Israel Delivers: TechnoSpin, Gizmox, Endogun, Applicure

Today Israel’s innovators made all kinds of headlines from cleantech to medical devices to software security.

Let’s start with TechnoSpin. The four year old startup has raised $8 million from US VC 21 Ventures. They develop and produce rotors for small wind turbines which, it claims, are cheaper to produce and more easily assembled than competitor’s products, and can be operated on 80% of the earth’s surface – not just in high-wind areas. TechnoSpin also develops wind turbine gears which produce torque that is then converted into electrical power. Check out an interview with the CEO, Maxim Rakov.

 

Next on the list is Gizmox. This 2006-formed web application design startup announced today that it has reached an agreement to market its software through Microsoft marketing platforms. The Maayan Ventures portfolio company will use its Ajax-based environment for running web applications to enhance Microsoft’s Visual Studio environment development partnership program.

 

Then there’s Endogun Medical Systems. The 2004-founded graduate of Meytag Technology Incubatorand now Biomedix Incubator portfolio company has announced FDA approval for its internal soft-tissue fastening solution. This procedure, a key element of many Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS), is difficult to perform. Endogun’s technology, apparently, makes MIS procedures more safe, effective and simpler to perform.

 

Finally, Applicure Technologies released a statement via email that it has signed an agreement with British Trafalgar Capital Management for an investment of up to $5 million over a three year period. The four year old company, which is still negotiating with other investors in Israel and abroad for additional financing, creates software-based products for web application security and database compliance.

$20M for Provigent in Fourth Round of Financing

Provigent, a leading provider of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions for the broadband wireless transmission market, announced today that it has increased its fourth round of financing to $20 million.

The privately-owned company, which was founded in Israel in 2000 but is now headquartered in the U.S., makes products that “enable system vendors to rapidly develop cost-effective high performance broadband wireless transmission systems.” Their SoCs “offer an unparalleled combination of increased bandwidth, extended range and enhanced flexibility while lowering overall system costs.”

Their hottest product is the PVG310, “a complete state-of-the-art single chip modem that integrates all the physical-layer baseband functionality – modulation, demodulation and forward error correction – for point-to-point broadband wireless transmission.”

Ray Stata, who raised his equity fund’s initial investment from $1 to $4 million, said that Provigent’s “consistently growing and strong customer base is constant validation of its leading position as the merchant silicon provider in this growing market.”

CEO Dan Charash added that the “successful round of funding will enable Provigent to further accelerate its roadmap and market penetration.” “With an established economy of scale, significant R&D investments and a focused dedication to the broadband wireless transmission industry, Provigent continues to establish itself as the market’s leading SoC provider.

Other investors in Provigent include some of the biggest names in venture capital from Israel and abroad, including Sequoia Capital, Pitango Venture Capital and Dr. Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of QUALCOMM.

Check out the press release for more.

Siverge Partners With IBM on Powerful Processor

IBM is certainly taking advantage of the lightspeed innovation happening in the Israeli tech world. Herziliya-based Siverge Networks has told EETimes that it is collaborating with IBM on the development and production   of a convergence processor, codenamed Griffin. The chip will be available in the second half of this year, and will be sold to companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia-Siemens, Ericsson and ZTE.

Siverge, which was founded in 2005 and has 50 employees, “will use IBM development tools and subcomponent libraries in the design of the dedicated ASIC chip that is claimed to support a large number of telecom interfaces, various communications speeds and a wide range of networking protocols.”

Siverge’s core technology and architecture, according to its website, “enables OEMs to build converged packet-based communications systems for next generation networks that also support TDM services. This allows the design of multi-service, multi-rate and multi-interface line cards utilizing Siverge’s true one-chip universal gateway solution. Carriers can deploy a single platform for new packet based networks while supporting traditional services, revolutionizing the economics of carrier networks.”

According to Yuval Berger, CEO of Siverge: “In the next few years we see two main needs in the networking space. One is the need for much larger bandwidth, driven primary by the extensive use of video of all kinds. In practice, the ability of service providers to tackle this is very limited, since the costs of upgrading the networks are very high. As a result of that, bandwidth extensions are limited and incremental.

“The second problem is the need to converge different protocols across the networking generations while achieving true multi-service capabilities. Our chip is set to be the first processor that will solve both of the problems without compromising performance, which will be about 10 times higher than available chips.”

In January, Siverge raised $12 million in its first round of financing through Evergreen Venture Partners and Cedar Fund. The financing round marked Evergreen’s 100th venture investment.

Teuza Planning to Raise $120M for New Projects

Teuza – A Fairchild Technology Venture Ltd., is a publicly-traded fund founded in 1992 and headqaurtered in Haifa which invests primarily in venture companies active in the fields of software semiconductors, communications, electronics and medical equipment. According to Globes it “plans to raise a $120 million follow-on fund having fully invested its current $36 million fund. The company raised this fund more than 16 years ago.” With this new fund Teuza plans to add biotechnology to its traditional investment sectors.

On the heels of Walden Ventures failed attempts to raise $125 for a fourth fund, Teuza hopes it won’t fall victim to a similar situation. Its hoping that its selling six months ago of its 40% stake in NESS Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Systems Ltd. to Bioness Inc. for $75 million will help finance the fund.

According to Teuza’s website:

“Total company market value currently stands at about 27M$ having a net equity worth of about 25M$. Since the beginning of January 2004 the price per share of Teuza shares increased by 70%. So far, Teuza Fund has invested in 15 companies, in the total amount of $35M. Usually the company prefers to have a large equity stake between 25%-49%, so that every successful exit becomes very significant. Teuza has successfully exited from nine companies (partial exit from four of them).”

Some recent exits:

• In April 2000 Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd., in which the original investment was $900,000, issued its shares on the USA NASDAQ stock exchange (at a post money valuation of $285 million).
• Teuza had a successful exit from WaveAccess when Lucent bought the company for $60 million. The profit from this realization was about NIS 43 million.
• Teuza realized its balance investments in Oramir that was sold to for $27 milli