Israel Active

Israel’s Big-Tech 50 R&D Partnership has launched on the TASE, raising NIS 85 million to build a portfolio of the 50 largest private Israeli tech companies. In two years, the portfolio will hold NIS 1 billion worth of shares, resembling an index, and will allow investment in those companies.

This article by newsletter supporter Zev Stub describes Israel as the Scale-Up Nation. Relatively few Israeli startups exit in takeover events, but rather expand to become billion-dollar “Unicorns” (nine new ones in the last three months). Another 80 Israeli companies are publicly traded in the US.

Caja Robotics (reported previously) is another Israeli company that learned how to adapt to the new normal during the coronavirus pandemic. It used video in recruitment and communications but despite its robotics systems, Caja focused on the human aspects of employee relations.

A recent survey by US-Israel Ground Up Ventures debunks reports that there is a drought of funds for new Israeli startups. 37 of Israel’s leading venture funds they surveyed made 145 investments at the seed stage in 2020 (rising from 112 in 2019). The average investment also rose - by 20%.

In 2020 Japanese firms invested some $1.1 billion in Israel – 20% higher than in 2019. (In 2015 it was just £87 million.) Japan now accounts for more than 11% of all foreign investment in Israeli high-tech (compared to under 2% in 2016). Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were the largest investors.

Almost every month Israel hits a new record for its reserves of foreign currency deposits. In Jan 2021 they rose by another six billion dollars to almost $180 billion. The Bank of Israel is selling Shekels to encourage exports, but the value of the shekel keeps rising due to global confidence in the Israeli economy.

January 2021 saw an unprecedented record $1.2 billion invested in Israeli companies. It included the generating of five new Israeli Unicorns (value over $1 billion).

Israel’s Edete (reported previously) is to trial its artificial pollination technology in the Australian state of Victoria. Its machinery that can be deployed both day and night, and at extreme temperatures. While Israel is busy saving the world’s honeybees, this is Plan B!

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Saket Agarwal of India’s Onnivation Ventures, markets the services of 15 Israeli hi-tech companies to India’s largest corporates. His “portfolio” of Israeli expertise in cloud, data science, AI, cybersecurity and marketing, attracts millions of dollars in annual business.