CTech’s Daily Israeli Tech News Roundup

Thieves have it easy with bitcoin, says anti-fraud entrepreneur. Founded in 2014 by Nimrod Lehavi and two former employees of Paypal, chief technology officer Erez Shapira and chief analytics officer Netanel Kabala, Simplex offers online payment processing and fraud protection exclusively for the cryptocurrency industry—sort of like Paypal for bitcoin. Read more

BioCanCell raises $25 million. BioCanCell, a biopharmaceutical company based in Jerusalem and Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced on Tuesday it has signed a term sheet for an investment of $25 million. The company also said it would seek to get listed on a U.S. stock exchange in 2018. Read more

Bitcoin. Photo: Bloomberg

Business ties are key to Israel’s security, says Israel’s former army chief. Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israeli military and the current chairman of Fifth Dimension Holdings Ltd., a big data AI analytics company, said on Tuesday that Israel can bolster its security by fostering foreign direct investment and international cooperation. Read more

Activist investor Jana Partners takes stake in Teva. The firm has taken a position in the troubled drugmaker during the fourth quarter of 2017, believing CEO Kåre Schultz's cost-cutting measures could turn the company around, according to a Bloomberg report. Read more

Russian tech company Yandex to launch AI program in collaboration with Tel Aviv University. Yandex entered a strategic partnership with the Israeli university and will offer courses on machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics, as well as financial support to students and faculty. Read more

Israel lags behind most developed countries on the Inclusive Development Index. The World Economic Forum ranked Israel 25th out of 29 developed countries in its Inclusive Development Index (IDI) 2018 report, published ahead of annual meeting in Davos. Read more

The ongoing shake up in delivery logistics. Raanan Cohen writes about the trends impacting delivery logistics in 2018 from real-time visibility, to big data and the sharing economy. Read more

The Helmsley Trust donates $18 million to build new research tower on Haifa hospital campus. The American charitable trust will fund the construction of a 20-story medical research tower to serve Rambam hospital, the University of Haifa, and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Read more