Winners and Losers of the Week

This week’s winners are:

Artificial intelligence chip developer Habana Labs, for getting into advanced acquisition negotiations with Intel. Habana Labs develops processors optimized for artificial intelligence applications. The company raised $120 million to date, $75 million of it in a November 2018 round led by Intel Capital. Now, Intel is negotiating to buy it for $1 billion to $2 billion. Read more

Israel-based conversation analytics startup Gong.io, for raising $65 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital. Gong.io develops speech recognition technology that provides sales representatives with real-time insights into their interactions with customers by analyzing recorded phone calls. Read more

This week’s losers are:

RAD Data Communications, which is laying off dozens of employees. Founded in 1981, the company designs and manufactures specialized networking equipment for the global telecom industry and currently employs approximately 1,000 people. Read more

Israeli entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg, for being sued—again—for investor fraud. The plaintiff, a Vancouver resident, claims that misconduct by Hogeg and his crypto company Stox has cost him at least $430,000 in losses. Earlier this year, a Chinese citizen filed a NIS 17 million lawsuit accusing Hogeg of fraud, and in July, another lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv accused Hogeg of misleading investors in another one of his companies, Mobli, which went bankrupt in 2016. Read more

This week’s data point: $17.8 billion

Although the budget allocated to the Israeli education system doubled in the past decade, reaching approximately $17.8 billion in 2019, Israeli students are still underperforming compared to the OECD average. According to the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the performance of 15-year-old Israelis in terms of reading, math, and science, were pretty bad. Israel took 33rd place, out of 38 participating countries. Read more