Israel Active

Jerusalem’s Biohouse hosted a delegation of business leaders from Global New York, visiting Israeli technology advances in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheva. Meanwhile, JVP hosted the Forbes Under 30 Global Women's Summit, highlighting technological growth in Israel’s North.

To commemorate the Moon mission of SpaceIL’s Beresheet spaceship, you can now buy SpaceIL merchandise. T-shirts, baseball caps, and a baby overall that says, “I love you to the Moon and back”. Meanwhile Beresheet has just photographed the far side of the Moon, not visible from Earth.

I reported previously on Israel’s Mapi and its long-lasting Glatiramer Acetate treatment for Multiple Sclerosis patients. Mapi is now building a production plant in Jerusalem for the product, called GA-Depot, which will compete with Copaxone from Israel’s Teva.

Israel’s Priority Software has acquired Belgium-based Optimize Group as part of its European expansion. Priority develops enterprise resource planning software for 75,000 companies in 40 countries. Optimize provides IT services for the steel and beverage industries.

Ryanair will launch a 4-flights per week service from Tel Aviv to Budapest and 2-flights per week to Nuremberg – both starting in late October. Ryanair already operates 17 routes between Tel Aviv and Europe plus 15 routes from Eilat to European destinations including to Budapest.

Isrotel has announced that it will increase the number of hotels it operates in Israel from 19 to 30 by 2025. Isrotel is currently building 5 hotels in Tel Aviv – a city that it says “combines business and tourism and is becoming a strong international brand.”

I reported previously on Israel’s Infinity Augmented Reality and that Internet giant Alibaba had invested in the startup.  Alibaba has now gone further, acquiring InfinityAR and merging it into its Israeli machine vision laboratory. Alibaba bought Israel’s Visualead in November.

I reported previously on the sensor technology of Israel’s PointGrab. Now, accounting giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has selected Israel’s PointGrab.to install its smart sensor systems to monitor activity at its U.K. and northwest Europe headquarters in London.

Israeli-founded retail analytics company CB4 uses pre-existing point of sale data to identify demand for specific products in brick and mortar stores. When a product fails to sell to predicted demand levels, CB4 sends an alert to the store manager, highlighting the issue and suggesting ways to fix it.

I reported previously that Israel’s Netafim was deploying its drip-irrigation systems to 6,000 farmers in Hungund, India. It has since won a $100 million contract to install its systems in 100 villages, benefiting 60,000 farmers across India.