Israel High Tech Scene October 10 – 16

New Startups / VC Funding
Israeli High-Tech Raised $17.78 Billion In Q1–Q3/2021
Startup Nation keeps on hitting new highs, bringing in a record $17.78 billion in new investment for its high tech firms from 575 different deals over the first three quarters of 2021. This according to a new report released by IVC Research and the Meitar law firm.
The numbers for 2021… Read More Here

Israeli Startup IT Central Station Raises $30 Million
Israeli startup IT Central Station, which offers an enterprise technology review platform, raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Invictus Growth Partners.

Founded in 2011 and based in Modiin, IT Central Station has an enterprise technology service that provides peer product reviews in Cybersecurity, DevOps and IT. The company promises that every reviewer on IT Central Station is verified to help buyers make well-informed… Read More Here

Karma AI Shopping Assistant Raises $25 Million
Karma, an Israeli startup that offers a browser-based artificial intelligence AI shopping assistant and shopping network, closed a $25 million Series-A funding round led by Target Global followed by MoreTech Ventures, with participation from existing investors including NFX and Altair Capital.

Karma, which boasts that it created a “whole new way to shop smarter for millions around the world,” will use the funding to grow its team, double down on AI, machine learning and predictive analytics, scale its user base… Read More Here

Better Health Wants To Modernize Medical Supply
Better Health, an Israeli medtech startup working to modernize the medical supply industry, raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Caffeinated Capital and General Catalyst.

Better Health has a lot of catching up to do with all of the other successful Israel health and medtech services firms out there that have already made their mark. Israeli startup Vim offers digital infrastructure and platforms for US health care… Read More Here

IPOs and Unicorns
TripActions Latest Israeli Unicorn At $7.25 Billion Valuation
TripActions, an Israeli travel tech startup, brought in $275 million in a Series F growth funding round led by Greenoaks with strong participation from investor Elad Gil, Base Partners, and all key existing financial investors. The round has turned TripActions into a super unicorn, with a $7.25 billion valuation… Read More Here

World Fastest Unicorn: 1.5 Years-Old Startup Wiz Raises $250 Million At $6 Billion Valuation
Wiz, an Israeli cloud security startup, announced today that it has raised $250 million at a company valuation of $6 billion.

The financing round was led by current investors Insight Partners and Green Oaks. The majority of other previous investors, including Sequoia, Index, Cyberstars, and SalesForce, also participated in the round. Prominent private investors in the company include billionaires Bernard Arno… Read More Here

Gett Taxi Looks To $Billion Plus IPO
Gett, an Israeli based international taxi services company, is looking to a $1.3 billion initial public offering IPO, through an SPAC merger. Calcalist reported that Gett is close to merging with a special purpose acquisition company and getting a valuation of $1.3-1.5 billion. This is about the same as the company’s most recent valuation… Read More Here

Insightec Set For $2 Billion IPO
Insightec, an Israeli global healthcare medtech company that offers a device for minimally invasive surgery based on ultrasound, is ready for an SPAC merger ahead of its initial public offering IPO. Globes has reported that sources at the company revealed that Insightec expects to end up with a $2 billion valuation… Read More Here

Israeli Unicorn Armis Hits $3.5 Billion Valuation
Armis, an Israeli internet of things IoT company, is now a super unicorn with a $3.5 billion valuation. Armis hit this milestone, reports Calcalist, after brining in as much as $300 million in new funding. The news comes as Armis looks… Read More Here

Mergers and Acquisitions
IronSource Acquiring Tapjoy For $400 Million
Israel’s ironSource, which offers a multi-media platform, is buying out American mobile ad company Tapjoy for $400 million in cash. ironSource is just the latest Startup Nation firm to buy out a foreign business.

The acquisition, says ironSource, should strengthen the ironSource platform offering for mobile app and game developers through several areas of synergy. ironSource boasts that its customers will now be able… Read More Here

Cellebrite Buys Fellow Israeli Co Digital Clues
Cellebrite, an Israeli digital intelligence solutions provider, is buying out Israeli digital intelligence tools company Digital Clues, which was founded by Israeli entrepreneur Mati Kochavi. This is yet another example of a merger/acquisition for Startup Nation, albeit an all domestic one. The sale price of Digital Clues has not been disclosed, but Cellebrite certainly has plenty of… Read More Here

Plazit Polygal Plastics Selling To Plaskolite For $210 Million
Plazit Polygal Plastics is set to be bought out by the American company Plaskolite for $210 million, reports Globes based on unnamed sources described as “close to the deal.” Plazit Polygal Plastics designs, develops and manufactures polycarbonate, thermoplastics and profiles and is currently owned by Kibbutz Gazit, which holds an 80% stake in the company… Read More Here

Other Business Stories   

Check Point Stops Crypto Theft, Saves Billions
Israel’s Check Point Research uncovered an attempt to steal the cryptocurrency from OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace. The hackers tried to steal crypto wallets from the site. The amount of money that could have been stolen is immeasurable, but OpenSea says that it handled $3.4 billion in transaction volume in August 2021 alone… Read More Here

Cybereason Teams With Google Cloud
Israeli cybersecurity company Cybereason and Google Cloud have formed a joint collaboration to create and bring to market Extended Detection and Response (XDR) across endpoints, networks, cloud and workspaces.

McAfee explains that extended detection and response is a SaaS-based, vendor-specific, security threat detection and incident response tool… Read More Here

Rafael Unveils BNET NANO Software Defined Radio
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. has released a new palm-sized radio that uses the company’s BNET NANO system.

BNET is a lightweight radio unit enabling point-to-point and point-to-multipoint topology and an Ad Hoc Mesh Network, supporting complete brigade area-of operation connectivity with… Read More Here