Israel Science Technology News Blog

Solar power efficiency startup Tigo Energy has closed a $10 million second round of funding led by Israel Cleantech Ventures (ICV), and joined by all existing investors, Matrix Partners, OVP and Clal Energy.

Tigo developed a unique technology which significantly increases efficiency in photovoltaic solar installations. The company’s Maximizer System (patent pending) can immediately return up to 20% power from today's traditionally architected systems. The company successfully deployed 18 installations in the US, Europe and Japan in cooperation with several of solar industry leaders.

Tigo was founded in 2007 by Sam Arditi, the company CEO, and Ron Hadar, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Tigo. Arditi previously served as the Vice President and General Manager for the Cellular and Handheld Group of Intel. Prior to founding Tigo Energy, Ron was a Vice President and General Manager at MKS Instruments. Modi Avrutsky has joined Tigo Energy as the Vice President of Power products R&D and General Manager of Tigo Energy Israel.

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Cleantech startup B-Solar has raised $3 million in a first financial round from venture capital fund Genesis Partners and serial entrepreneur Gidi Barak, the founder of IXI Mobile, DSP Communications, Butterfly, and Envara.

B-Solar develops and manufactures unique photovoltaic cells which generate 15-20% more electricity than cells presently in the market. The company plans to establish a manufacturing facility in 2010 to produce its photovoltaic cells, initially at a production capacity of 70 megawatts per year.

B-Solar was founded in December 2007 by Dr. Yossi Kofman, Professor Naftali Eisenberg, Dr. Lev Kreinin, and Dr. Ninel Bordin. Kofman, who serves as B-Solar’s CEO, was previously the co-founder and co-CEO of Modem-Art, which was acquired in 2005 by Agere Systems.

Eisenberg, CTO, Kreinin, Chief Scientist, and Bordin, Scientist, are experts in the solar energy field. Eisenberg founded and led the photovoltaic solar energy center and the non-conventional optics laboratory at the Jerusalem College of Technology. Together with his colleagues, Dr. Kreinin and Dr. Bordin, he turned the center into a leading university laboratory in the field of silicon based solar cells.

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Switching solutions provider Dune Networks has expanded its second investment round by raising an additional $8.3 million from Evergreen Venture Partners. Last year Dune raised 12 million from USVP, Pitango, Aurum, JVP and Alta Berkeley in series B financial round. This additional funding brings the total amount of funding raised to date to $53 million.

"Despite the fact that Dune recently reached profitability and maintains a strong cash position, we decided to take additional cash to further improve our balance sheet and to safely expand our operation," said Eyal Dagan, Dune Networks founder and CEO.

Dune Networks is a semiconductor supplier of networking devices, facilitating the build of Data Center, Enterprise and Carrier Ethernet Solutions. Dune provides a switching solution that extends the life cycle of packet platforms from the legacy 3 years up to 10 years and more. Founded in 2000 by Eyal Dagan, Dune is located in Sunnyvale, California with an R&D center in Yakum, Israel.

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Content delivery applications provider Cotendo has raised $7 million in Series B financing from Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital. The new financing round, which follows initial funding by Sequoia Capital in January 2008, enables Cotendo to bring its advanced suite of content delivery applications to the market, and accelerate new product development activities.

Targeting the content delivery network (CDN) marketplace, Cotendo offers a complete suite of Internet content delivery applications that addresses the sophisticated and evolving needs of mid-market content providers. The Cotendo Content Delivery Application Suite improves performance and user experience while giving content providers application-level flexibility to control content in real time.

"Some areas of technology get starved for a long time. Content delivery is one of them. It has been years since fresh eyes were trained on the subject and during this period the amount of content conveyed around the Internet has multiplied at a rate that even rabbits would admire," said Michael Moritz, general partner of Sequoia Capital. "Cotendo offers a reprieve for content providers trapped within the confines of antiquated solutions."

Cotendo was founded in 2008 by Ronni Zehavi, CEO, Udi Trugman, Vice President of R&D, and David Drai, Chief Technical Officer, all experts in intelligent content management systems. The Cotendo team also includes Gary Baldus, Vice President of Operations, and Mike Sawyer, Vice President of Marketing, both experienced executives from the CDN Industry. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with R&D based in Israel.

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Video web storage technology provider VideoCells has raised $3.2 million in a new financial round led by Israeli entrepreneur, Marc Belzberg. The cash infusion will be used to enhance the company marketing and sales efforts in the video surveillance market.

VideoCells developed a video management platform, called WebVR, which offers a low-cost and low-maintenance IP-based, central service that allows the user to remotely record, view and manage content. The solution, that reduce the cost of monitoring services to SMBs, remote locations and homes, targets surveillance companies, telecommunication operators and ISPs.

Established in 2004, VideoCells is a provider of video monitoring solutions that enable broadcasting of real-time and recorded video streams from IP, analog and web cameras to PCs, cellular phones, PDAs and TVs. The company, managed by Stuart Steinberg, is located in Petach-Tikva, Israel.

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SaaS IT Management Provider SAManage has secured Series A funding from Xenia Venture Capital and existing backers. The new funding will support growth and rollout of new innovative IT Management SaaS services.

"SAManage is well-positioned to provide the kind of service-enabled simplicity that IT departments at small and medium-sized organizations have been long clamoring for,” said Anat Segal, CEO of Xenia Venture Capital. “In addition, the Service-as-a-Software model opens up opportunities for SAManage to provide new analytical and benchmarking services that can add significant value to the management of IT assets."

"We are seeing a growing demand for our SaaS IT Management services, which empower companies to better manage their IT Assets and reduce their IT costs and risks,” said Doron Gordon, CEO of SAManage. “We look forward to introducing our upcoming value-added IT Management products that will further enhance the way companies manage their IT operations and make purchasing decisions."

SAManage provides secure, on-demand IT Management services that help companies manage their PC and software assets. SAManage automates and simplifies the daily tasks associated with establishing IT governance, control, and compliance. SAManage is based in Redmond, Washington with R&D facilities in Israel.

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Touch screen technology provider N-trig has raised $24 million from Microsoft and venture capital (VC) funds, including Aurum Ventures, Challenger, Canaan Partners, and Evergreen Venture Partners.

N-trig plans to use this new round of funding to enter the mobile phone touch screen market, and to continue working with leading OEMs to create multi-touch notebooks and convertible computers for the mainstream marketplace. N-trig’s touch technology is currently deployed in Dell’s Latitude XT, and was recently launched on HP’s TouchSmart tx2.

“With the introduction of multi-touch in Windows 7, integrated with N-trig’s DuoSense technology, our customers will have a new and natural way to interact with their PCs,” said Ian LeGrow, Group Program Manager for Windows Client at Microsoft. “By simulating the way people write and touch naturally, N-trig is helping to make it easier to navigate your PC and enable a new class of Windows experiences.”

“We will use this funding to keep fueling technology innovations in Hands-on computing, providing leading OEM brands with new product platforms and supporting ISVs to develop new applications,” said Amichai Ben-David, CEO of N-trig. “Additionally, we intend to expand our global supply chain by developing breakthrough mobile platforms in order to create and penetrate new markets.”

Founded in 1999, N-trig is headquartered in Kfar Saba, Israel, with offices in Austin, Texas and Taipei, Taiwan. On February 2008, N-trig has completed a fund-raising round of $28 million from Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners.

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Information security solutions provider Aladdin Knowledge Systems is to be acquired by an investor group lead by private equity firm Vector Capital for approximately $160 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the next two to three months.

Founded in 1985, Aladdin is a provider of security services and solutions used to protect digital assets, enable secure business, and maximize the benefits from creating, selling, distributing and using digital content. The Israeli company revenues in 2008 are expects to be between $124 million and $134 million, compared to $106 million in revenues reported for fiscal year 2007.

In the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 Aladdin completed the acquisition of the Secure SafeWord product line from Secure Computing Corporation for approximately $65 million in cash. It also completed the acquisition of EutronSec, a provider of software protection and authentication products, for approximately €10 million in cash.

Vector Capital is a private equity firm specializing in spinouts, buyouts and recapitalizations of established technology businesses. Among Vector's investments are LANDesk Software, Savi Technology, SafeNet, Precise Software Solutions, and Watchguard Technologies.

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Fabless semiconductor startup company Celeno Communications has closed a strategic $16 million in a Series C investment round led by Cisco Systems. Miven Venture Partners and the company's previous investors, Greylock Partners and Pitango Venture Capital, also participated in this financial round. Total investment in the three-year old company now exceeds $30 million.

Celeno is a provider of semiconductors for multimedia Wi-Fi home networking applications. The company standards-based Wi-Fi System on a Chip enables applications such as IPTV streaming, multi-room DVR content distribution and marrying the PC network with multiple TV screens - with full home coverage and no new wires. Wi-Fi silicon components for multimedia distribution are integrated in devices such as residential gateways, set top boxes and home routers.

"Cisco's expertise in home networking and video distribution brings complementary skills to address service providers' and consumers' needs for robust, carrier-grade IP video distribution solutions in the home,” Gilad Rozen, CEO of Celeno.

Celeno was founded in 2005 by Rozen, who previously served as SVP of products and technology and VP of engineering at Actelis Networks. The company chairman of the board is Dr. Jozef Straus, who served as the CEO of JDS Uniphase from May 2000 until August 2003. Another member of the board is Yoram Snir who joined Greylock as a partner in 2005 after seven years at Cisco Systems. At his last position with Cisco Snir was responsible for its acquisitions, investments and strategic partnerships efforts in Europe, Asia Pacific and Israel.

Celeno headquarters and R&D center are in Ra'anana, Israel. The marketing and business development office is in Silicon Valley, California.

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Endpoint virtualization security solutions provider Neocleus has raised $11.4 million in Series B financail funding led by Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds.

Neocleus applies security virtualization solutions to desktops and laptops, which enable critical IT tasks to operate in isolated, trusted virtual environments with complete access to the capabilities offered by the underlying endpoint hardware.

In May 2008 the company launched its Desktop Hypervisor Framework, an endpoint hypervisor enhancement to the Xen server hypervisor that the company will be contributing to the open source community to foster an ecosystem of innovation. In early June Neocleus announced Trusted Edge, the first in a suite of virtual software appliances that allows for secure access to corporate resources regardless of the endpoint’s location or state of security.

“Endpoint challenges have grown exponentially as the number of different user scenarios have increased and evolved, introducing new complexities and new IT requirements,” said Adi Pundak-Mintz, General Partner, Gemini Israel Funds.” Neocleus’ solutions address this burgeoning market with a strong vision, technology innovation, solutions and a proven management team.”

Neocleus was founded in 2006 by Ariel Gorfung (CEO) and Etay Bogner (CTO). Gorfung recently served as the CEO of Intuwave, a provider of connectivity middleware to the Symbian mobile operating system. Prior to joining Intuwave, Gorfung co-founded e-Sponsor, which was acquired by Intuwave in October 2000. Bogner was the co-founder of and managing director of SofaWare, which Check Point Software acquired a majority share. Neocleus headquartered in New Jersey, UA, and its R&D center located in Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Mobile backhaul optimization solutions provider Celtro has raised $20 million in financing round led by Rho Ventures, with the participation of existing investors Genesis Partners and Cedar Fund. The company will invest the proceeds to further expand international operations and to penetrate new markets.

Celtro provides creative mobile backhaul switching solutions that improve service delivery, increase network efficiency, and facilitate smooth backhaul network evolution - helping providers enhance revenues, improve customer satisfaction, lower operational costs and optimize their backhaul network assets. The company has commercially deployed its backhaul switching products in the mobile networks of more than 50 leading operators.

Headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel, Celtro was founded in 2001 as a business unit within ECI Telecom and was spun-off in 2003 as a privately-owned, independent company.

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3D sensing technology provider Prime Sense raised $20.4 million in second round of funding led by Canaan Partners and included A round investors, Gemini Israel Funds and Genesis Partners. The funds raised will enable the company to shift from the development phase to sales, according to Inon Beracha, CEO of Prime Sense.

"We believe that the company's breakthrough technology positions it as a market leader in the fast growing arena of 3D machine vision, and we are delighted to see the market traction that Prime Sense is gaining with major brands," says Izhar Shay, a venture partner at Canaan Partners, who has joined the company's Board of Directors.

Prime Sense develops innovative 3D sensing technology that provide any digital device with the ability to see and understand the world in 3D just like humans do. The Israeli startup is focused on deployment of the technology in video game and Consumer Electronics. The company was founded in 2005 by by Aviad Maizels, the company's President, and includes Alex Shpunt, Dmitri Rais, Ophir Sharon and Tamir Berliner.

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Over-the-air mobile software management provider Red Bend has secured $10 million in funding led by new investor Coral Capital Management, joined by Red Bend’s existing investors: Carmel Ventures, Greylock Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Poalim Ventures and Infinity.

Red Bend will use the new funds to grow its position in the mobile market as well as seize new opportunities in licensing its software for other connected wireless devices such as mobile broadband PC cards, USB modems, embedded chipsets and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules.

The company mobile software already shipped in 305 million mobile phones worldwide. Red Bend forecasts that in the second quarter its software will reach 360 million mobile devices, including mobile phones, mobile broadband PC cards and modems, and M2M wireless modules.

“With its software now reaching more than 305 million mobile phones worldwide, Red Bend has achieved something only a handful of players in the mobile industry can claim,” said Harel Beit-On, Chairman of the Board of Red Bend and General Partner of Carmel Ventures. “This mass market success with mobile phones and recent deals for modems and M2M devices demonstrate the vast market potential for the company’s products.”

Red Bend helps mobile phone manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Sharp, Sony Ericsson to accelerate the adoption of new services and features. Founded in 1999, Red Bend Software is a privately held with offices in China, Israel, Japan, Korea, UK and the US.

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Virtualization solutions provider ScaleMP has received $8 million in new venture funding from its existing investors: Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TL Ventures, and ABS Ventures. This new round of funding brings the total raised to date to $26 million.

The ScaleMP technology allows a server to expand outside a single system boundary, addressing growing end-user requirements for large memory systems or systems with high-core count.

“ScaleMP is revolutionizing the high-end computing market by aggregating multiple industry-standard x86 servers into a single system,” said Barry Eggers, general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and chairman of the board at ScaleMP. “During 2008, I expect the company to build upon its strong customer traction and market momentum, as well as the strategic partnerships that it has already established.”

Using software to replace custom hardware and components, ScaleMP offers virtualization solution for high-end computing environments. Founded by Shai Fultheim, the company CEO, ScaleMP headquartered in Cupertino, California and its R&D center located in Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel.

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Viaccess, a France Telecom subsidiary that provide IPTV protection solutions, is to acquire IPTV middleware and applications provider Orca Interactive for an estimated price of $21.4 million.

The acquisition will allow Viaccess to seize the new opportunities of the TV and video markets, and to bring innovative solutions to content services operators such as broadcasters and telecom companies.

Orca Interactive, listed on AIM London Stock Exchange, is a provider of IPTV middleware and applications for broadband network operators and service providers. It help operators to deliver broadcast TV, video on demand (VOD), personal video recording (PVR), home media services.

Viaccess delivers solutions for digital pay television and secured content distribution. Its conditional access and DRM solutions deployed in 30 countries worldwide, on more than 80 digital platforms including multi-channel providers and digital content distributors.

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CAD interoperability solutions provider Proficiency has raised $4.25 million in funding led by Catalyst Investment. Current investors, Carmel Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital also participated in the financing round, which will support the company growth and product initiatives.

"This round of investment is part of Proficiency's strategic growth plan, and re-enforces our roadmap and commitment to provide the level of CAD interoperability which modern CAD users expect and deserve," said Alex Shapira, President and CEO of Proficiency. "Rather than giving up a large part of the design intent or manually re-designing models in another CAD, manufacturers can now preserve the integrity of their product knowledge and validate it at the required level of accuracy in a fast, reliable and scalable way.

Proficiency's solutions, based on the Collaboration Gateway, enable OEMs, partners and suppliers with heterogeneous PLM and multi-CAD environments to ensure effective product knowledge integration (PKI) during design and manufacturing processes.

"Proficiency has revolutionized the way people think about their product knowledge as they need to deliver 3D models to other CAD systems or migrate them to a modern CAD," said Yair Shamir, chairman and managing partner, Catalyst Investments.

Proficiency is providing solutions to leading OEMs and suppliers in industries such as aerospace & defense, automotive, and heavy machinery. Customers like Alstom Transport, Boeing, Bombardier, Daimler, EADS, FIAT Powertrain, Ford, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Siemens, and ThyssenKrupp, are using Proficiency's solutions. Proficiency headquartered in Massachusetts and its R&D center located in Jerusalem, Israel.

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Wisair, a provider of single-chip based Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (WUSB) solutions, has secured $24 million. The financing round was led by four new investors: Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE), Advent Venture Partners, Bridge Capital Fund of Japan and Yasuda Ventures. Existing Wisair investors also participated, and included Apax Partners, Broadcom, Intel Capital, Vertex, and Zisapel brothers from the RAD group.

This additional funding will enable Wisair to accelerate the release of products with integrated WUSB capabilities to satisfy the burgeoning demand for simple high-speed wireless connectivity in the consumer electronics industry," noted Jonathan Klahr of SGE.

“Wisair's market-ready, single-chip technology is poised to play a major role in the WUSB market, which is now fully set to experience rapid growth over the next few years,” said Martin McNair, general partner.

Wisair is a fabless semiconductor company providing UWB and Wireless USB chipsets and reference designs for personal computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. Wisair headquarters are in Israel, with offices in the USA and Japan, and representatives in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

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Mobile computing pen and multi touch technologies developer N-trig has completed a fund-raising round of $28 million from Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners. In addition to the investment round, N-trig has recently secured a credit facility of $5 million from venture lending fund Plenus.

N-trig’s DuoSense technology, combining pen and zero-pressure touch for mobile computers into a single device, is now being deployed by Dell Computer. Other major brands are expected to announce new products, which raises the bar on the next generation of notebook PCs and other mobile devices currently in development.

“The computing user interface is on the verge of a major shift: after using a mouse and a keyboard for many years, the market is seeking an enhanced user experience,” said Boaz Dinte, Managing Partner at Evergreen Venture Partners. “We believe that N-trig’s DuoSense will lead this revolution, positioning it as the premier technology in both tablet PCs and mobile devices.”

N-trig develops natural input digitizer solutions for notebook PCs and mobile computing devices. N-trig was founded in 1999 by Dr. Meir Morag, the company current president. N-trig maintains its global headquarters in Kfar Saba, Israel and has a regional presence with offices in Austin, TX and Taipei, Taiwan.

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eBay has agreed to acquire the Isreali online risk tools provider Fraud Sciences for $169 million in a cash transaction. Fraud Sciences’ risk tools and analytics are intend to enhance the fraud management systems of eBay and its online payment solutions firm, PayPal.

“Integrating Fraud Sciences’ risk tools with PayPal’s sophisticated fraud management system should allow us to be even more effective in protecting eBay and PayPal's hundreds of millions of customers around the world," said Scott Thompson, President of PayPal.

Key personnel from Fraud Sciences, including Yossi Barak, Fraud Sciences’ COO, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf, will join the company’s technology and fraud management teams. Gadi Maier, Fraud Sciences' President and CEO, will provide strategic and operational support to the company during the integration period.

Fraud Sciences has developed a technology that differentiates between real and fraudulent transactions with unprecedented accuracy. Using this groundbreaking technology, Fraud Sciences offers a unique transaction verification service to manage online fraud. Fraud Sciences is funded by BRM Capital, Redpoint Ventures and other US and Israeli investors.

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Dune Networks, a provider of networking devices for Metro Ethernet, Enterprise and Data Center platforms, had closed a $12 million investment round led by US Venture Partners (USVP).

Dune’s existing investors; Alta Berkeley Ventures, Aurum Ventures, Cipio Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital and its strategic investors participated in the financing round. This additional funding brings the total amount of funding raised to date to $45 million.

"Dune has established itself as the leading vendor of high performance packet switching solutions," said Chris Rust, General Partner at USVP, who joined Dune's Board as part of the investment. The new funding is to be used to accelerate development of new product lines while expanding sales and support of existing customers.

Dune Networks is a supplier of networking devices facilitating the build of Data Center, Enterprise and Carrier Ethernet platforms. Founded in 2000 by Eyal Dagan, Dune is located in Sunnyvale, California with an R&D center in Yakum, Israel.

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