This article first appeared on NoCamels and was reposted with permission.
Cybersecurity firms raised record $8.8b. in 2021
Israel’s cybersecurity industry has had an outstanding year, setting new records in a number of fields, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) reported last week. The sector raised a record $8.8 billion in 2021, tripling the amount raised in 2020. The money was secured in 131 deals.
Records were also set in cyber exports, acquisition deals and the number of cybersecurity firms that became unicorns after raising funds. Eleven of the companies that raised money in the past year became unicorns or privately-held companies at over $1 billion, the directorate said.
According to the data, one out of every three cybersecurity unicorns in the world is an Israeli company.
The data also showed the annual 2021 figures account for 40% of the total funds raised by cybersecurity firms worldwide this year. According to the Israeli Export Institute data, overall cyber experts were $11b. in 2021, according to the INCD data.
Viola Ventures raises $250m.
Israeli venture capital firm, Viola Ventures, announced last week the closing of a $250 million early-stage investments fund. This will be the company’s sixth fund.
The company will focus on backing start-ups in sectors like fintech, vertical AI, deep tech, digital health, next-generation enterprise infrastructure, SaaS 3.0, Web 3.0 and cybersecurity. In general, the VC company said it intends to allocate funds to 25-30 seed and Series A-round companies seeking early-stage investment.
The collective value of the capital firm’s assets under management (AUM) is now over $1.25b.
It also comes on the heels of a record-breaking year for Viola Ventures as eight of its portfolio companies have reached unicorn status.
Nvidia plans to expand R&D activities
US semiconductor giant Nvidia announced on Tuesday that it was expanding its R&D activities in Israel.
The company said it would establish a new design and engineering group that would lead the development of next-generation Nvidia central processing units for the next technology revolutions in AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and virtual world simulations from Omniverse, Nvidia’s new platform.
The group will include engineers in a wide range of positions, including hardware, software, architecture and other roles. They will join a variety of teams currently active in Israel, working on high-speed networking and HPC technologies, Nvidia’s Data Processing Unit development, AI research and other activities
UBQ uses household garbage to curb methane emissions
Late last year, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told world leaders at the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that Israel was poised to “become a climate innovation nation.” This was a defining moment for the country, which has significantly ramped up its efforts to tackle climate change issues.
One company that witnessed the pivotal moment in Glasgow was UBQ Materials, the Israeli firm that develops a sustainable thermoplastic material from unsorted household waste. The company’s CEO and cofounder Jack “Tato” Bigio says, while they were the only Israeli company that appeared at the summit, they were welcomed warmly by the Israeli delegation in attendance.
Founded in 2012 by Bigio, Yehuda Pearl and Eran Lev, UBQ Materials offers a solution to the growing global problem that every year the world produces more than two billion tons of household waste, the majority of which is unrecyclable and sent to landfills, incineration or is dumped in open natural spaces. In addition to the many well-documented natural hazards of landfill waste, it is also the third-largest cause of anthropogenic methane emissions.
UBQ’s waste conversion tech knows how to absorb all kinds of unsorted household waste, which includes organic garbage, plastics, paper, cardboard and dirty diapers. During the conversion process, UBQ breaks down the waste into its most basic molecular components and assembles a new raw material.
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