Record 26 Israeli-founded unicorns now headquarter in NYC
Record 26 Israeli-founded unicorns now headquarter in NYC
New York continues to lead the way as the city with the most Israeli-founded unicorns outside of Israel
A record 26 Israeli-founded unicorns – privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more – now have their global or U.S. headquarters in New York City, according to the United States – Israel Business Alliance. Outside of Tel Aviv, New York continues to be the city with the most
Israeli-founded tech unicorns in the world. All 26 tech companies are concentrated in Manhattan.
“When we started tracking Israeli-founded unicorns in 2018, New York had five and we thought that was a tremendous number,” USIBA president Aaron Kaplowitz said. “Now that we’re at 26 we’ve had to recalibrate our thinking on Israelis’ contributions to the local economy and all the jobs these massive companies are creating.”
“New York supplies strategic resources that no single city can truly match,” Kaplowitz said. “It offers access to seemingly endless sources of capital, a well-traveled path to the rest of America and global markets, a highly sophisticated workforce, cultural synergies – the list goes on. But in interviews we conducted with Israeli founders over the past year, many expressed deep frustrations trying to navigate the global travel disruptions that have arisen during the pandemic,” Kaplowitz said.
According to the USIBA report, since last April New York City has added 14 Israeli-founded unicorns. Half of these newly-minted unicorns earned their wings during the fourth quarter:
Augury, Fabric, HiBob, Immunai, OpenWeb, Selina, and Veho, which recently relocated to the Big Apple from Boulder, Colorado. Verbit and Claroty became unicorns in June and AnyVision in July.
Capitolis and Cheq crossed the billion-dollar valuation threshold during the first quarter of 2022. According to USIBA - which aims to strengthen the economic relationship between individual states and Israel - the addition of two new unicorns represents something of a slowdown compared to the same period in 2021, when seven Israeli-founded companies joined the club.
Fireblocks and Pagaya rapidly increased their respective valuations and are both currently among the top ten highest valued Israeli-founded unicorns in the world.
“After more than two decades of the best and brightest Israeli tech leaders grappling with the temptations of exiting early, we’re now seeing a maturation in the ecosystem,” Kaplowitz said. “Many of those wide-eyed founders from 20 years ago are now serial entrepreneurs and investors who have gained the confidence and patience to no longer settle for $20-$60 million exits. That is having a top-down effect on the entire ecosystem.”
In addition to adding new unicorns, New York City also lost nine Israeli-founded unicorns to public listings: Kaltura, monday.com, Outbrain, Payoneer, Riskified, Similarweb, Taboola, Talkspace, and WeWork.
Among the remaining 12 so-called veteran Israeli-founded unicorns based in New York, seven increased their valuations during the past year: Axonius, BigID, Forter, Melio, Papaya Global, Vast Data, and Via. Gett, the ride-hailing platform, saw its estimated valuation drop.
On the funding side, leading New York-based venture capital firms Tiger Global Partners and Insight Partners proved to be among the most active investors in Israeli technology in 2021.
