CTech's Weekly Roundup of Israeli Tech News

Israel and Airbnb clash over listings in West Bank settlements. Israel’s Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin has called for action against rental listing service Airbnb following the company's Monday decision to stop hosting properties located in Israeli West Bank settlements. Read more  

A Tel Aviv rooftop with a view to New York. A panel of venture capitalists assembled to discuss The Israeli Hop—the bi-continental existence many Israeli startups opt to go for. Read more  

 

 

The U.S. still leads corporate investment in Israeli tech. So far in 2018, U.S. corporates invested some $253 million in Israeli tech companies, according to a new report. Read more  

Nas Daily’s next adventure: building a viral video empire. Three years ago, Nuseir Yassin decided to quit his high-paying tech job to travel the world and create daily one-minute videos. Read more  

In Tel Aviv, a herd of sheep is helping the city bloom. Tel Aviv’s first official herdsman is accompanied by two border collies, Chaos and Fauda: the first only takes commands in Hebrew, the second only in British English. Read more  

Abramovich’s planned mansion celebrates old Tel Aviv elegance. Having lived in the U.K. in recent years, Israeli-Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich had turned to Israel when his U.K. visa expired. Read more  

Russian multinational Yandex to launch Yango taxi hailing service in Israel. The company's main rival in Israel is Gett, the local taxi hailing market leader. Gett and Yandex are already competing on the latter’s home turf. Read more  

Israeli archives attack Wikimedia for releasing historic photos. Last week, Wikimedia made 28,000 public domain photos taken from Israeli archives publically available online. Backlash soon followed. Read more

Israeli defense contractor IAI builds laser cannon. Israel planned to use a laser technology to defend against long and short-range threats, but a development project was stopped in its tracks over a decade ago, and Iron Dome was developed instead. Read more  

 

M&A and IPOs

CVC on brink of closing deal for medical laser company Lumenis. Read more  

Medtronic to acquire nutrition data startup Nutrino to boost diabetes offering. Read more

Matomy unloads mobile advertising operator MobFox. Read more

Startup funding

IT software startup SysAid raises $30 million. Read more  

Facetune developer secures additional funding to change how the world creates content. Read more  

Cybersecurity startup Alcide raises $7 million. Read more

Israeli quantum computing startup Quantum Machines raises $5.5 million. Read more  

Team8 launches identity-based cloud security startup Portshift. Read more  

Cell-therapy company KidneyCure raises funds. Read more  

Israeli cloud startup Darillium raises $2 million. Read more