Tel Aviv is the city at the heart of Israel's reputation as a tech haven.
Israel has long been called a startup nation, having established itself as the tech hub of the Middle East. Tel Aviv–part of the area nicknamed 'Silicon Wadi' in reference to its US peer–houses a reported 1,500 startups, or 21 per square kilometre. This is in addition to multinational businesses including Google and Microsoft setting up research centres in the country.
It is no wonder then that venture capital investors have been pouring increasing amounts of capital into the nation. Already this year, Israeli startups have received €1.25 billion across nearly 200 deals, according to PitchBook data, around 68% of the total capital raised last year despite a fall in the number of transactions.
A large proportion of those funds are earmarked for software companies, which is by far Israel's dominant sector. The SaaS vertical has seen notable fundraising efforts from companies such as team management software specialist monday.com, which received $50 million in Series C funding last month. AI and cybersecurity are two areas which have seen their share of VC increase. That includes a $30 million funding in July for ThetaRay, the provider of an AI platform to identify signs of money laundering.
Below are the top 13 VC investors in Israel since the start of 2016, per the PitchBook Platform, excluding accelerator and incubator rounds (deal counts are in parentheses):
1. OurCrowd (32)
T-2. Magma Venture Partners (17)
T-2. Pitango Venture Capital (17)
T-2. Vertex Ventures Israel (17)
T-5. Jerusalem Venture Partners (16)
T-5. Keiretsu Forum (16)
T-7. Maniv Mobility (14)
T-7. Pontifax Venture Capital (14)
T-7. iAngels (14)
T-10. Bessemer Venture Partners (13)
T-10. StageOne Ventures (13)
T-10. Aleph (13)
13. OrbiMed (12)
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