An Israeli Businessman Who Made a $600 Million Exit Is This Week’s Top Winner
CTech’s Editor Elihay Vidal chooses the week’s top winners—and biggest losers
Israeli businessman Teddy Sagi, for selling payment technology company SafeCharge to Nuvei Corporation for $889 million in cash. SafeCharge was founded in 2006 by CEO David Avgi and Sagi, who holds 68.3% of the company, meaning he will see around $600 million from the deal. Read more
Venture Capitalist Gigi Levy-Weiss, for closing $275 million in commitments for the second fund by his firm, NFX. Silicon Valley-based NFX's first fund closed with commitments of $175 million in October 2017. The firm invests companies across many industries and focuses on Israeli and Silicon Valley startups. Read more
David Even Haim and Omer Matityahu, for selling prescriptive business analytics software startup, Profitect, to Nasdaq-listed Zebra Technologies. According to a person familiar with the deal, Zebra Technologies has agreed to pay approximately $100 million. Read more
Teddy Sagi. Photo: Orel Cohen
This week’s losers are:
Israel's top cannabis companies, for losing a combined $307 million on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange over the past three months. The market capitalization of Israel's eight leading medical cannabis companies dropped to $475 million. The largest slide was of InterCure Ltd., chaired by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, which lost 34.3% of its market cap. Read more
Elinadav Heymann, Fabio Goldman, Yuval Harel, Ori Ben Yossef, Ariel Tregier, and Rafi Cesana, the people behind Archimedes Group, the company accused of coordinating fake news campaigns targeting African countries. Last week, Facebook announced it has deleted a network of 265 fake accounts, pages, events, and groups on Facebook and Instagram, which were part of a campaign targeting Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger, and Tunisia. Read more
NSO co-president Tami Mazel Shachar, for stepping down after three years at the Israeli surveillance company. The Israeli firm has recently been in hot water due to the alleged use of its spyware to surveil journalists, politicians, and human rights activists. Read more
Huawei's Israeli employees who were barred temporarily from the company's local R&D subsidiary for holding American citizenship. The policy was not Israel-specific but was implemented by Huawei globally wherever it has employees of American nationality after the U.S. stepped up its campaign against Huawei adding it to a list of companies considered a threat to national security. Read more
This week’s data point: 89%
89% of all the Israeli startups that held funding rounds in 2018, did so at a higher company valuation than their last round, new report found. In comparison, 78% of Silicon Valley companies raised at a higher valuation in 2018. This is the first time the Israeli market is seeing an increase in company valuations alongside later stages, meaning the industry is creating mature companies that can leverage private capital without undermining their valuation, and thus are in no hurry to sell or go public. Read more
This week’s top deals:
Salesforce ventures launches $125 million EMEA investment fund. Read more
Cybersecurity startup guardiCore raises $60 million. Read more
Cybersecurity company Siemplify raises $30 million. Read more
Wix acquires Israeli brand marketing agency Gefen Team. Read more
Medtech company G Medical innovation files for Nasdaq IPO. Read more
Autonomous Drone Developer Percepto Raises $15 Million. Read more
