• Databand employees will join IBM’s data processing and artificial intelligence department, and the acquisition will be completed on July 27.
• According to IBM, Databand is its fifth acquisition in 2022. The company continues to bolster its hybrid cloud and AI skills and capabilities.
• In total, IBM has acquired more than 25 companies since Arvind Krishna became CEO in the spring of 2020.

Mikhail Kashkin, who works at Databand as an engineer, says there are people from Ukraine on the team. The company is now supporting anyone who has stayed or left the country.

“The acquisition of Databand.ai builds on IBM’s research and development investments as well as strategic acquisitions in AI and automation. Databand.ai capabilities can alert data teams and engineers when the data they are using to fuel an analytics system is incomplete or missing,” IBM says on its website.

About Databand

Databand was founded in 2018 by Josh Benamram, Victor Shafran, and Eugeny Shulman. The company processes various pipeline metadata, including logs, runtime info, and data profiles, and presents it in a single platform alongside data from other sources. The goal is to give engineers a view of where bottlenecks appear and their potential causes.

• The company has suffered from the rise in interest rates and rampant inflation together with the recovery from the Covid pandemic. This concerns almost every company that benefited from the pandemic, such as e-commerce, delivery, and computer games companies.
• The company wants to close its three studios:
  • Seriously Studio, located in Los Angeles, will now transfer the responsibilities of its Best Fiends game to Israel and Poland.
  • Lab London, a studio set to diversify the company’s portfolio, will shut down but retain business development in London.
  • The Montreal center will also be closed due to the loss of potential with activities moving to Israel.
• The cuts won’t affect operations in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Romania.
• Playtika has about 4,000 employees worldwide and 1,100 employees in Ukraine, including offices in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, and Dnipro. The company was one of the first to reopen operations after the Russian invasion.
• Although the company avoided layoffs in the war zone in Ukraine, Globes has learned that 50 employees of Playtica’s popular house machine fun app have been transferred from operations under the product and offered alternative projects.
• In comment to AIN.Capital, Playtika’s spokesperson stated that the information about layoffs in Ukraine is incorrect.

Ukraine has always been an integral part of our operation and we have supported our employees throughout these tragic times.

Playtika.

• Despite Western sanctions, Playtika continues to employ 600 people in Belarus. The company is encouraging them to relocate to the offices in Warsaw, with around 300 employees already there.

Founded in 2011 by Zeev and Chen Amit, Tipalti is a B2B fintech company that provides a single cloud platform to help companies to manage suppliers, invoices, purchase orders, tax compliance, payments, billing, and other accounting services.

According to the recent survey of Tipalti and Censuswideresearch company, manual financial operations are the most time and resource consuming. 47% of finance organizations in the USA still spend around 520 hours per year on manual accounts payable tasks. Besides, AP operations increase risk of fraud, tax, regulatory and audit penalties for companies. Tipalti global payables automation solution is aimed to solve these problems.

This year the company passed the 1,000-customer mark and opened its third office in Vancouver, Canada. Tipalti already has offices in Israel and San Mateo, the USA, and such companies, as Twitter, GoDaddy, Fiverr, GoPro, Foursquare, and Vimeo among its clients. 

«This new round of investment will allow us to further accelerate our innovation edge as a leader in the payables automation space and expands our solution to the larger market. Tipalti is clearly needed and this enables us to be ready for all that demand,» said Chen Amit, the current CEO of Tipalti.

“We’re excited about the opportunities this new fund will allow us to invest in. Additionally, it is an indication of confidence in our approach that so many of investors from Fund I have invested once again in Fund II, and that many of the founders we have backed previously now wanted to become investors in Fund II,” says Hetz Ventures managing partner Judah Taub.

Hetz Ventures was founded in 2018 and has offices in Tel Aviv and London. The firm specializes in investing in early-stage deep-tech startups in B2B enterprise software, DevOps, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and fintech. 

Hetz Ventures has already made two investments through its second fund. Fund I was closed in February 2018 with $55 million capital and it has invested in 10 startups since then.

Papaya Global develops a SaaS platform for all types of global employment that is aimed to help international companies or those who intend to expand internationally to manage payroll data and workforce.

“It is painfully complex to manage payroll in different countries with multiple suppliers while maintaining a grasp of the nuances of local compliance and particular local payroll components. These pain points are experienced by companies of all sizes,” explains Eynat Guez, CEO of Papaya Global, in her interview for Globes.

Established in 2016 by Eynat Guez, Ruben Drong and Ofer Herman, the company headquartered in New York with over 150 employees from Papaya employs 150 people based out of London, Austin, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne and Kyiv. According to the TechCrunch, the Papaya Global clients include OneTrust, nCino and Hopin, as well as major corporates like Toyota, Microsoft, Wix and General Dynamics.

Founded in Israel in 2009 by Robert Taub, the current Executive Chairman, Nyxoah is a medical device company focused on the development and commercialization of hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) therapy to treat sleep disordered breathing conditions. It is the first Belgian company graduated from Euronext’s pre-IPO TechShare programme.

 As reported by Globes, after Nyxoah went public, its share price has risen by 14% pushing the company’s valuation to €413 million and making it join the franchise of the 89 life science companies listed on Euronext’s markets. 

Nyxoah is planning to use the raised capital to conduct clinical trials in the US, Europe and Australia, and to fund product development, R&D, marketing strategy and commercialization, the company tells.

Founded in 2016 by Guy Tytunovich, Ehud Levy, and Asaf Botovsky, CHEQ develops autonomous technology for brand safety and ad-fraud prevention. It offers cybersecurity driven ad-verification to big brand advertisers and media agencies across the globe. The company has offices in New York, LA, Chicago, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, and Tel Aviv. 

Tel Aviv-based company ClickCease was founded in 2014 by Yuval Haimov and Ilan Missulawin. It offers software that prevents fraudulent clicks and is aimed to mitigate invalid ad-clicks driven by botnets, web-crawlers, click-farms and other sources. 

“We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved thus far in becoming the leading player in click-fraud prevention. Joining CHEQ will help solidify our market-leading position and will create exciting new growth opportunities,” Haimov maintains.

Founded in 2016, Next Insurance company provides customized online policies for different types of small businesses across the US. It offers general liability, professional liability, commercial auto and new workers’ compensation coverages. As the company declares, the whole process of policies purchasing and managing through the Next’s platform is simple and convenient. 

Next Insurance is planning to use the new funding to complete the product as “one-stop-shop for any kind of business’ insurance needs”, as well as to expand the team and acquire new clients. To date, it already has more than 100,000 customers and is available in 50 states.

Guy Goldstein, the CEO of Next Insurance, in his interview with Crunchbase News, maintains that the goal of the company is to become the largest provider of small business insurance in the US.

Snyk is a developer-first security company that helps organizations use open source code and stay secure. The company provides a cybersecurity tool that is used by developers to scan their code for vulnerable open-source components. Snyk’s tool flags exploits and gives developers tips on how to fix them. 

Snyk headquartered in London and has offices in Tel Aviv and New York. According to the company,  it currently has 375 employees, with plans to hire 100 more during the next year. Besides, Snyk says that 1.5 million already use the service, while there were 400,000 in January. 

“This latest investment will help us to better meet the unique challenges of our time. As the pandemic fuels the dramatic acceleration of digital transformation projects globally, it’s crucial that we continue to provide very busy development teams with security intelligence, automated workflows, and visibility that will help mitigate their risks faster and more easily,” Peter McKay, the CEO of Snyk, claims.

Melio is a free digital accounts payable & receivable solution for small businesses in the US that helps to get more control over the finances, improve cash-flow and simplify the paperwork process. 

“When a small business needs to pay a supplier, it has to go to its back office, which then sends off a cheque, by mail, to the supplier. In the US, the annual scope of these types of transactions is between $14 and $17 trillion dollars. That makes no sense since the same person will send money to a friend using a digital service,” the CEO of Melio Matan Bar explains. 

The company offers its paying services for free using ACH bank transfers, or 2.9% fee for credit card payment. The platform processes each payment and delivers it to vendors, suppliers, and other business payment recipients via mailed paper checks, or bank deposits. 

Despite the fact that a lot of Melio’s clients closed their businesses, the company’s solution became popular among the businesses that moved online. Melio has experienced 700% growth since March.

Melio is planning to use the attracted funds to hire more engineers and sales staff, as well as expanding its collaboration with more bookkeeping services including Quickbook, its current partner.

Founded in 2018 by Avshi Avital and Yarin Benado, Vayo specializes in software that provides data analytics of customer interactions and identifies important, common themes that can help improve the performance of revenue teams and other organizations. With the acquisition, the whole Vayo team will join Gong.

Gong develops a conversation intelligence platform for B2B sales that ensures sales effectiveness and key deals to be cut. The company’s software, based on AI technology, captures each company’s interactions with customers automatically, records and transcribes each one to help companies to discover sales insights and identify behaviour patterns and trends.

“It was only natural that we look for ways to accelerate the product roadmap delivery and Vayo’s technology helps us do exactly that. Our customers can expect upcoming product launches to contain even more delightful surprises to help them manage their deal pipeline and increase win rates. Stay tuned, because we are just getting started,” the CEO of Gong Amit Bendov maintains.

Redis Labs provides an in-memory database platform for applications and services. The platform offers cloud-based services and products that are utilized by developers and enterprise customers for real-time analytics, high-volume transactions, in-app social functionality, and application job management. To date, Redis Labs has more than 8,000 customers from the finance, tech and healthcare areas including Microsoft and Google. 

The company was founded in 2011 and has totally raised $250 million since then. According to the CEO of Redis Labs Ofer Bengal, the company will be ready for IPO in one or two years. The new funding will go towards sales and marketing, the continued sponsorship of open source Redis and additional product innovation, Bengal says.

Warner Music Group is one of the largest entertainment companies and record labels in the US with a market capitalization of $15.4 billion. Until recently, the recording giant was a customer of IMGN Media, a tech-media company specialized in producing and programming viral social media content on mobile-first platforms in esports, gaming, ASMR and entertainment categories.

New York and Tel Aviv-based IMGN Media was founded in 2015 and has raised about $6 million to date. According to WMG, “IMGN Media will continue to be run by its CEO Barak Shragai, as a stand-alone entity with journalistic autonomy.” Moreover, IMGN will continue to support its list of leading customers that includes Electronic Arts, Burger King and Microsoft among others.

Warner Music Group is planning to use the IMGN’s platform to provide deep data-backed insights regarding Warner’s viral content, as well as analyzing what content people want to see to improve its marketing efforts accordingly.  

Founded in 2015 by CEO Amit Bendov and CPO Eilon Reshef, Gong develops a conversation intelligence platform for B2B sales that ensures sales effectiveness and key deals to be cut. The company’s software, based on AI technology, captures each company’s interactions with customers automatically, records and transcribes each one to help companies to discover sales insights and identify behaviour patterns and trends.

Gong is growing rapidly. Previously, in December 2019, the company has attracted $65 million in a Series C round. Its total raised funding is now $334 million. The number of Gong’s clients exceeds 1,000, including such corporates as Autodesk, LinkedIn, MuleSoft, Outreach, PayPal, Shopify, Slack, Twilio, Zillow, and Zoominfo.

Gong is planning to invest the raised capital in the further development of its revenue intelligence platform, because of the strong market demand, the company says.

Yotpo offers a full suite of data-driven solutions for customer reviews, visual marketing, loyalty, referrals and SMS marketing that are aimed to help retail brands accelerate direct-to-consumer growth. 

Rebecca Minkoff, MVMT, Bob’s Discount Furniture and Steve Madden are among the company’s customers and the number of them is growing rapidly. During the early months of COVID-19, Yotpo has seen 170% year-on-year jump in new customers, emphasizes the company.

“In the COVID era, every business is an eCommerce business. Our vision is to equip businesses of every size, across every industry, with the best possible technology to efficiently achieve maximum growth. To that end we are building a single, fully integrated platform that empowers businesses to create exceptional, customer-first commerce experiences,” co-founder and CEO of Yotpo Tomer Tagrin said.

The startup is now planning to spend attracted capital for expanding its products portfolio and acquiring more customers.

The company develops automated data science platform that links customers to the thousands of relevant data sources worldwide they need for better decision-making and allows them to build better predictive models concerning sales, risks or prices for the next month, for example.

“The greatest analytical challenge organizations will face over the next decade is finding the right data to feed their models and automated processes. The right data assets can make or break a company, or even propel a company to market leadership,” Shlomo explained.

Explorium has not disclosed its revenue but according to the company, it has tripled the number of customers since September. Recent customers include enterprises such as small-business lender OnDeck, global media agency CrossMedia, small business banking provider BlueVine, online eyewear retailer GlassesUSA, and small business loan provider Behalf. 

Founded in 2015 by Roy Raanani, Russell Levy and Micha Breakstone, Chorus.ai offers machine learning and AI sales meetings analysis solution that provides data and insights directly into organizations’ CRM.

The software helps sales teams to discover moments that impact selling outcomes immediately, as well as better understand what customers actually care about, their own unique challenges and the engaging moments that should be pursued in order to close a deal.

Chorus.ai is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Tel Aviv, Toronto and Boston. It has totally attracted $85.2 million and has been working with such companies as Zoom, Mavenlink, Qualtrics, Adobe and GitLab.

In addition to the investment round, Chorus.ia also announced the appointment of Greg Holmes, former Head of Sales and Corporate Strategy at Zoom, to the board.

Founded in 2018 by the CEO Ran Poliakine and Japan Laboratories Manager Hitoshi Masuya, Nanox develops affordable medical imaging system which includes digital X-ray device Nanox.Arc and cloud-based imaging software Nanox.Cloud. Nanox’s device weighs 70 kg compared to 2,000 kg for the average CT scanner, and its production costs around $10,000 compared to $1-3 million for the CT scanner. 

Nanox is aimed to «democratize health care» by offering a «digital camera for the full body» among its range of medical imaging services that operate on a pay-per-scan business model, emphasized Poliakine. Nanox’s screening service costs $30 per scan, while traditional scan globally costs $300 in average, in the US – $3,000, said the CEO.

The company is planning to spend the proceeds for the expanding of its imaging system worldwide. To date, Nanox has already signed agreements for the deployment of its services in 13 countries. Besides, as reported by CTech, the Israeli startup has applied for the upcoming Nasdaq IPO and declared a plan to raise $125 million.

Amdocs is Israeli telecom billing and IT business systems company that provides software and services to communications and media companies in 85 countries. 

Privately-owned company Openet is headquartered in Ireland and has offices in the US, Malaysia and Brazil. It develops 5G payment and billing solutions for cloud, edge computing, and Internet of Things. According to the press release, its annual revenue amounted to $70 million over the past two years.

Openet’s open and network-centric technologies will support more than 350 Amdocs’ customers from the communications industry to move to the cloud, writes Globes. 

“The Openet solutions complement our portfolio and this acquisition is part of our mission to accelerate the industry’s move to the cloud,” emphasized the President and CEO of Amdocs Shuky Sheffer.

Sight Diagnostics is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has growing offices in London and New York. The company develops devices that run rapid blood analysis, based on machine-vision and AI technology. Sight’s first product Parasight was launched for identifying malaria in 2012. Using the same technology, the latest product of the company OLO provides the results of a complete blood count test in minutes by displaying it on-screen. 

In the COVID-19 era, the portable and easy-to-operate OLO device provides accurate and inexpensive blood analysis for the quarantined coronavirus patients who need constant testing.

“Our device is part of a strengthening trend during the coronavirus outbreak in which the world wants to conduct tests close to the patient. This is relevant for both coronavirus and other patients where institutions are looking to reduce exposure within the hospital,” said the CEO and co-founder of Sight Diagnostics Yossi Pollak.

As reported by NoCamels, in July 2019 the company reached unicorn status after completing a $100 million Series D round led by Bond Capital. Totally, Hippo has raised $359 million over 7 rounds since it was founded in 2015. 

Hippo offers smart home insurance that includes coverage for household goods, as well as household services, such as cleaners and babysitters. Additionally, the company provides clients with smart home devices that are aimed to detect problems in advance, for example, water leaks or fire damage, and prevent them. Hippo is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and operates in 29 US states.

The company is planning to invest new fundings in expansion and further developing its tech operations. Besides, as the CEO Assaf Wand says, Hippo is preparing for going public in 2021.

As we wrote earlier, another US-based online insurer Lemonade has already undertaken an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and attracted $319 million.

According to Crunchbase, Gett has raised $913 million since it was founded in 2010. Its biggest investor is Volkswagen Group, which has invested over $300 million in total. 

Gett develops a SaaS cloud solution for managing the ride-booking experience for businesses. The company provides its services to over 17,000 corporates in 120 cities, including a third of the Fortune 500 list.

The company has also a taxi passenger hailing app that is available in Israel, the UK, Russia. But further scaling of this product is unprofitable from financial and competitive points of view, that is why Gett is planning to continue the expanding of its B2B business.

As the CEO of Gett Dave Waiser claims, the proceeds will help to concentrate on the growth of its corporate SaaS platform internationally and the preparation for a potential IPO, which the company expects in 2021.

OwnBackup provides a comprehensive solution to backup, compare, recover, archive, and manage large, complex SaaS-based data sets. The company gained a reputation as a backup and disaster recovery system for the cloud-based software company Salesforce ecosystem, writes TechCrunch. 

Among the company’s clients are the University of Michigan, ServiceNow and Slack. According to the CEO of OwnBackup Sam Gutmann, the company continues to grow, added 250 new customers during the last few months. As a result, the company has over 2000 customers around the world.

OwnBackup was founded in 2015 by CEO Sam Gutmann, CTO Ariel Berkman, Ori Yankelev, and Eran Cohen. The company is headquartered in New Jersey with the R&D centres in Tel Aviv and London.

OwnBackup is planning to invest raised funds into developing its products, as well as expanding into new ecosystems.

Spot was founded in 2015 by CEO Amiram Shachar and Chief Architect Liran Polak. According to the Crunchbase, it has raised a total of $52.6 million in funding over 4 rounds, the latest was in 2018. Investors include Highland Capital, Intel Capital, Vertex, Leaders Fund, Pico Venture Partners.

Spot by NetApp delivers application-driven infrastructures (ADIs) that help companies to optimize and automate the use of cloud infrastructure and allow them to save up to 90% of their compute and storage infrastructure expenses. Intel, IBM, Sony, Samsung, N26, Moovit, Wix are among the clients of Spot. 

“The combination of NetApp’s leading shared storage platform for block, file and object and Spot’s compute platform will deliver a leading solution for the continuous optimization of cost for all workloads, both cloud native and legacy,” NetApp Senior Vice President and General manager Public Cloud Services Anthony Lye said.

Founded in 2015 by Israeli entrepreneurs Shai Wininger and Daniel Schreiber, Lemonade is a licensed in 40 US states insurance company that offers homeowners and renters insurance. The company uses artificial intelligence and behavioural economics to set rates for the homes and renters it insures. Unlike the traditional insurance model, Lemonade donates underwriting profits to nonprofits selected by its community. 

Without any brokers and bureaucracy, the company declares the possibility to register insurance in 90 seconds and to claim insurance payment – in 3 minutes with the help of AI bot Maya.

According to the IT Business Week media, the company has previously attracted $480 million of venture funding from Allianz, Google Ventures, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Aleph, Expansion VC, GV, OurCrowd, Thrive Capital, Tusk Capital and XL Innovate.

Aflac Global Ventures, Bank Hapoalim’s Poalim Capital Markets, Viola, Oak HC/FT, Harvey Golub – the former CEO of American Express, Clal Insurance and Siam Commercial Bank are among other investors, reports Reuters. 

Pagaya was established in 2016 by Gal Krubiner, Avital Pardo and Yahav Yulzari. The company is developing a proprietary Pulse technology based on Machine Learning algorithms and big data analytics for institutional asset management. To this date, it manages assets for banks, pensions plans, insurance companies, foundations and private wealth and sovereign wealth funds over $1.6 billion.

As reported by the Globes media, in May the company issued a $200 million consumer credit asset-backed security completely managed by its AI. Totally, Pagaya’s ABS issuance has reached over $1 billion in a year and a half. 

The company is planning to invest attracted capital in strengthening the team with data scientists, further developing its technology and pursue new asset classes.

Team8 Capital will support companies at the seed, series A and B rounds of funding. As reported by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s data, it has already received commitments of $104 million, reports CTech.

Team8 is company-building venture group. It was founded in 2014 by Nadav Zafrir, Israel Grimberg, and Liran Grinberg. According to the information from the company’s webpage, it focuses on building and investing in technology companies, as well as supporting entrepreneurs with experts and community of enterprise c-level executives and opinion leaders. Previously, Team8 was already financially supported by Microsoft, Walmart, AT&T, Cisco, Airbus and Barclays.

Team8 Capital will be managed by Grinberg and Israeli leading angel investor Sarit Firon. The raised funds will be used for the further financing of companies that were established by the startup foundry.

Founded in 2013 by Oren Ezer and Hanan Rumbak, ElectReon strives to make the future belongs to green e-mobility solutions and eliminate the dependency on oil. The company designs and implements the revolutionary smart road technology of induction charging of electric vehicles in motion. It is ensured by copper coils installed under the driving lane, and receivers located under vehicles’ chassis.

ElectReon provides its solution primarily to governments, cities officials, fleet and major grid operators. Currently, the company is conducting pilot projects in Israel and Sweden. Next steps are the deployment of a 10 km smart road for public transport in Tel Aviv and 25-30 km for charging the trucks on a public road at Gotland. 

The company is planning to invest attracted capital into expanding the range of vehicles by offering its solution to shuttles, taxis, light trucks, and vans. Besides, ElectReon wants to enter the new markets such as the US, Italy, France, India, and Latin America.

CyberX with a headquarter in Boston and development centre in Herzliya was founded in 2013 by Omer Schneider and Nir Giller. The company specializes in detecting, stopping and predicting security threats on Internet of Things networks and the networks of large industrial organizations. 

The clients of the startup include Adani, Deutsche Telekom, IDE Technologies, SGN, T-Systems, as well as leading US and European energy, pharmaceutical and oil and gas companies. Totally, CyberX has raised $48 million from investors including Qualcomm, Inven, Norwest Venture Partners, Glilot Capital Partners, Flint Capital, ff Venture Capital, and OurCrowd, reports Globes. 

It is not the first investment of Microsoft in IoT. Two years ago, the company made an announcement about spending $5 billion on Internet of Things over four years. Microsoft is planning to integrate CyberX technology into its Azure IoT security solution. 

“CyberX will complement the existing Azure IoT security capabilities, and extends to existing devices including those used in industrial IoT, Operational Technology and infrastructure scenarios,” Microsoft says.