Israeli technology skips the corona crisis - and with great success: start-ups raise $ 1.5 billion in three months • A record is also set in 2020 - about a third of the world's cyber investments have been raised in Israel
A new Israeli record
Photo:
GettyImages
A new record for Israeli cyber: raising NIS 5 billion ($ 1.5 billion) in 90 days.
At the end of the first quarter of 2021, Israeli cyber broke an all-time record, summing up three months during which start-ups in the industry raised a total of $ 1.5 billion in 17 different transactions.
The volume of investments places Israeli cyber in second place in the world in the distribution of investments after the United States. Performance is a continuation of a trend after a record year of 2020, during which investments reached $ 2.9 billion and accounted for 31% of all global cyber investments.
Israel's outstanding achievements in the cyber industry are particularly notable for measuring the industry by unicorn companies - a term attributed to a private company that has reached a value of more than $ 1 billion.
There are no less than half of the unicorns in global cyber in Israel, with the division being: Israel 11 companies, USA 8, China 1, Ireland 1, Switzerland 1.
One of the largest fundraisers in the first quarter of this year is that of Orca Security, which last month announced a $ 210 million fundraiser at a value of $ 1.2 billion, just two years after its inception.
"It is true that from the side, the focused and multiple investment in the Israeli cyber industry seems unreasonable compared to other high-tech industries, but market analysis shows that a value of more than $ 1 billion for cyber companies is often underestimated," says Gil Gron, co-founder of Orca Security.
According to Garon, "Israeli entrepreneurs have begun to build larger companies and developing markets. In the cyber field, Israel has one of the highest reputations in the world, and this encourages foreign investment."
"We have seen a reversal of trend"
Kobi Samborsky, founder and partner of the Glilot Capital Fund, which was established in 2011 and currently manages about $ 500 million in venture capital and growth capital in Israeli cyber, adds: "What we saw over the past decade are cyber companies that exit at the end and are acquired by large technology companies. strangeness.
"In the last year we have seen a reversal of a trend, and more cyber companies are seeing themselves as companies that stay long-term and will be really big."
Pavel Gurevitch, CEO of the cyber Guardicor company, in which former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, among others, invested, notes that "the intensive investments we see are a direct result of the damages and risks that occur as a result of lack of protection."
According to Gurevitch, "Israeli cyber is becoming a global success story because companies are able to bring the security solution needed to a market with a huge sales volume. Corona disruptions have also accelerated growth, because today there is no real advantage to geographical proximity to customers and easier to sell to foreign markets."