Israel Active

The UAE’s Etihad Airlines and Israel’s El Al have launched a joint codeshare network and reciprocal loyalty agreement for frequent flyers. El Al will sell tickets and offer frequent flier points to its members for the twice-weekly Etihad service between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv from July 18.

Israel and the UAE have signed an Agreement on Economic and Trade Cooperation. It covers free flow of goods and services, trade fairs, knowledge exchanges, delegations, standards and regulation, the private sector, R&D, agri-tech, and more. Mutual trade has now exceeded $675 million.

Israel has increased its score in StartupBlink’s 2021 Startup Ecosystem Index Report (see 2020 ). It remains at number 3 ahead of Canada and Germany but is close behind the UK in second place. The US is still number one.  The list compares Quality, Quantity and Business Environment.

Former US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman have made plans to set up a Tel Aviv office for their Liberty Strategic fund. The fund expects to receive billions of dollars including from the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf States.

raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ; raised ;

Israeli AI chipmaker Hailo (see previously) completed a $110 million funding round at a valuation of $1.1 billion, making it the latest Israeli company to join the “Unicorn” list.

Israel’s Transmit Security (see previously) leaped in value to become another Israeli startup to gain the status of a “Unicorn”, with the largest Series A investment in the history of cybersecurity. The $543 million of new funds gives Transmit Security a valuation of $2.2 billion.

Music education startup JoyTunes (see previously) has just completed a $50 million funding round at a $1 billion valuation, giving it the financial status of a “Unicorn”.

The Hilton hotel chain is looking forward to the end of the pandemic. It announced plans to build two new hotels on Tel Aviv seafront. In total there will be 577 rooms in the two hotels, which will be housed in one building north of the existing Tel Aviv Hilton. The hotels will open in 2026.

Paid Time Off (PTO) is often unusable until an employee terminates their job. Israel’s Sorbet has developed a platform that allows employees to convert unusable PTO into cash. Sorbet buys out PTO and gives employees virtual prepaid cards for travel experiences, flight upgrades, training courses etc.