Israel Active

On May 24th 18,000 passengers passed through Tel Aviv Ben Gurion’s airport with 134 flights taking off and landing. Many of the foreign airlines, who suspended flights during Operation Guardian of the Walls have now resumed Israel operations.

Israeli venture capital firm 83North has raised a new $550 million fund. This is the VCs sixth fund and will take its assets under management to $1.8 billion. 83North has invested in Israeli startups ironSource and Payoneer (who are about to go public) plus CYE, Trigo, Zerto, Via, and many others.

CNBC’s 2021 Disruptor 50 list (of companies aligned with a rapid pace of technological change) contains seven Israelis (up from 5 in ).  They are (at number 4), (9), (11), (15), (26), (31) and (32).

Four Israeli startups were listed in Garner’s 2021 Cool Vendors list. They are VOOM (Insurance), Run:AI (Enterprise AI Operationalization and Engineering), Lightrun (Monitoring, Observability and Cloud Operations) and Apiiro (DevSecOps).  All have previously appeared in this newsletter.

With R&D centers in Tel Aviv and Binyamina, US-headquartered Sunbit has developed a payment method that allows US stores to offer their customers the option to buy now and pay later, in installments. Sunbit has just raised $130 million of funds, to reach a “Unicorn” valuation of $1.1 billion.

Covid is over, as far as Israel’s hi-tech jobs market is concerned, with Israeli companies fighting over available local resources. This is according to the OurCrowd High-Tech Jobs Index - a quarterly report tracks vacancies and hiring patterns of high-tech companies in Israel and abroad.

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported the core unemployment rate fell from 7.9% to 5% in April. The broader measure of 10.6% includes those who should begin to return to work in June when Israel’s unpaid leave scheme ends.

Some good recent economic statistics as Israel emerges from the pandemic. The average salary and those for hi-tech employees are up around 10% compared to a year ago. The annual deficit is now 11.2% of GDP (end Feb 12.4%). S&P is maintaining its AA-/A-1+ credit rating for Israel.

Israel’s Trigo (see previously) has partnered the REWE Group, one of Germany’s largest food retail chains, to deliver a “grab-and-go” shopping experience in Cologne. The launch of Trigo’s checkout-free experience in Germany follows its ventures with UK’s Tesco and Israel’s Shufersal.

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