Computerized vision company OrCam founded by Mobileye founder Prof. Amnon Shashua and his partner Ziv Aviram, is laying off 16% of its 380-strong workforce.
The letter summoning the candidates for dismissal to hearings states that the move is part of a restructuring and efficiency measures in the light of the new macro-economic environment, unconnected to the company’s financial position. Most of the employees who will be laid off are in research and development. OrCam is headquartered at Har Hotzvim in Jerusalem, near the offices of Mobileye. The company also has branches in Italy and the US.
OrCam’s previous CEO, Rani Hagag, left six months ago. He was replaced in August by Elad Serfaty, who had been responsible for Mobileye’s Middle East sales division and then VP Government Affairs at the company.
OrCam has developed a smart camera device attached to spectacles and designed to improve the lives of blind and partially sighted people and of people suffering from dyslexia by reading text and recognizing other objects and translating visual information to aural information. According to Pitchbook, in late 2020 OrCam was in negotiations on a $175 million fund raising round with Big Tech 50 (TASE: BIGT), a publicly traded late-stage investment partnership. The round could have given OrCam a valuation of $1.75 billion, but it was eventually cancelled. Up until its last round, in 2019, OrCam had raised $131 million altogether. Among the main investors in the company are Clal Insurance, Meitav Dash, the Barkat brothers’ BRM, Intel Capital, James Shaul, and the Google for Startups Accelerator.
The layoffs comes at a critical period for Prof. Shashua and Mobileye, which Shashua still manages after its acquisition by Intel. This Thursday, Intel will report its quarterly results, which are expected to be poor, and it will embark on a global downsizing involving the dismissal of thousands of employees, including several hundred in Israel. It may be that even Mobileye, one of Intel’s most profitable divisions, will be affected, although probably in a minor way if at all.
The day before, Mobileye will return to being independently listed on Nasdaq. The company is aiming for a valuation of $14.3-16 billion, after figures of $50 billion and then $30 billion were spoken of in the past. A substantial part of the amount raised will be used to make a $3.5 billion payment to Intel.
OrCam’s camera is attached to spectacles and is based on artificial intelligence technology. It dictates texts from documents and computer screens into the user’s ear, scans currency bills and product barcodes, and even recognizes faces of people the user meets, all this without a connection to the internet. The device is available in several languages, among them Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Chinese. Last year and in 2019, the device was chosen by Time magazine in its list of the 100 best inventions in the accessibility category.
OrCam did not respond to the report.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 23, 2022.
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