Fundraising by Israeli companies in March 2018 was led by the eToro social investing platform, which raised $100 million in its eighth financing round, led by China Minsheng Financial with the participation of Korea Investment Partners, SBI Group and World Wide Invest.
Proceeds reportedly will go toward expansion and R&D in blockchain and asset digitalization. Founded in 2007, eToro employs about 200 people and has more than 9 million registered users.
Also in March, Tel Aviv-based Endor raised $45 million in an initial coin offering. In 2017, Endor demonstrated its predictive analytics platform at FinovateFall 2017 and was named a Gartner Cool Vendor as well as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.
Medial EarlySign of Kfar Malal raised $30 million from Marius Nacht’s aMoon Fund, with the participation of Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures and cofounder Nir Kalkstein. The company’s machine-learning system analyzes medical records to identify patients at high risk for specific medical conditions including colorectal cancer.
Tel Aviv-based Verbit, an online transcription service that combines a speech recognition engine with human transcribers, raised $11 million in a seed round led by Vertex Ventures, Orzyn Capital and HV Ventures.
Fintech company Capitolis announced two financing rounds, a Series A investment of $20 million led by Index Ventures, and a prior $9 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital. Founded in 2017, the company has offices in Tel Aviv, New York and London.
Both ReWalk Robotics and ContinUse Biometrics raised $20 million in March from Asian investors.
ReWalk’s investment from Hong Kong-based Timwell will fund ongoing development of the ReWalk walking device for paraplegics worldwide and establish ReWalk’s presence in the Chinese market, while the ContinUse investment from Chartered Group of Singapo will help it develop its award-winning Smart Health Mod photonic sensor capable of continuously monitoring blood pressure from a distance.
On March 14, Luminate Security emerged from stealth mode and announced a total of $14 million raised in combined round A and seed funding round from U.S. Venture Partners and Aleph Venture Capital along with the Microsoft ScaleUp program. Based in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, Luminate provides a universal platform for access to corporate applications in hybrid clouds.
Vectorious Medical Technologies of Tel Aviv raised $9.5 million in a Series B round led by Boston’s Broadview Ventures and China’s GEOC, along with individual investors, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 R&D program and the Israel Innovation Authority, to develop its V-Lap implantable wireless heart monitor.
Snyk, which makes a solution for addressing vulnerabilities in open-source libraries, secured $7 million in Series A funding led by Boldstart Ventures and Canaan Partners with participation of Heavybit, FundFire and Peter McKay (Co-CEO of Veeam). Snyk has offices in Tel Aviv and London.
Nanosatellite developer NSLComm closed a Series B financing round of $6.25 million led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), Liberty, GF Hawk, OurCrowd and El Al’s Cockpit accelerator. The company plans to launch its first satellite into space in November from India and to develop and manufacture two new nanosatellites for future launches.
Nucleai, a Tel Aviv startup developing an artificial intelligence system for computerized analysis of biopsies, raised $5 million in a round led by Vertex Ventures and Grove Ventures, with participation by Brian Cooper (founder of Retalix) and Nir Kalkstein (co-founder of Final and Medial EarlySign).
Also raising $5 million in March was Atidot, an insurance technology developer. The Series A round was led by Vertex Ventures with the participation of existing investors The D.E. Shaw Group, Moneta Seeds and Bank Hapoalim.
Smart-irrigation developer Saturas, a portfolio company of The Trendlines Group in Misgav, completed an investment round of $4 million from Hubei Forbon Technology in China; Ramat Magshimim in Israel; and Miguel Torres Winery SA, the largest winery in Spain and owner of vineyards in California and Chile. Existing investors in Saturas also participated. Saturas’ sensors receive direct input from trees or vines to provide real-time, accurate and continuous data to optimize irrigation.
Cybersecurity startup MinerEye of Hod Hasharon raised $3.6 million in its first financing round, including $3 million from Canadian venture capital fund Awz HLS Fund I.
Fintech company Candex raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round from Edenred Capital Partners, Partech Ventures, Advisors.Fund, Camp One Ventures, NFX, Tekton Ventures, Big Sur Ventures and fintech angel Mark Goines. With offices in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, Candex offers a platform for engaging, tracking and paying small suppliers.
Skyline AI raised $3 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital to further develop its commercial real-estate forecasting platform and expanding to serve users in the United States.
Israeli serial entrepreneur Alon Melchner, who founded WakingApp, an augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) company, closed a $750,000 seed round from PPI Worldwide Group for his newest venture, Mixed Place.
Mixed Place has filed 17 patent applications for developing an infrastructure enabling users to position mixed reality digital content over the physical world.
In related news last month, London-based global venture capital firm Eight Roads Ventures announced its third fund for scale-ups in Europe and Israel. ERVE III will provide an average investment of $10 million to $30 million to 15 to 20 fast-growing technology companies across enterprise, consumer, fintech and healthcare IT sectors.