Israel Active

The Israeli Tourism Ministry is to build some 8,000 new hotel rooms in the next two years. Hotel occupancy rates are nearing pre-pandemic levels as the tourism industry picks up again. Plans are to add 770 rooms in the north of the country, 2,100 rooms in the South, and 1,650 rooms around the Dead Sea.

Israel’s AVATAR Consortium comprises Rafael, Opsys, ThirdEye, VayaVision, Cognata, Ebit, and nearly all Israeli universities and technical institutes. They are testing autonomous vehicle decision-making to develop a framework for advanced Israeli technologies.

Israeli NGO ICON (see previously) has announced the 10 Israeli startups to complete its latest SV101 accelerator program for connecting and expanding to Silicon Valley. They are , , , , , , , , Redefine, and Silk.

More details of the deal that allows Israel’s NewMed to search for natural gas deposits off the Atlantic coast of Morocco (see previously). The 8-year agreement includes geological and geophysical analysis with initial exploration drilling anticipated after about 2.5 years.

Leading Japanese electronics manufacturer Murata has partnered with Israel’s Autotalks (see previously) to launch the most mature mass-market ready V2X (vehicle to anything) communications module. It will operate with either of the two global V2X communication standards.

Israel’s Otonomo (see previously) has been awarded “Fleet Management Innovation of the Year” by the 2022 AutoTech Breakthrough Awards. Otonomo’s Maintenance and Mileage dashboards provide customers with a 360-degree view of all relevant vehicle data.

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This article about Jerusalem’s rising innovators includes Housetable, which provides finance for families below the normal bank-lending threshold. Housetable uses Artificial Intelligence to deduce how much a home would be worth on completion of renovation work.

Eran Kravitz, co-founder and CTO of Israel’s Shopic (see previously) describes his company’s shopping device and system that speeds up the checkout process. Shopic is working with Israeli supermarket giant Shufersal and several North American supermarkets.

Following the success of a Free Trade Agreement with the United Arab Emirates (see previously), Israel has successfully completed the first round of FTA talks with Bahrain. Israel’s Economy ministry remarked on the “quick progress in the negotiations”.