Author: Techtime

Nemo Nanomaterials Unveils 50-Ton Production Line

Posted on by Techtime

[Pictured above: Nemo Nanomaterials – technology illustration. Credit – Dima Yaroshezki, D.V.A. PRODUCTIONS]

Nemo Nanomaterials, an Israeli technology company providing nanomaterial-based industrial additives, has unveiled a production line with the capacity to produce 50 tons per year of its NemoBLEND™ nanomaterial-based additives. Additionally, in response to demand from Europe, the company plans to establish a new production line in the first quarter of 2025 that will have the capacity to yield hundreds of tons annually.

Nemo’s NemoBLEND™ additives, which are based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) hybrid, serve two main purposes: providing electrical conductivity to eliminate the need for metal conductors and providing electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding to protect sensitive electronic devices from disruption. These additives can be mass-produced and incorporated into a wide range of plastic parts, making them an ideal component for enhancing the performance and sustainability of materials used in planes, trains, automobiles, and other applications.

The NemoBLEND additives are ready to be used in common plastic manufacturing processes, opening new possibilities for design, advanced functionalities, weight reduction, and enhanced sustainability.

In response to the growing demand from the US and Europe, Nemo envisions establishing a factory in Israel within a year of the planned line’s operation, with subsequent ventures planned in regions with significant demand.  The planned line will cater primarily to material manufacturers serving the transportation and energy sectors. Leveraging a distinctive manufacturing process underpinned by proprietary compositions and formulations, the company has filed two patent applications and several additional patents applications are being prepared for filing. Nemo’s unique production technology, comprising proprietary special processes and custom-designed equipment, sets the stage for a versatile additive poised for widespread adoption.

The demand in Europe has been driven through Nemo’s strategic collaboration with Kafrit Group, a global masterbatch and compounds producer. The two companies signed an agreement which combines investment by Kafrit in Nemo and collaboration of the companies in the field of nanomaterial-based concentrates. As part of the collaboration, the two companies joined forces in marketing Nemo’s products, including masterbatches for electrical conductivity and EMI shielding in plastics.

“Nemo Nanomaterials emphasizes a range of standardized products tailored to diverse needs across segments and applications,” stated Alexander Zinigrad, CEO of Nemo Nanomaterials. “The new production line, that will be located in Petah Tikva, Israel, is set to specialize in thermoplastic materials, catering to varied plastic requirements.”

Nemo Nanomaterials, which was established in 2018 by Alexander Zinigrad and Jonathan Antebi, offers a line of innovative additives with a unique set of properties, such as electrical conductivity and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) shielding in plastics.

Carrar Raises $5.3 Million to Deliver Long-Lifetime Battery for EVs

Posted on by Techtime

Carrar, a provider of battery modules and thermal management systems for electric vehicles (EVs), today announced the closing of its $5.3 million Series A funding round to deliver commercial automotive-grade battery modules for electric vehicles with novel internal thermal management based on two-phase immersion technology.

The round included new investors Salida B.V., OurCrowd, NextGear, and current investors Gentherm, Next Leap Ventures, Dive Digital, and others.

Carrar is transforming e-mobility with battery modules and thermal management systems that dissipate twice the amount of heat of existing solutions, increasing battery lifespan three-fold.

Carrar also improves EV safety by preventing the temperature spirals caused by battery exothermic processes, which lead to thermal runaway and battery fire.

“I’m happy to begin this new stage in our company’s growth,” said Avinoam Rubinstain, Carrar’s CEO. “We thank our investors for the vote of confidence in our capabilities and vision. This investment will enable us to achieve the last mile of bringing our superb technology to market.”

“We are working with Tier-1 companies Gentherm and Röchling to build a first-of-its-kind battery module that presents outstanding cooling capabilities,” Rubinstain said.

“A safety test we conducted on a module developed with a global heavy-duty EV manufacturer achieved excellent results in preventing thermal runaway and battery fire,” he said.

“We are confident in our vision of optimal performance for electric vehicles in all weather conditions and improved passenger safety while reducing the environmental impact of EV batteries,” Mr. Rubinstain added.

“A considerable advantage of Carrar’s system is heat dissipation and enhanced safety. This offering represents an exceptional business opportunity in the fast-moving EV market,” said Sake Bosch, Key Principal at Salida B.V.

“Carrar addresses some of the main challenges of the e-mobility industry—battery safety, longevity, and cost,” added Tal Cohen, Founding Partner at Next Gear Ventures. “Carrar brings tangible benefits to consumers and will help increase the adoption of electric vehicles worldwide.”

OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, “We are excited to invest in Carrar, a leader in thermal management for the growing EV market. Anyone who experienced problems with their electric vehicles in North America this winter understands just how critical it is to manage the temperature of EV batteries. Carrar is poised to provide a must-have solution to a critical problem in the fast-growing global EV market. With a growing list of customers and partners, now joined by an A list of value-added investors, Carrar has all the key ingredients for potential success.”

“Carrar’s offices and team in Sderot, near Gaza, were attacked by Hamas on October 7th. Avinoam and his team have shown outstanding perseverance in adhering to the company’s development and business roadmap and completing a successful investment round despite these huge challenges. We salute them and are proud to be among their investors,” Medved added.

Hailo Closed $120 Million Funding Round

Posted on by Techtime

Hailo has extended its series C fundraising round with an additional investment of $120 million. At the same time, the company announced the introduction of its Hailo-10 high-performance generative AI (GenAI) accelerators that usher in an era where users can own and run GenAI applications locally without registering to cloud-based GenAI services. The new funding round was led by current and new investors including the Zisapel family, Gil Agmon, Delek Motors, Alfred Akirov, DCLBA, Vasuki, OurCrowd, Talcar, Comasco, Automotive Equipment (AEV), and Poalim Equity. To date the company has raised more than $340 million.

The Tel aviv bases Hailo was established in 2017 and is focused on developing specialized AI processors, based on a rethinking of traditional computer architecture. The processors are designed to fit into a multitude of smart machines, impacting a variety of sectors including PCs, automotive, security, industrial equipment, industry 4.0 and retail. “We designed Hailo-10 to seamlessly integrate GenAI capabilities into users’ daily lives, freeing users from cloud network constraints,” said Hailo CEO and Co-Founder Orr Danon. “This empowers them to utilize chatbots, copilots, and other emerging content generation tools with unparalleled flexibility and immediacy.”

SolidRun's video acclerator SoM equipped with Hailo-15 SOM chip
SolidRun’s video acclerator SoM equipped with Hailo-15 SOM chip

The new Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator leverages the same software suite used across the Hailo-8 AI accelerators and the Hailo-15 AI vision processors, enabling seamless integration of AI capabilities across multiple edge devices and platforms. Hailo-10 is capable of up to 40 TOPS (tera operations per second). Among popular GenAI platforms, Hailo-10 can run Llama2-7B with up to 10 tokens per second (TPS) at under 5W of power. In processing Stable Diffusion 2.1, a popular model that produces images from text prompts, Hailo-10 is rated at under 5 seconds per image in the same ultra-low power envelope.

Early applications of Hailo-10 GenAI accelerators will be targeting PCs and automotive infotainment systems, empowering current and future CPUs that cannot by themselves power the chatbots, copilots, personal assistants, and speech-operated operating systems that have become standard today. Hailo will begin shipping samples of the Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator in Q2 of 2024.

Wi-Fi 6 plus Bluetooth LE 5.4 Wireless SoC

Posted on by Techtime

Silicon Labs announced the SiWx915 SoC, the second in its family of Wi-Fi 6 devices, aimed for energy efficient or line powered IoT wireless devices using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), Matter, and IP networking for cloud connectivity. It includes a Wi-Fi 6 plus Bluetooth LE wireless CPU subsystem, and an integrated micro-controller (MCU) application subsystem, Security, memory, peripherals subsystem all in a single 6×6 mm QFN package.

The wireless subsystem consists of a multi-threaded processor (ThreadArch®) running up to 160 MHz, baseband digital signal processing, analog front end, 2.4 GHz RF transceiver and integrated power amplifier. The application subsystem consists of an ARM® Cortex®-M4F running up to 180 MHz, embedded SRAM, and FLASH.

The ARM® Cortex®-M4F is dedicated for peripheral and application related processing, while the ThreadArch® runs the wireless and networking stacks on independent threads, thus providing a high performance, fully integrated solution that is ready for a wide range of embedded wireless IoT applications.

Target applications include Smart Homes, Consumer Health and Wearables, Clinical Medical, Industrial, Retail, Smart Building and Cities, Asset Tracking.

Silicon Labs is represented in Israel by Elina Engineering 

 

Contact: Yossi Chen, +972-44902499, yossi@elina.co.il

Enigmatos Has Developed a Solution for Cyber Protection of Commercial Fleets

Posted on by Techtime

In today’s transportation sector, one of the segments most exposed to cyber risks is vehicle fleets. This market includes hauling, transport, and public transport companies that operate huge fleets of vehicles that aren’t always protected against cyber attacks. This is the segment of the market where the Israeli company Enigmatos focuses. The company has developed a dedicated solution that can be installed in vehicles after production (aftermarket) and answers the unique risks of vehicle fleets.

In a conversation with Techtime, the company’s CEO, Neta Lempert, explained: “Most cyber companies turn to car manufacturers (OEM). We understood the need for cyber protection in vehicle fleets is more urgent. The business and integration processes are also faster and simpler than processes with car manufacturers, which may take years.”

Enigmatos was founded in 2017 by Eyal Kamir, a serial entrepreneur from the automotive field who serves as the company’s chairman, and Alex Fok. In its early years, the company was engaged mainly in R&D. Lempert: “We investigated, through automotive engineers and cyber experts, the connection between the automotive and cyber worlds, to understand the weak points and how to identify a breach.”

The weak points of connected vehicles lie in the internal communication of vehicles, the CAN BUS. The CAN BUS was developed in the 1990s by Bosch and constitutes the communication infrastructure between the various control units (ECUs) and the central computer. “The CAN BUS is a very efficient communication infrastructure. However, its configuration has stayed the same over the years. When they originally defined the protocol, they didn’t consider the cyber aspects. All the information passes through the internal communication network without encryption and protection.”

Strategic Collaboration with Dan

Enigmatos’ main collaboration with Dan Public Transportation, which invested about 5 million NIS in the company in 2021. Dan connected its fleet of about 1,200 buses to Enigmatos’ defense solution.

The challenge in cyber monitoring in the automotive world is identifying events in the CAN network that may indicate a cyber breach. That’s why, in the first stage, Enigmatos’ system 

studies the characteristics of each vehicle in the fleet and produces a unique profile for it using machine learning. After that, the system monitors the messages in the CAN network in real-time and compares them to the profile. When the system detects a deviation from typical behavior, it activates another verification process based on AI to determine whether it’s a cyber incident.

Enigmatos’ platform is cloud-based, and one critical aspect enabling its continuous activity is the data compression capability developed by the company. According to Enigmatos, it managed to compress vehicle data at a rate of 99%, enabling data transfer from the vehicle to the cloud. Enigmatos has already registered about 18 patents in different locations. 

The Lack of Regulation

In recent years, there has been significant progress in integrating cybersecurity standards into manufacturing new vehicles. Regulators in Europe have adopted the ISO/SAE 21434 standard, which regulates cyber security issues in vehicles, and every new model that comes to the market must comply with the standard. 

However, the standard doesn’t provide a solution for systems installed in the vehicle after it comes to the market, such as telematics systems, location tracking, security cameras, and even automatic braking systems. These systems also connect to the CAN network and produce potential weaknesses not under the protective shell in which the vehicle left the factory. This problem is especially tangible in the world in vehicle fleets, which include many more third-party systems than in private vehicles.

In Israel especially, the Ministry of Transportation has implemented a regulation to help these customers. According to the Ministry’s protocols, every public transportation tender must now include a requirement for cyber monitoring of the CAN network to monitor external accessories installed on the bus.

This trend of extending regulations to the aftermarket is a significant catalyst for Engimatos. “We are in contact with companies that have won tenders to provide them with our cyber service, ensuring they meet the Ministry of Transport’s conditions. Additionally, we are conducting pilots with companies that have fleets transporting fuel and hazardous materials.”

Hailo Appoints NEXTY Electronics as Sales Promotion Partner in Japan

Posted on by Techtime

Hailo, the pioneering chipmaker of edge artificial intelligence (AI) processors, announced today that it has appointed NEXTY Electronics, one of the core members of the Toyota Tsusho Group’s electronics business, as Hailo’s second sales partner in Japan, where it will focus on further advancing Hailo’s AI solutions within the automotive market.

The appointment comes on the heels of Hailo’s recent announcement that leading autonomous driving solutions provider iMotion selected the Hailo-8 AI accelerator and Renesas R-Car V4H SoC (System-on-Chip) to power the iMotion iDC High domain controller for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving (AD). A Chinese automaker is expected to begin mass production with the iMotion iDC High domain controller in the second half of this year.

“ADAS is a key area of growth for Hailo and our partnership with NEXTY Electronics will be critical to help us expand our market presence,” said Nori Kojima, General Manager of Hailo Japan. “Hailo’s edge AI processors are cost effective and offer high-performance data processing and low power consumption to the automotive market, making advanced ADAS and autonomous driving features accessible for mass market vehicles. We’re thrilled to partner with NEXTY Electronics to be able to offer their automaker and Tier 1 customer base a wider range of AI options that can tackle even the most challenging automotive scenarios.”

NEXTY Electronics is one of the key companies in the electronics business sector of the Toyota Group Tsusho and specializes in automotive electronics, IT, communication, and industrial solutions to support smart factories, robotics and more.

The appointment of NEXTY Electronics marks another significant milestone in Japan for Hailo, which has been working with Macnica, Japan’s largest distributor of semiconductors and the fifth largest in the world to serve a variety of Japanese sectors including smart retail, cities, homes, and Industry 4.0, since 2021.

It also underscores the momentum of Hailo’s global expansion. With its products already serving over 300 clients worldwide through a robust network of distributors across the world, Hailo announced last week agreements with two new distributors – J-Squared Technologies in North America, and Macnica DHW in South America.

With offices in Tokyo, Taipei, Shenzhen, Seoul, Munich, Silicon Valley, and Chicago, coupled with a growing range of distributor partners in Asia, America, Europe and Australia, Hailo is positioned for sustained growth and innovation on a global scale.

OurCrowd AI Fund to Collaborate with NVIDIA Inception

Posted on by Techtime

OurCrowd AI Fund announced it will offer select artificial intelligence startups, in collaboration with NVIDIA, a fast track into the NVIDIA Inception program.

The OurCrowd AI Fund provides investors with access to the next revolutionary wave of global venture capital opportunities in mission-centric AI companies and the generative AI space, helping solve real-world problems across multiple verticals.

The fund will invest in 20-25 venture investments diversified by stage and geography, sourced by a team of dedicated investment professionals, along with professionals from OurCrowd’s global network of third-party VC funds. The fund will also pursue follow-on opportunities in the most promising portfolio investments.

So far, several companies have been approved to be part of OurCrowd’s AI Fund including:

  • D-ID– D-ID revolutionizes digital interactions with AI-powered Digital People, enhancing customer engagement across various sectors, and has produced over 150 million videos for diverse clients including Fortune 500 companies.
  • One Zero Digital Bank– Israel’s first fully licensed digital bank, leveraging technology to provide customers with an automated private banking experience.
  • Polaris Quantum Biotech– Applying quantum computing technology to find promising molecules for the process of drug development.

“The OurCrowd AI Fund gives accredited investors the chance to access the most promising opportunities in AI startups as identified by experienced venture capital experts,” said Jon Medved [pictured above], CEO and Founder of OurCrowd. “Our collaboration with NVIDIA Inception will help give qualifying companies in the fund access to a program tailor-made to nurture startups and equip them for success.”

“When people think of artificial intelligence today, they think of generative AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, the transformative power of AI goes much further than its ability to generate text, photographs, music, video, and other materials,” Medved said. “Investors need to take a vertical view of the AI revolution. The application of AI to each business vertical will transform our world and shape the economies of the future. AI is poised to affect every industry sector, with an impact comparable to the introduction of cloud computing, social media, the smartphone, the PC, and, before that, electricity.”

NVIDIA Inception helps startups evolve faster through cutting-edge technology, opportunities to connect with venture capitalists, and access to the latest technical resources and tools from NVIDIA. The program supports all stages of a startup’s life cycle.

Arik Kol, Senior Director, Head of NVIDIA Inception Israel said, “Our collaboration with OurCrowd AI Fund will develop the next generation of AI startups, helping to shape the way that AI will benefit multiple aspects of our lives.”

Qualifying startups selected for the OurCrowd AI Fund portfolio will be fast-tracked into Inception, which will support them through access to NVIDIA Training courses. These companies will also benefit from opportunities to collaborate with industry-leading experts and access to additional investors, as well as cloud credits through NVIDIA partners and preferred pricing on select NVIDIA hardware and software.

OurCrowd is Israel’s most active AI investor, with $386M invested across 81 AI companies worldwide, with 8 exits to date including Lemonade, Magisto, and BriefCam, and is ranked among the top 15 most active VCs worldwide in AI deals since 2012, according to an analysis of PitchBook data.