Author: Techtime

FlyOne to market 25 personal Air’s eVTOL vehicles

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First commercial agreement for Air, developer of personal eVTOL (electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft). The Israeli company, located in Pardes-Hanna, announced its partnership with Australia’s FlyOne, local supplier of electrical aircrafts which also operates Skycademy – an academy for pilots using personal electrical aircraft, such as the one developed by Air.

As part of this agreement, FlyOne will begin to market a fleet of about 25 personal AIR ONE vehicles, and will also provide training, certification, maintenance and service. According to Air, the partnership is estimated at $4 million, where each AIR ONE vehicles is valued at $150,000. FlyOne offers a 12-week training which grants the student with a local license allowing it to fly two-seater aircraft during day hours.   

Air was founded in 2017 by Chen Rozen, serial entrepreneur in the field of unmanned aircrafts, which used to formerly work for Elbit. Another co-founder joining him later are Netanel Goldberg and Rani Plaut. The company has developed an all electrical two-seater aircraft, , intended for short flights and leisure. AIR ONE is equipped with a 60kWh Lithium battery, fully charged within an hour. The vehicle is capable of flying for a range of 110 miles (177 km) on a single charge at speeds up to 155 miles per hour (250 km).  It comes with foldable wings, which makes it easy to store, and it allows owners to take off and land on any flat surface.

The core of the flight control system is based on the Fly by Intent software developed by Air. This software performs complex control and navigation functions, so the usage is not limited to highly skilled or professional pilots only (the license type is similar to the sport one, which requires a 15-20 training hours). Another safety features include an AI based monitoring system, which performs comprehensive inspections to the vehicle and replaces complex maintenance and operational activities, in order to provide maximum safety for less professional users, too. According to the company, AIR ONE is based on technologies and techniques adopted from the aviation and automotive industries, and is planned to be used as a fun, safe and daily vehicles, meeting all aviation standards.

Sidelong the current agreement, 60 people already booked  an AIR ONE vehicle using the company’s website. In order to do that, they required to pay a deposit of $1,000. For almost two years, Air is working with the American FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and is expected to sign a G1 certification soon, as part of the vehicle’s certification process, and also started with the same process in Australia. The company estimates the process in front of the Australian authorities will be much simpler than the American one.

Square Peg Expands activity in Israel, appoints Yonatan Sela as Partner

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International VC Square Peg is expanding its operations in Israel and appoints Yonatan Sela as a Partner. Yonatan will manage the fund’s investment activities in Israel together with Philippe Schwartz. Square Peg invests primarily in Australia, SouthEast Asia and Israel. The firm manages $1.2 billion across several funds, and is currently raising a new fund that is expected to be at least $500m in size. Square Peg’s portfolio includes two of the world’s most prominent unicorns in recent years, Canva and Stripe, and many others, including Airwallex, Finaccel and Fiverr.

Square Peg has been growing its operations in Israel in recent years and has invested $250 million in Israeli startups, including freelance marketplace Fiverr, weather technology platform Tomorrow.io, healthcare AI software Aidoc, IoT security provider Sternum, and AI infrastructure platform Deci. The fund typically invests in Israeli companies in Seed and A rounds, and recently invested in Exodigo and Retrain, as well as other investments it hasn’t yet announced. Square Peg has so far returned $550 million to investors.

Philippe Schwartz: “The depth and diversity of the Israeli ecosystem is rare by any standard, and that’s why we are expanding our activities here. A new generation of large, world changing companies have been created in Israel in recent years, and it’s a great privilege for us to be active partners in their journey and support their creation. All of us at Square Peg Israel spent most of our careers on the other side of the table as operators and founders – this is truly what we love to do. As we expand our investing activity in Israel and work to empower our founders, we are looking to add more investors to our team.”

Yonatan is an entrepreneur and investor with expertise in crypto, fintech, and consumer internet (B2C). He co-founded Props, a crypto protocol intended to bring user ownership to consumer apps that has amassed 12 million users. Prior to that, he was the CBO of YouNow, a pioneer in mobile live streaming. With more than 50 million downloads, the app has paid out tens of millions of dollars to content creators through its virtual economy. Yonatan was previously a founding team member and the VP marketing at B2B video platform Tvinci, which was acquired by Kaltura. During his time in New York, Yonatan worked as an investor at Venrock where he began investing in fintech, crypto and media, and as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.

Yonatan Sela: “While increasingly we see outstanding founders working on crypto and B2C ventures, many funds in Israel have been avoiding investing in these areas, especially when it comes to crypto. For me, these are verticals I am particularly passionate about having built and invested in them in the past. Naturally, I’ve made two of my first investments in Square Peg in these areas, and I’m thrilled to be a part of a fund where these domains are considered important. I hope that we can contribute to nurturing the next generation of category leading ventures in these categories.”

[Pictured above: Yonatan Sela. Credit: SquarePeg]

Aliya 2.0, doing it right

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By Leehee Gerti, VP Marketing at CodeValue

A melting pot. A land of refuge, the only homeland for people of Jewish heritage. That is what modern-day Israel IS. It’s been 30 years since the last big wave of “Aliya” (immigration to Israel) when over 1 million people from the former USSR made their new home here in the land of milk and honey. Education, science, creativity, and innovation have been the cornerstone of the new founded land straight form its inception, that is true enough, but what that wave of Aliya brought with it is a different culture that sanctifies hard work, uncompromising compliance with goals, and deep exploration.

The merger between the two, the method versus ad-hoc, the planning versus “it’ll be okay”, these have made Israel a global high-tech super-power and one of the strongest economies in the world.   

The war in Eastern Europe presents us with a new challenge, a potential pool of tens of thousands of people entitled to immigration under the “Law of Return”. A genetic and cultural repository similar to that of the immigrants of the 1990s. If we are smart enough to prepare properly, embrace, understand the difficulties and provide a quality integration infrastructure – the potential benefits are massive.

When the 1990’s immigrants entered the Israeli labor market, their labor productivity fell. This is because they – as with any immigrant – suffered from the “Kuznets effect”. Simon Kuznets, a well-known Jewish economist from Harvard and one of the first to calculate the GNP, found that when immigrants arrive in a new country, their earning capacity drops by 50% to 70%, and it takes them 20 years to return to earning level that is appropriate to their level of education. 

We do not have that time nor privilege.

In the last year or so, we’ve been experiencing a massive workforce shortage in the Israeli high-tech industry. It is estimated that there are anywhere between 10,000 to 25,000 open development positions waiting to be filled. 

Many companies have put a lot of effort into narrowing the gaps between what is required and what is available. At my company CodeValue, for example, we conducted several Techboost rounds in which we identified and recruited people with potential and love of tech’ but lacking sufficient experience – and trained them in modern technologies to suit current market requirements. 

Such initiatives need to be replicated and adapted in order to accommodate the potential immigrants from Ukraine and Russia. High-tech companies and other prominent employers need to join hands with government organizations and NGOs whose goal is to promote immigration and integration. Let us map out the needs of the immigrants, their abilities, and professional aspirations and at the same time establish a unified system that will incorporate specific jobs and open positions that may suit the immigrants’ professional interests, language, and culture. We need to shorten processes, streamline procedures, and get going… fast.

History presents us with a unique opportunity. Rare coincidence complied of global epidemic aftershock – which has pushed forward the digital transformation revolution, A country that has put its trust in the high-tech industry, and a well-educated, hard-working workforce looking for a new home to thrive in. 

AI-Startup Run:ai Raises $75M in Series C Round

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Run:ai announced that it has raised $75M in Series C round led by Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners, who led the previous Series B round. The round includes the participation of additional existing investors, TLV Partners and SCapital VC, bringing the total funding raised to date to $118M.

According to Run:ai, the company has grown sharply, with a 9x increase in Annual Recurring Revenue in the last year, while the company’s staff more than tripled over the same period. The company plans to use the investment to further grow its global teams and will also be considering strategic acquisitions as it develops and enhances the company’s Atlas software platform.

Omri Geller, Run:ai CEO and co-founder, said, “It may sound dramatic, but AI is really the next phase of humanity’s development. When we founded Run:ai, our vision was to build the de- facto foundational layer for running any AI workload. Our growth has been phenomenal, and this investment is a vote of confidence in our path. Run:ai is enabling organizations to orchestrate all stages of their AI work at scale, so companies can begin their AI journey and innovate faster.”

Research firm IDC predicts global AI spending in 2022 will reach $433bn, nearly a 20% annual increase. However, AI infrastructure is complex to manage and scale. Companies see low hardware utilization, scheduling clashes and a delayed pace of innovation — if they can build functioning AI infrastructure at all.

Run:ai’s Atlas platform provides a ‘Foundation for AI Clouds’, whether on premises, across public clouds, or at the edge, allowing organizations to have their AI resources on a single, unified platform that supports AI at all stages of development, from building and training models to running inference in production. Customers include Fortune 500 companies as well as cutting-edge AI startups from multiple verticals like finance, automotive, healthcare, and gaming, as well as leading academic AI research centers.

“We do for AI hardware what VMware and virtualization did for traditional computing — more efficiency, simpler management, greater user productivity. Traditional CPU computing has a rich software stack with many development tools for running applications at scale. AI, however, runs on dedicated hardware accelerators such as GPUs which have few tools to help with their implementation and scaling. With Run:ai Atlas, we’ve built a cloud-native software layer that abstracts AI hardware away from data scientists and ML engineers, letting Ops and IT simplify the delivery of compute resources for any AI workload and any AI project.” said Ronen Dar, Run:ai CTO and co-founder.

“As enterprises in every industry reimagine themselves to become learning systems powered by AI and human talent, there has been a global surge in demand for AI hardware chipsets such as GPUs,” said Lonne Jaffe, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “As the Forrester Wave AI Infrastructure report recently highlighted, Run:ai creates extraordinary value by bringing advanced virtualization and orchestration capabilities to AI chipsets, making training and inference systems run both much faster and more cost-effectively. Because of explosive demand since 2020, Run:ai has almost quadrupled its customer base, and we couldn’t be more excited to double down on our partnership with Omri and the incredible Run:AI team as they lean into their momentum and Scale Up.”

Hi Auto in multimillion-dollar deal with US drive-thru restaurant chain Checkers & Rally’s

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American drive-thru restaurant chain Checkers & Rally’s is adopting the speech recognition developed by Israeli startup Hi Auto. The Tel Aviv-based company’s solution is the first of its kind for the restaurant industry. The solution enables restaurants to take orders from drivers through an artificial intelligence system that makes it possible for drivers to converse normally with a virtual assistant at the orders counter.

Checkers & Rally’s has about 900 branches across the US. It will install the solution in all the company-operated stores and in most of the franchised locations. Hi Auto uses a SaaS model and the deal will generate millions of dollars revenue for the company.

Two of the ten largest US fast-food chains are carrying out advanced pilots to test Hi Auto’s solution for automated voice ordering. The US fast food market is estimated at $300 billion, and restaurants with drive-thru lanes see up to 80% of their total business there.

The speech recognition technology that Hi Auto has developed enables drivers at the drive-thru lane to converse in natural language with Auto, a smart AI-based virtual assistant, which accepts the order, understands its contents, offers additions and upgrades (upsell) in a human voice, and sends the order to the kitchen. The system has a 95% accuracy rate. It understands complex menus, can understand the customer’s half-sentences, multiple detailed requests, and monitors changes in the order that the customer is making during the conversation.

The system effectively functions as an outstanding employee, who does not tire, always comes to work, is always polite, and does not forget to recommend upsells. The system not only helps address the labor shortage crisis in the US restaurant industry, which is losing hundreds of thousands of workers a month, but also improves the restaurant’s performance when compared to a human employee. For example, recordings of employees discovered that they only offer upsells for around 10% of orders, while the system does so for around 70% of orders. Because the cost structure of restaurants is mostly comprised of fixed costs, this change has an immediate effect on the bottom line.

Roy Baharav, CEO of Hi Auto, says, “Hi Auto is the first virtual assistant in the world that is being deployed at scale by Quick Service chains. The solution that we developed reduces the load and dependence on personnel by taking orders automatically and helps overcome the shortage of about 1.5 million workers in the US, which has adversely affected the industry in the past two years. In the future, the virtual assistant will improve all restaurant sales processes.”

Baharav adds, “Routine, low-paid work under pressure causes high turnover of workers and a constant race in hiring and training. In the current crisis, owners are unable to man restaurants with the minimum number of workers needed and have to close early or shut down completely. Chains are now dreaming of building restaurants that are based on a smaller number of employees who receive a higher salary and stay diligent over time, and we can help them make this dream come true.”

Hi Auto was founded in 2019 by Zohar Zisapel, who serves as its executive chairman and is an investor in the company, Roy Baharav, CEO, who served in IDF Unit 81 and worked at Google, and Eyal Shapira, CTO, a graduate of the IDF Talpiot program and Unit 81, and a serial entrepreneur. The company has raised $8 million since it was founded and is preparing for a Series A funding round in 2022. The company currently has 40 employees, most of whom are at its development center in Tel Aviv, and it plans to double its workforce in the coming year in order to meet its growth challenges.

IDF choose Coganta’s rough terrain simulator

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IDF, through the Department of Production and Procurement in the Ministry Of Defense, purchased Coganta’s simulator, which simulate terrain driving. IDF will use the simulator to validate and train autonomous driving algorithms, as part of the development of autonomous vehicles (AV) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for military usage.

 Coganta’s AV Off-road simulator is a new platform, intended for training and testing of autonomous vehicles driving in difficult terrain conditions on unpaved roads, to include military vehicles such as unmanned tools and remotely operated vehicles (ROV). The system simulates many scenarios, to include off-road driving on unpaved roads, narrow trails, steep slopes, muddy or sandy ground, as well as obstacles along the path such as rocks or vegetation, and driving in poor visibility conditions like darkness or limited view angles.   

Simulating terrain driving features complex challenges. Unlike public road, where the driving route is clear and regulated, in maneuvering in rough terrain the AV need to consistently estimate the possible route without rolling over or encountering an impassable obstacle. Shay Rootman, Director of Business Development at Coganta, explains to Techtime that the main challenge is simulating the physic of the rough terrain driving: “In the field, there are no predefined driving outlines. One of the major physical aspects that have to be taken into account in rough terrain driving is the friction generated between ground and road conditions and between the autonomous vehicle – whether it is muddy, sandy or bumpy ground. The vehicles have to get pretty good estimation of the road conditions in order to adjust the speed and the angle of its approach and whether the obstacle in front is passable”.

In recent years, using unmanned military vehicles became more and more common in military forces around the world. It is mainly used for reconnaissance missions, mine clearance and lanes opening in situations where human’s presence might be dangerous. For example, the US Army develops autonomous transport trucks that can move independently in a convoy.

In addition, Israeli defense companies are also investing in developing autonomous vehicles in the recent years. The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) develops a variety of combat instruments such as autonomous robotic patrol for detecting and evacuating Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and autonomous bulldozers for carrying out complex Combat Engineering missions in threatened areas. Elbit also started in recent years to develop unmanned vehicles to be used in routine security missions. In 2016, together with the IDF, the company has developed the “Border Keeper”, spanned along the Gaza Strip border and the border with Egypt.

“The military autonomous robotics area is boosting. When we started to work with the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, we noticed that simulators are required in AV world in the same way it required in the civil AV world”, says Rootman.

Coganta’s flagship product is a simulator system for training and testing autonomous vehicles. The simulator generates realistic imaging of complete cities – to include streets, trees, road obstacles, cars, human beings and more. It also generates information derived from various sensors such as cameras, infra-red systems and LiDAR. The system allows for generation of multiple scenarios and using it shortens the R&D and verification processes schedules and reduce the number of test drives. In recent years Coganta developed simulators for different types of AV’s such as agricultural tools, mining logistic tools and vehicles intended for rough terrain transportation.

Cybersixgill secures $35 Million in Series B Funding

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Cybersixgill announced today the company has raised  $35 million in Series B funding led by More Provident and Pension Funds and REV Venture Partners. Additional participating investors include CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, Elron Ventures, SonaeIM, and OurCrowd.

This latest investment brings the company’s total investment to $56 million. The company stated it will use the funds to build on customer momentum, continue innovation of Cybersixgill’s threat intelligence solutions, expand global footprint and grow sales and marketing. 

“We are extremely pleased to be working with world-renowned cybersecurity investors and tech leaders committed to fueling innovation and delivering the best cybersecurity solutions on the market,” said Sharon Wagner [pictured above], CEO of Cybersixgill. “As cybercrime rises faster and the velocity of ransomware attacks increases, the need for accurate and timely threat intelligence has never been greater. Through automation and machine learning, we have built the largest threat intelligence data lake that arms our customers with the earliest signals to stop attacks and secure their overall cybersecurity posture.”

According to Cybersixgill, the company has experienced accelerated growth, quadrupling its revenue and doubling its global footprint in the last three years. Cybersixgill’s solutions harness the power of automatic collection and extraction of threat intelligence sourced from social media, instant messaging, and clear, deep, and dark webs to create a threat and risk intelligence data backbone that provides the context needed for customers to implement preemptive security responses that stop breaches in their tracks.

“We are thrilled to be investing in the outstanding team at Cybersixgill. This financing round will enable them to further strengthen their leading threat intelligence solutions whilst aggressively expanding their customer base,” said Kevin Brown, Founder Partner, REV. 

Founded in 2014, Cybersixgill brings agility to cyber threat intelligence, with fully automatic threat intelligence solutions to help organizations proactively detect and protect against phishing, data leaks, fraud, malware, and vulnerability exploitation – enhancing cyber resilience and minimizing risk exposure in real-time. The company has hundreds of customers in North America, EMEA, and APAC, including global enterprises, financial institutions, MSSPs, government and law enforcement agencies.