Winners and Losers of the Week

This week’s winner are:

Israel-linked cybersecurity company SentinelOne for completing another investment round of $200 Million at an estimated company valuation of $1.1 billion. The current investment was led by New York-based venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. According to one person familiar with the matter, the current round is estimated to be the company’s final one before attempting to go public, most likely in 2021. Read more

Another winner this week is venture capital firm Grove for raising $120 million in commitments for its second fund. Grove II will invest in early-stage Israeli deep tech companies, the firm said. Grove has already made two investments from its second fund that will be announced in the upcoming months. Read more

Other winners this week are Israeli Kibbutz Afikim residents for nearing the closure of a deal to sell 50% of the Kibbutz’s dairy farm management company for $70 million. The buyer, New Zealand-based Livestock Improvement International, will pay Afikim residents $28 million and $42 million to private equity firm Fortissimo Capital for its stake in the company. Read more

This week’s losers are:

6.5 million Israeli voters after security breaches in election apps compromised their personal data. Less than a week after Calcalist reported a severe security breach compromising the personal data of over 6 million Israeli voters, two new security breaches were discovered this week in the campaign management app used by Israel’s ruling Likud party. In addition to the personal details of almost 6.5 million Israelis which leaked for the second time, the new flaws also revealed correspondence between activists and potential voters as well as the app’s source code, according to activist hacker Noam Rotem and Ran Bar-Zik, a senior developer at Verizon Media, who discovered the leaks. Read more

This week’s data point: 81%

81% of Israeli office workers say they are happy or very happy with their jobs, compared to 94% in the U.S., 91% in the Netherlands, and 83% in Poland. According to a survey conducted by coworking real estate company MindSpace, U.K. office workers are less happy than their counterparts around the world, with only 76% of them saying they were happy or very happy with their jobs. Read more