Israel Active

In one of the biggest deals ever between two Israeli companies, DevOps specialist JFrog has acquired VDoo and its automated product security platform for $300 million. It triples JFrog’s team of security experts (engineering, marketing, and sales) with employees located in Israel, Germany, Japan and North America.

Israel’s Future Meat (now Believer - see previously) has opened the world’s first industrial cultured meat facility in the city of Rehovot. It has the capability to produce 500 kilograms of slaughter-free meat products a day - equivalent to 5,000 hamburgers.

The UK Ministry of Defense has chosen the Trophy Active Protection System, from Israel’s Rafael to protect its Challenger 3 tanks from missile threats.

Israel’s Rafael has established the Israeli Operational Technologies Cyber Consortium to provide cyber security for operational technologies in Dubai. Its aim is to protect critical infrastructure in the UAE and elsewhere in the Gulf, including desalination plants, power plants and seaports.

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.

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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.