- Top investment opportunities
- Startup of the Week: Workspot’s secure cloud desktop
- Binah.ai: World’s first blood pressure via video
- InsideTracker guides users to longer, healthier lives
- Israel hits new VC record of $25.6 billion
- Wall St Journal: Flytrex ‘will change your life’
- Expert advice on OurCrowd’s 4,300 job vacancies
- HarvestMaster hails SCiO as ‘single biggest advancement’
- Remilk raises $120M, valuation rises tenfold within a year
- Beyond Meat gets finger-lickin’ with KFC
- Zippin to expand checkout-free shopping to 100+ airports
- Israel’s MoD taps Hub Security and QuantLR for top secrecy
- Introductions
- More than 4,200 high-tech jobs
Startup of the Week:
PulmOne: Complete lunWorkspot: Secure work from anywhere
Corporations are struggling to support a workforce that is increasingly working from home, raising serious security issues. Workspot has developed the first multi-cloud desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), which migrates the end-user computer desktop to the cloud with top security, performance, availability and cost. Workspot’s customers include Hyundai, Southland, Agdata, Poyner Spruill and Advisor360. Virtual desktops solve many of these problems, but conventional VDI is based on outdated architecture and can take months and upwards of $200,000 to deploy, with ongoing maintenance headaches. Workspot provides a cloud-native DaaS replacement for PCs and workstations that is quick and easy to deploy – the only multi-cloud SaaS solution for the DaaS market. This fast-growing company anticipates accelerated growth in a market already estimated at $100B a year. Board chairman Mark Templeton is the former president and CEO of Citrix. The CEO and other executives also previously held senior positions at Citrix. This $45M convertible note is offered at 25% discount off the next financing round.
Binah.ai: World’s first blood pressure via video
Binah.ai can now measure your blood pressure using a simple smartphone video – the first system of its kind in the world. This amazing step forward in Binah.ai’s remote health and wellness monitoring platform takes its diagnostic capability to another level. Blood pressure and other vitals, including heart and respiration rate, are measured without any additional hardware in about one minute. Our investment round in this revolutionary diagnostic startup is closing soon. Read more about the technology here.
InsideTracker guides users to longer, healthier lives
“I can’t imagine not using InsideTracker. It is vital to creating my health goal and helps me prioritize longevity. I want to be in coaching for a long time and I still want to be a great athlete 20 years down the line,” says Shalane Flanagan, an Olympic silver medalist, NYC Marathon winner and Nike Coach, in Lisa Gann’s story in the Times of Israel. Using a simple blood test, InsideTracker’s app analyzes up to 43 biomarkers in your blood that affect energy, metabolism, strength and endurance, plus a DNA test to see how 261 genetic markers influence your athletic potential, aiming to give users a clearer picture of what’s going on inside their body than ever before.
Israel hits new VC record of $25.6 billion
Scrap your NFTs – this image is worth billions. Israel’s VC community outperformed its already dramatic growth with the high-tech ecosystem coming into its own in the past year. The $25.6B raised in 2021 represents year-on-year growth of 146%. But that’s just part of the story. Add 77 mega deals of more than $100M each, some 90 unicorns, 23 Wall St. IPOs and a startup ecosystem now numbering 9,000 different companies. It all shows that our little Startup Nation is growing up nicely into Scale-Up Nation. Stay tuned for 2022 and participate together with us as we help write the next chapter in this extraordinary success story.
Wall St Journal: Flytrex ‘will change your life’
The Wall Street Journal hailed our drone delivery platform Flytrex as a breakthrough “Tech that will change your life in 2022,” and CEO Yariv Bash was named as one of “100 people transforming business” by Business Insider. The flood of accolades follow a green light from the US Federal Aviation Authority for Flytrex to expand its drone-based delivery service beyond line of sight to a one-mile radius in its increasingly successful rollout in North Carolina, where the company’s proprietary drones currently deliver food and retail products from Walmart, Starbucks and other providers to suburban homes. The company believes it has now made more home deliveries in the US via drone than anyone else. Flytrex has raised around $60M so far to develop its services. The current round on the OurCrowd website is closing soon.
Expert advice on OurCrowd’s 4,200 job vacancies
Our Business Development team will host the OurCrowd Virtual Job Fair on Monday, Jan. 17, highlighting thousands of vacancies across our portfolio companies and featuring CEOs, HR experts and tips on resumes, interviews, self-marketing and better use of LinkedIn. Companies participating include Clinch, Tailor Brands, Bizzabo, TetaVi, Morphisec, Intuition Robotics, Taranis and ThetaRay. The OurCrowd Jobs page currently has more than 4,200 vacancies at more than 170 companies. If you know anyone looking for a high-tech job in Israel, please invite them to the event on Jan. 17, which we are hosting with our partners Start-up Nation Central, Scale-Up Velocity, Tel Aviv Internationals and Nefesh B’Nefesh.
Top Tech News
Ag giant HarvestMaster hails SCiO as ‘single biggest advancement’
US agriculture giant HarvestMaster is integrating SCiO, the market-leading infrared spectrometer created by OurCrowd portfolio company Consumer Physics, into its GrainGage combine harvester analysis system, giving farmers access to critical crop data while harvesting in real time, SeedQuest reports. Based on Consumer Physics’ SCiO Cup material sensing platform, HarvestMaster’s GrainGages will provide accurate moisture, protein, and oil predictions during harvest. Producers and researchers no longer have to bag samples and ship them to facilities to gather information. “Integrating SCiO’s NIR technology into our GrainGages is a huge step forward in seed research,” says Ray Newman, HarvestMaster Product Manager. “This is arguably the single biggest advancement our GrainGage has ever seen, the real-time data provided in the field during harvest will drastically improve efficiency and be an invaluable asset to the future of the industry.”
Remilk raises $120M, valuation rises tenfold within a year
More money for milk without cows. Our animal-free dairy startup Remilk raised a $120M Series B at a valuation of $325M, Calcalist reports – 10 times the valuation of the company just a year ago. Remilk produces real dairy products through microbial fermentation instead of using bovine milk. The company has signed deals with dozens of dairy manufacturers around the world and estimates its sales will reach $600M by 2026.
Beyond Meat gets finger-lickin’ with KFC
KFC will be taking fried chicken made by our portfolio company Beyond Meat nationwide in the US from January 10, TechCrunch reports. “We couldn’t be prouder to partner with KFC to offer a best-in-class product that not only delivers the delicious experience consumers expect from this iconic chain, but also provides the added benefits of plant-based meat,” says Ethan Brown, CEO of Beyond Meat. The companies have been working together since 2019 to find the perfect recipe for KFC.
Zippin to expand checkout-free shopping to 100+ airports
Checkout-free shopping might be coming to an airport near you this year, thanks to our portfolio company Zippin. The firm wants to bring its AI-powered, checkout-free system to over 100 airports in 2022, Forbes reports. Customers swipe their credit cards on entry, bag the products they want and leave, automatically charging their card. Zippin’s first airport store opened at New York’s JFK Airport in November.
Israel’s MoD taps Hub Security and QuantLR for top secrecy
Israel’s Ministry of Defense is entrusting two of our portfolio companies to help safeguard the nation’s most sensitive materials. Hub Security and QuantLR will provide the ministry with a new quantum security platform designed to protect information in a cloud environment, Help Net Security reports. The system is the first of its kind to offer user identification capabilities coupled with encryption of data, using unique, quantum-computing-generated encryption keys.
Israel’s MoD taps Hub Security and QuantLR for top secrecy
Israel’s Ministry of Defense is entrusting two of our portfolio companies to help safeguard the nation’s most sensitive materials. Hub Security and QuantLR will provide the ministry with a new quantum security platform designed to protect information in a cloud environment, Help Net Security reports. The system is the first of its kind to offer user identification capabilities coupled with encryption of data, using unique, quantum-computing-generated encryption keys.
Introductions
Your portfolio gets stronger when the OurCrowd network gets involved. Visit our Introductions page to see which of our companies are looking for connections that you may be able to help with.
More than 4,200 High-Tech Jobs
Read the OurCrowd High-Tech Jobs Index Q3 2021 HERE.
- Head of QA at Perception Point (Tel Aviv)
- Customer Success Manager at DailyPay (Minneapolis)
- Marketing Associate at Klook (Seoul)
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