CTech's Tuesday Roundup of Israeli Tech News

Israel Won’t Settle for Airbnb’s Settlement Snub. Early last week, Airbnb announced the company will be removing “approximately 200 listings” in Israeli settlements from its service. Read more

Mobileye picks Amazon Web Services to handle autonomous vehicle cloud data. In October, Mobileye announced a partnership with Volkswagen Group and Israeli car importer and distributor Champion Motors to launch a self-driving taxi service in Israel in early 2019. Read more Ridesharing company Via launches service in Tel Aviv. After launching operations in cities like New York, Tokyo, Sydney, and Paris, Via arrives at the city whose unique van-based public transportation inspired its ridesharing model. Read more

Analysis | Explaining Israel’s interest raise. On Monday, the Bank of Israel raised its benchmark interest rate, for the first time in seven and a half years, from 0.1% to 0.25%. Read more

Amazon Web Services launches ARM core-based custom CPU. The central processing unit was developed by Annapurna Labs, an Israel-based chipmaker acquired by Amazon in 2015. Read more

OECD Secretary-General warns: Israel headed towards tax-evasion blacklist. The Secretary-General sent a letter to Netanyahu, urging the government to ratify the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) treaty. Read more

Russian Multinational Yandex to Operate Yango Taxi Hailing Service Throughout Israel. Yandex’ main rival in Israel is Gett, the local taxi-hailing market leader. Gett is already competing with Yandex on the latter’s home turf, having launched its service in Russia in 2015. Read more

Drone maker Aeronautics reports 23.7% drop in revenues. The Tel Aviv-listed drone maker has been under a probe since September 2017 in an ongoing investigation into its conduct. Read more

News Briefs

 

11 years overdue, Jerusalem express train to reach Tel Aviv in early 2019, exec says. Read more

Blockchain Securities Startup Securitize Raises $12.75 Million. Read more