The largest investment in an Israeli company during April 2018 was $70 million raised by Caesarea-based V-Wave, which is about to start multicenter clinical trials of its minimally invasive implanted interatrial shunt device for treating patients with severe symptomatic heart failure.
The round was led by Deerfield Management with participation of existing investors Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Edwards Lifesciences, along with BRM Group, Pontifax, Pura Vida Investments, TriVentures, BioStar Ventures and Israel Secondary Fund; and new investors Endeavour Vision, Quark Venture and Aperture Venture Partners.
A $19.75 million Series B round was completed in April by Guesty, a Tel Aviv-based company that developed a platform for property owners to manage Airbnb reservations and now plans to enter the vacation rental market. The round was led by TLV Partners with existing investors Magma VC and Buran VC.
Data backup and recovery innovator OwnBackup of New Jersey and Tel Aviv raised $15.5 million in April. The round was co-led by new investor Vertex Ventures and existing investor Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Oryzn Capital and Salesforce Ventures also participated in the round.
Tel Aviv-based LawGeex won $12 million in a round led by venture capital fund Aleph with the participation of previous investors including Lool Ventures. LawGeex offers an artificial-intelligence platform that performs automated business contract review in less than an hour. A recent study showed LawGeex’s platform bested top US lawyers in accurately spotting risks in everyday business contracts.
GamEffective, a Jerusalem Venture Partners portfolio company, raised a Series B round of $11 million. The company makes gamified “digital motivation” HR tools used by companies in 30 countries on six continents. GamEffective is based in New York and Ra’anana. The round was led by JVP and joined by new investor La Maison, together with existing investors 2B Angels, CE Ventures, Lipman, Chomski, Yaniv Tal, Eshbol and others.
Genie Enterprise of New York and Rishpon, a food-technology company that develops and markets smart ovens, closed a Series A round that was oversubscribed at $10 million.
Sports-tech company PlaySight Interactive, whose SmartCourt platform is in use in more than 20 countries across 25 sports, received $10 million in new investments from SoftBank Ventures Korea and CE Ventures from Hong Kong as an extension of its $21 million Series C financing round. The company is headquartered in New Jersey with its development office in Kfar Saba.
Database-as-a-service developer ScyllaDB, with offices in Palo Alto and Herzliya, closed a $10 million Series C round led by TLV Partners with participation of previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Western Digital.
Nutrino, a nutrition-related data services and analytics technology based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, completed Series A round of $8 million. Pereg Ventures, Nielsen Ventures and Gandyr Group joined existing investors including the New York Angels group, which led the $2 million seed round for the company.
SecuredTouch of Ramat Gan raised $8 million in Series A funding from German financing company Arvato Financial Solutions, RDC and other investors. SecuredTouch’s behavioral biometrics technology for digital fraud prevention is being integrated into Arvato’s fraud identification platform.
Deep-learning and computer-vision startup Allegro.ai of Ramat Gan raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Mizmaa Ventures with the participation of Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Samsung Catalyst Fund and Dynamic Loop Capital.
Haifa-based LeaderMES announced a funding round led by Israeli venture capital fund Firstime that has brought its total raised to $5 million. The company’s platform allows managers of small and mid-sized factories to harness the power of the cloud, empowering them to analyze trends, obtain actionable information and make informed decisions.
Rapid production debugging solution developer Rookout launched in April with a $4.2 million funding by TLV Partners and Emerge. The new startup has offices in Tel Aviv and Palo Alto.
Tel Aviv-based REACH (formerly Seegnature) completed a $3.5 million Series A financing round led by US venture capital fund NFX. REACH plans to open an office in Silicon Valley. Its proprietary platform enables remote management of financial transactions and meetings.
Cloud broadcasting startup iChannel.io of Ramat Gan raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Israel-based venture capital firms Plus Ventures and 2B Angels.
Alice, a Hebrew-language flight search engine, raised $1.5 million from Talma Travel and Tours and launched a new version of its website in April.
(via Israel21c)
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