For the eighteenth year, "Globes" presents its list of the ten most promising startups in Israel. This is a list of young, groundbreaking Israeli technology companies that have behind them substantial fundraising rounds, in the tens of millions of dollars, that are growing healthily, making a significant impact on industries and consumers, and are on a sure path to an IPO within two to three years.
The "Globes" list of the most promising startups in Israel is based upon the choices of 66 leading local and foreign investment firms that are involved in the Israeli technology sector. We tried to avoid well-known unicorns and companies ranked among the promising startups in previous years. In the past, companies such as Mellanox, Monday.com, Lemonade, and Aramis have ranked high in the annual "Globes" most promising startups list.
In the survey that we carried out in the investment community, we asked each venture capital firm to recommend one startup in which it had invested, and to choose another four startups not in its portfolio that in its view will become the next big things in their fields. The VC firms were asked to choose privately-held startups with particularly high growth rates in software, hardware, foodtech, agritech, cleantech, and digital health (but not in biotech or pharmaceuticals). This year, we added a new category, military equipment, and we asked the participants in the survey to give points to founders who have served in the IDF reserves in the current war.
Among the 66 investment firms that helped to compile the list are Israeli firms Viola, Pitango, Cyberstarts, Entrée, StageOne Ventures, Vertex, and Qumra, while among the foreign firms are Insight Partners, Lightspeed, Blumberg, Intel Capital, and Bessemer.
The list includes a company founded by people formerly in the IDF and defense companies who have invented systems for underground surveys, aimed at construction and mining companies; a company that produces drones that have taken part in the fighting in the Gaza Strip; outstanding companies in artificial intelligence, life sciences, and cybersecurity, and two particularly interesting startups in the financial sector: one is a company with a system that monitors accounting transactions to prevent fraud - after a difficult year in which several instances of fraud were uncovered in startup companies - and the other is a company that assists some of the biggest banks on Wall Street with financial asset management.
The complete most promising startups list is as follows:
1. Exodigo
Underground mapping.
First place is taken by a startup with roots in Israel’s security forces. Its founders specialized in processing signals underground, in the air, and at sea. Exodigo has developed a system that surveys and maps the ground beneath construction sites and infrastructures. A real estate developer or a railway company can save millions of dollars and months of delays with accurate mapping of the ground on which a building will be constructed or a road or railway will be laid.
It often happens that a high-tension power cable, or a water or gas pipe, not drawn on the existing map can delay construction projects and add substantially to their costs, and even lead to lawsuits. Exodigo’s service, which uses underground sensors and an AI model based on thousands of hours of surveys, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the risk of delays and legal proceedings deters developers from gambling on starting construction without suitable underground mapping.
"We locate double the quantity of objects than is displayed on the maps," says co-founder and CEO Jeremy Suard. "In cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, there are always surprises in the ground. Cables are being laid for an infrastructure project, and a pipe is discovered where it’s not supposed to be. Just updating the plans to take account of it can take months, and the developer is exposed to lawsuits from contractors who can’t start work."
2. Qwak
Implementation of AI models for enterprises.
Qwak offers technology that enables enterprises to create, install, operate and manage AI applications. Use of the company’s platform is designed to reduce the amount of infrastructure work required for development of machine learning models, and it allows development and data science teams to focus on the core work.
3. Dot Compliance
Compliance solutions for the life science industry.
Dot Compliance produces AI-based solutions for managing quality control processes in life science companies, where time is very much money. Making control more efficient means saving time. To take an extreme case, for a pharmaceuticals company, bringing a product launch forward by a few months can be worth millions of dollars. The company claims that it shortens implementation time from many months to a few weeks.
4. Trullion
Accounting oversight platform using AI.
The company’s name is a fusion of "truth" and "million". It has developed a platform for the accounting industry that facilitates automated management of financial processes, and also control and identification of errors, using AI. Among other things, it detects financial fraud and prevents false reporting, phenomena that have become rife in privately held technology companies.
5. Fundguard
AI-powered investment accounting utility for financial asset managers.
The company, headquartered in the Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv, has become one of the fastest growing partners of banks in New York, on the back of the rally on Wall Street. Fundguard, founded by former employees of Goldman Sachs and Salesforce, assists large banks in managing mutual funds, ETFs, pension funds, and other financial assets, making available real time data, with constant cloud backup.
6. Torq
Hyperautomated cybersecurity solutions.
Since 2021, Torq has marketed one of the best-selling cybersecurity systems in the Israeli cyber industry. It enables large enterprises such as banks, telecommunications companies, and technology companies to make cybersecurity processes semi-automatic. The security manager at a company decides which programs he wishes to monitor and how, and what the response will be to threats, on a system that facilitates mapping of the processes, with an ease that is reminiscent of user-friendly visual work management software like that of HubSoft and Monday.com.
7. env0
Infrastructure-as-a-Code management solutions.
env0 (pronounced envzero) seeks to make developers’ work more efficient by reducing the cumbersome weight of the welter of coding in cloud infrastructures. The platform facilitates mapping of infrastructures when there are many different cloud environments, and management of and changes to the infrastructure in a centralized, orderly way, which the company says saves time and errors, and hence money.
8. Xtend
AI robotics and drone operating system for civilian and military use.
The fastest growing drones company in Israel has acquired a name for itself in the Swords of Iron war, enabling troops to send a drone to scout buildings and tunnels that is capable of opening doors, drop grenades, or carry out a suicide attack on a target. Xtend is currently developing a robotics system that will enable armies to operate coordinated swarms of drones and robots.
9. Lumen
App and device for measuring metabolism.
Against the background of the global obsession with correct nutrition, health, and longevity, Lumen has developed a device that enables anyone to measure their metabolism, and that makes nutrition recommendations. Fifteen seconds of breathing into a small device will tell you whether you are burning carbohydrates or fat, indications of the efficiency of your metabolism.
10. Bluewhite
Autonomous agricultural vehicles.
The company, which was founded in 2017, is a developer of AI-based technology to produce automated agricultural equipment. "In essence, we produce autonomous machines based on data. We take customers’ existing tractors and make them autonomous," explain Ben Alfi and Yair Shahar, two of the company’s three founders.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 18, 2024.
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