Israel High Tech Scene June 25 – July 1

New Startups / VC Funding
Gloat, an Israeli startup that offers a flexibility platform for human resources and talent, has completed a $90 million Series D round of investment led by Generation Investment Management with participation from Accel and others. The news comes just one year after the company raised $57 million in a series C round.

Human resources people probably have the most thankless job in any organization… Read More Here

Lightbits Raises $42 Million For Cloud-Native Data Center Platform
Lightbits, an Israeli startup that offers the first software-defined NVMe data platform for any cloud, raised $42 million in growth capital in a round led by new investor Atreides Management. Lightbits has now raised more than $100 million to date.

Founded in 2016, Lightbits boasts that it makes high-performance elastic block storage simple, scalable, and cost-efficient for any cloud. Lightbits says that it offers a Cloud Data Platform that delivers “efficiency… Read More Here

Embedded Tax Platform April Raises $30 Million
April Tax Solutions Inc, an Israeli fintech startup offering a personal income tax platform that embeds into digital financial apps, raised $30 million in a Series A round of funding. The company is called April because it helps Americans with their taxes and in the U.S. tax day is April 15.

If you have ever lived in America around that time of year then you would have seen how the country is barraged by television commercials offering a variety of tax processing services. Websites, accountants, and just about anyone… Read More Here

Cyolo Raises $60 Million For Zero Trust Security Systems
Cyolo, an Israeli cyber security startup that develops Zero Trust Network Access 2.0 (ZTNA 2.0) solutions for IT and OT, raised $60 million in a Series B round led by National Grid Partners, the venture investing and innovation arm of National Grid. This raise comes almost one year after the company brought in $21 million in a Series A fundraise and brings Cyolo’s total funding to date to $85 million.

Zero Trust is a security concept based on the idea that organizations should not automatically trust anything from the outside, or even the inside, of the firm. So Zero Trust means exactly that – don’t trust anything. Hackers are everywhere at all times trying to breach your defenses… Read More Here

Embedded Tax Platform April Raises $30 Million
April Tax Solutions Inc, an Israeli fintech startup offering a personal income tax platform that embeds into digital financial apps, raised $30 million in a Series A round of funding. The company is called April because it helps Americans with their taxes and in the U.S. tax day is April 15.

If you have ever lived in America around that time of year then you would have seen how the country is barraged by television commercials offering a variety of tax processing services. Websites, accountants, and just about anyone who can help with your tax returns advertises everywhere and anywhere in the month of April. And many of the services offered are specifically for people who procrastinated and now need to rush to get their taxes done on time… Read More Here

IPOs and Unicorns
Unicorn Tipalti Is Hiring 100 People To Grow Its Payment Platform
Tipalti, a fintech business that creates and runs a global financial transfer network, will add 100 people by the end of the year to its 350 in Israel and 1,000 abroad.

Open roles include DevOps and Cand engineers… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
XM Cyber Acquiring Israeli Startup Cyber Observer
Cyber Observer, an Israeli cyber security startup in Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM) and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), was acquired by XM Cyber, a company that provides hybrid cloud security. The purchase price was not disclosed and the acquisition comes just seven months after XM Cyber was itself bought out by Schwarz Group for $700 million seven months ago.

Cyber Observer’s platform will be integrated into XM Cyber’s. This, say the companies… Read More Here

Joffre Capital Buying Playtika’s Majority Stake At $8.5 Billion Valuation
American Private equity firm Joffre Capital is set to buy Playtika’s 20% controlling stake at an $8.5 billion valuation. It represents about a 46% premium on the company share price at the end of trading on Monday, according to the Axios website.

Playtika’s stock price surged by 32.2% in extended-hours trading.

Joffre Capital is led by James Lu, a former executive at one of the largest dating apps Baidu, and also serves as chairman of LGTBQ dating app Grindr… Read More Here

Other Business Stories
Bayer Opening Cyber Security R&D Center In Israel
Bayer, a global enterprise with main interests in the life science fields of health care and nutrition, will soon be opening a new cyber security research and development center in Israel. And what better place in the world to go to for cyber security development.

The company is currently establishing a development center for cyber security in Israel, which will be integrated into Bayer’s global cyber unit. The center in Israel, which will be established in the company’s head offices in Hod Hasharon… Read More Here

Israeli Startup StreamElements Lays Off Dozens
StreamElements, an Israeli startup that offers interactive tools to help companies manage communities and create revenue for streaming content creators, is going through a contraction despite having recently raised a lot of money in funding. The company has reportedly sent dozens of its employees termination notices.

“Due to the current situation in the market, we are working to adjust our plans in order to sustain our high growth rate while creating a path to profitability. As a result we are required to make adjustments to our workforce,” explained StreamElements in a statement… Read More Here