The New York-Israel Business Alliance has announced “Covid Disrupters,” 11 Israeli-founded companies in New York that have the potential to apply game-changing solutions to major challenges posed by the novel coronavirus.
“In a matter of months, we’ve dramatically modified our behaviors in order to cope with the impact that Covid-19 is having on our lives,” NYIBA president Aaron Kaplowitz said.
“The rapid change has precipitated a technological transformation and created unanticipated opportunities for these companies to solve some of the thorniest challenges imposed by the pandemic and beyond.”
The NYIBA team reviewed publicly available reports and records of the 506 Israel-founded businesses across New York State, analyzed emerging trends, and conducted dozens of interviews with company executives, government officials, investors, and industry analysts.
NYIBA scored companies on industry disruptability, new unnovation, Covid-19 solution, staying power and external feedback.
“When we began this study, we expected to identify companies providing medical solutions,” Kaplowitz said. “But the fact of the matter is that the coronavirus has upended many industries and only one of the 11 Disrupters brings a solution directly related to healthcare.”
Blue White Robotics’ software platform manages integrated networks of autonomous vehicle fleets and robots from a single command center.
Farmers, for example, can deploy driverless tractors to spray their fields while seamlessly communicating with the aerial drones above that pollinate the crops.
Earlier this year, New York State recruited the Tel Aviv-based company to open its US headquarters there. Blue White is collaborating with Syracuse-based Dropcopter to pollinate Israeli date farms and New York apple orchards.
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is using Blue White technology to ferry Covid patients through the campus in autonomous shuttles and Netanya Geriatric Medical Center uses it to provide aerial delivery of medical supplies.
Merging location services, live video chat, incident mapping, and other communication technologies into a single dashboard, Carbyne provides more real-time information to law-enforcement and first-responder teams entering potentially chaotic and stressful encounters.
Carbyne, which moved its corporate headquarters from Tel Aviv to Manhattan in September 2019, has signed contracts in Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota and Alabama. In March, as part of its effort to protect first responders from Covid-19 exposure, New Orleans integrated Carbyne into its Emergency Communications Center.
Warehouse fulfillment company Fabric (formerly CommonSense Robotics) disrupts ecommerce with urban micro-fulfillment centers serviced by proprietary robots that fetch items from shelves and transfer them to floor robots that whisk product-filled baskets to processing and loading areas.
Fabric’s ability to fill thousands of orders with only a handful of people managing the warehouse fulfillment sites offers a critical safety assurance during the pandemic.
In early 2020, Fabric began construction on its first US micro-fulfillment center in Brooklyn, which will be followed by a center in Long Island City. In July, Fabric announced a partnership with FreshDirect that will introduce two-hour delivery to the Washington, DC metro area and expand cooperation with FreshDirect’s primary facility in the Bronx.
Rampant unemployment in the pandemic has driven more and more workers to the gig economy, where they’re connecting to cost-conscious companies seeking freelance services. This trend has accelerated growth for Fiverr, a marketplace platform for freelancers.
Since March, when the coronavirus began to shutter offices, Fiverr’s stock has more than quadrupled. In 2020, the company expects to generate between $177.5 and 179.5 million in revenue, further solidifying its prominent role in the job market.
A startup spun out of the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program on Roosevelt Island, Hyro brings AI-powered conversational interface to websites and platforms.
After securing Weill Cornell Medicine as its first institutional client, Hyro mastered a healthcare solution that would prove critical when Covid-19 concerns began to overwhelm hospital call centers.
Hyro deployed a Covid-19 virtual assistant free of charge to medical institutions, connecting concerned citizens with an AI FAQ bot to determine if they require additional medical attention. Hyro provided much-needed relief to the system and was able to gather medical data trends based on the keywords and queries submitted through its software.
Coronavirus has roiled the commercial real estate market and companies are struggling to determine a safe and cost-effective way to transition employees back into office buildings. They’re also reassessing their long-term needs for office space.
Founded in 2016 in Tel Aviv, Meet in Place today offers 36 high-end meeting rooms in Manhattan. The company’s rentable boardroom supply could be the shared office model of the future.
Monday.com is a cloud-based organization platform for team management and task tracking, customizing workflow and facilitating more effective communication.
With more people working from home, monday.com has become the preferred platform for teams trying to maintain productivity, ensure accountability, and avoid communication breakdowns. The company boasts more than 100,000 paying customers across the world and, according to Bloomberg, saw its valuation jump from $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion during the pandemic.
The pandemic’s devastation on the economy has forced the federal government to find ways to put money back into Americans’ pockets. With roughly $50 billion worth of rental security deposits idling in escrow accounts in the United States, Obligo’s credit-based alternative requires tenants to pay for damages only when they occur.
This solution also relieves landlords of the highly regulated and burdensome requirements involved in taking security deposits. Obligo’s Open Banking technology and AI-based underwriting allows landlords to use screening and collection technologies instead.
Riskified helps online retailers safely approve more orders and increase revenue. The company’s AI platform solution detects fraud and authenticates shoppers, helping companies avoid losing revenue to fraud and lost sales.
Riskified pledges a 100 percent chargeback guarantee if a fraudulent transaction slips through its technology, which is trusted by merchants such as Gucci and Samsung. As Covid-19 drives more retail shopping online, the need to guarantee transactions has never been greater.
TytoCare combines hardware and software to bring medical-quality telehealth visits into homes. The The Tyto Home palm-sized device contains an LED screen, digital thermometer and camera. The module connects to an array of medical accessories and instruments, which allow doctors to remotely check temperature, ears, lungs, heart, throat, skin, and abdomen.
Recently awarded Extreme Tech Challenge’s top prize in the Covid-19 category, Tyto is the first commercially available self-administered audiovisual diagnostic system. Israeli hospitals have also been using Tyto Home to remotely monitor homebound Covid patients and even determine the safety of releasing them from quarantine.
VAST Data’s AI technology reduces the power, space and cooling requirements of data centers, thereby lowering costs and optimizing efficiencies. Scientists at the National Institute of Health, Harvard University and Gingko Bioworks are using VAST Data’s technology to rapidly analyze massive datasets to research possible treatments for Covid-19.
In April, as Covid-19 research in the United States surged, the company closed a $100 million funding round that bumped its valuation at $1.2 billion.
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