the… Read More Here

Sting Of The Crisis Continues – EquityBee Fires 20%
EquityBee, an Israeli startup that provides an employee-focused stock options funding solution, is making layoffs. The company is letting go of about 25 of its employees in Israel, or roughly 20% of its total workforce. The company has raised $85 million in total investment to date.

Israel Startup Nation firms have been feeling the sting of the worldwide financial crisis that has dried up capital for new investment. As such, many have been forced to make similar cutbacks.

In a statement about the layoffs, EquityBee acknowledged this saying, “The changes in the market have led to the company… Read More Here

Israeli Unicorn Checkmarx Makes Layoffs
Checkmarx, an Israeli cyber security startup and a unicorn is the latest Israel Startup Nation firm in trouble. The company is laying off 100 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, including 40 people in Israel.

American private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) acquired control of Checkmarx in March 2020. At the time the company had a $1.5 billion valuation. But with the crisis in the global markets and new investments drying up, it is not clear how much the company may be worth today, or if Checkmarx is even still a unicorn. But cyber security is one of the services coming out of Startup Nation Israel that always seems to be in high demand, so the company… Read More Here

October Startup Nation Seemed Like Contraction Nation
October was not a good month for Israel Startup Nation with several more companies contracting, laying off workers, and so on. This is all because of the current worldwide financial crisis sparked by the ongoing war in Ukraine. And one Israeli firm is even being closed by its foreign parent company.

Hewlett Packard (HP) is shuttering its Israeli subsidiary Scitex, folding the company into its Indigo Division. Indigo has offices in Ness Ziona and Kiryat Gat. The move was announced in October and 60 of Scitex’s employees will be let go. Scitex was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in November 2005.

Also in October, Habana Labs, an Israeli chipmaker and an Intel…. Read More Here