(TECH) Carmanah To Acquire Israels LED Power Supplies Company Lightech For $18.5 Million

"Solar LED lighting and power systems provider Carmanah Technologies will acquire Lightech Electronic, a developer of power supplies for LED lighting, for $18.5 million in a cash and stock transaction.

'With this merger, Carmanah makes an expansion into a complementary and synergistic business' said Rob Cruickshank, Chairman of Carmanah. 'Carmanah will be taking advantage of the vast lighting market’s current shift to LED, and applying the joint resources of Carmanah and Lightech to satisfy the urgent market need for LED lighting. In turn, the resulting technology developments at Lightech will ultimately advance the capabilities and applications of Carmanah’s outdoor area illumination product portfolio.'



'This is an important and exciting development for Lightech as it will not only allow Lightech to continue to build on its existing strengths but also provide our global customers with an established technology path to meet their future needs for state-of-the-art solutions,' said David Schreiber, the Chairman and CEO of Lightech.

Lightech designs drivers and transformers for use in LED and Halogen lighting fixtures from research and development facilities located in Lod, Israel and Torrance, California, US. The company manufactures these drivers and transformers through EMS contractors in China and distributes these products worldwide through logistics centers in Hong Kong, California, Canada and the UK.

For fiscal 2009, Lightech’s revenues were $19.5 million, and net loss was $1.2 million. For the first six half of 2010, Lightech’s revenues were $10.6 million and net income was $0.8 million.

Carmanah is a solar LED lighting company specializing in self-contained solar LED lighting systems for marine, aviation, traffic and off-grid lighting applications worldwide. Carmanah is a publicly traded company, with common shares listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol CMH." (source)

(TECH) AOL Acquires Video Syndication Network 5min Media

"Web services company AOL has acquired video syndication network 5min Media. The acquisition allows AOL to significantly expand its consumer offering in video programming and connect consumers with high-quality video. Deal terms were not disclosed.

'Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web,' said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. 'AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade. 5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities -- it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering from content creation through syndication and distribution to the consumer experience and monetization.'

AOL has already begun to integrate 5min Media's video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed prior to the acquisition. The acquisition of 5min Media will enable AOL to add more video inventory to sites, and to enhance the distribution and monetization of AOL-produced original video content throughout the Web.

5min Media is a video syndication network with more than 20 million unique visitors across its 800 partner sites. The company provides media companies and professional independent video producers with a comprehensive video platform that targeted viewers across 21 different verticals, including Home, Food, Beauty, Fashion, Health, Travel and Pets.

5min was founded in 2006 by Ran Harnevo, Hanan Lashover and Tal Simantov. The company in is headquartered in New York City with offices in Or Yehuda, Israel." (source)

(TECH) IBM Acquires Israeli Online Storage Optimization Provider Storwize

"IBM has acquired the online storage optimization provider Storwize, to help IBM clients further improve storage efficiency, reduce storage requirements. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Storwize, a privately held company based in Marlborough, Massachusetts USA, have raised $38 million in VC backing thus far, from Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, Tamares Group, and Tokyo Electron Device.

Storwize provides online storage optimization through real-time data compression, delivering dramatic cost reduction without performance degradation. The company has over one hundred customers such as Mobileye, Polycom Israel, Shopzilla and Sumitomo Mitsui Construction across a wide range of industries including energy, manufacturing, finance, insurance, telecommunications and cloud services.

'Real-time data compression helps address a significant client need -- making it affordable to analyze and make sense of massive amounts of data in order to provide new services,' said Brian Truskowski, general manager, IBM System Storage and Networking. 'By adding Storwize to our innovative portfolio of storage solutions, IBM is better equipped than ever to help clients handle growing quantities of data and make more of it available for analytics.'

'IBM has the strongest vision for the future direction of storage and we are pleased to become a part of that vision,' said Ed Walsh, CEO, Storwize. 'Our customers will benefit significantly as our talented employees and innovative storage solutions merge with IBM's world-wide reach in sales, service and research and development.'

This acquisition continues IBM's investment in real-time compression, which has been proven for DB2 and Informix to reduce the overall total cost of information ownership by up to 80%. The Storwize appliance will work with popular NAS systems, including IBM N series and SONAS, as well as non-IBM NAS systems from EMC, HP, NetApp and others.

Storwize was founded in 2004 by Gal Naor, the company president, along with Jonathan Amit, the current Chief Technology Officer of Storwize. Ori Bauer, who joined Storwize in 2008 as Vice President of Engineering, is managing the company R&D site in Israel." (source)

(TECH) Is Nanotech Paint Israel's Secret New Weapon?

"Israeli company uses nanotechnology to develop paint that makes planes disappear off radar.

Imagine for a moment what the battlefield will look like in the future. Unmanned planes flying through the air; robots fighting on the ground; smart missiles hunting down targets. Now imagine that none of this can be detected on radar screens.

It may sound fictional, but it's happening. An Israeli company called Nanoflight is currently developing a special paint that makes drones, missiles, or war craft simply disappear. Or, to be more precise, they become very difficult to detect.



The critical stage in developing the paint, which was developed in a nanotechnology lab, has recently concluded, and a successful test run was conducted this week. For the test run, a thin layer of the material was painted on dummy missiles, and radar waves aimed at them had a difficult time registering them.

The paint particles don't make the missile's detection on the radar disappear completely, but make it exceedingly difficult to positively identify the object as a missile. In the future, this development will allow any missile or jet significantly decreased radar detection.

Even though they may not entirely disappear from radar screens, this technology is a considerably more cost-effective method to evade radar detection than purchasing an American stealth plane for $5 billion.

How does it work? In order to locate objects, the radar transmitter sends out electromagnetic waves. When these waves hit an object, they are scattered in all directions, with some of them being bounced back to the radar itself. Regular signal reception indicates the existence of an object.

The nanotechnology developed envelopes the object, absorbs the radio waves emitted by the radar, and releases them as heat energy scattered in space. In doing so, the material disguises the object, making it difficult to identify by radar.

'We are only at the beginning and are discovering new worlds everyday,' said Eli Shaldag, a former senior Israel Air Force official who worked on the Arrow missile project. He currently is part of the military applications department of Nanoflight.

'This is a breakthrough with the potential to change the rules of the game in the battlefield,' Shaldag said.



When will the material be ready for use on war craft?

'We have already completed the main development stage. We conducted a number of tests and discovered that the particles in their nanotechnology composition do significantly neutralize the ability to detect objects that have been painted with the material. We are entering the second stage, after which we will already be able to produce the material in larger quantities.'

Will this material be applicable for additional uses in the future?

'Absolutely yes. Discovery of nanotechnology materials is still in its infancy, and we are decoding the secret of this technology's power every day. We are currently working on developing an application of the material that will work with infrared so that soldiers won't be detected on night-vision goggles.'

According to company officials, the material can also be used for civilian purposes.

'Just like the nanotechnology material can prevent a radar from detecting a missile, it can also prevent radiation emitted by electrical transformers from reaching nursery schools,' said Nanoflight CEO Ricardo Burstein.

Burstein also noted that the material can prevent pollution through its absorption and transformation properties.

'In the future, it could be painted on sidewalks and roads in order to decrease air pollution. We are currently conducting an experiment with the City of Ramat Gan in which we are painting guardrails with the material in order to purify pollution from cars,' Burstein explained." (source)

(TECH) Trustwave Acquires Breach Security To Offer WAF & Application Penetration Testing Solution

"Information security and compliance solutions provider Trustwave has acquired the Web application firewall (WAF) technology provider Breach Security, to offer single source WAF and Application Penetration Testing Solution. The terms of the deal didn’t disclose.

A WAF is an appliance or software that provides protection for web applications, such as an e-commerce site, against attacks. When combined, WAF and application penetration testing more effectively protect applications from cyber criminals than each of the solutions deployed in a stand-alone manner.

Trustwave will integrate the WAF into its existing application security suite delivered through its SpiderLabs advanced security team to provide complete web application life cycle protection. Trustwave's SpiderLabs is a leading provider of application security programs, including penetration testing, secure code review, security-focused software development training and incident response.

"Hackers increasingly target insecure web applications as their point of entry into an organization's network," said Sanjay Mehta, CEO of Breach Security. "Adding WAF to Trustwave's application security suite provides customers with an unrivaled defense-in-depth solution to secure applications throughout the software development lifecycle."

Founded in 2004, Breach Security provider real-time, continuous web application integrity and security that protects sensitive web-based information. Breach Security’s products protect web applications from hacking attacks and data leakage, and ensure applications operate as intended.

Breach Security's WebDefend application firewall appliance, deployed by enterprises and small and mid-sized businesses, features inbound and outbound inspection of web traffic for sensitive data, such as credit card and Social Security numbers. In addition, Breach Security has been the primary custodian of ModSecurity, the most widely deployed web application firewall in the world with more than 10,000 deployments.

Trustwave is a provider of on-demand and subscription-based information security and payment card industry compliance management solutions to businesses and government entities. The coampny is headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia." (source)

(TECH) Snaptu Secures $6 Million From Carmel Ventures & Sequoia Capital

"Mobile application network provider Snaptu has secured $6M funding in a second round lead by Israeli venture capital (VC) fund Carmel Ventures. US based VC firm Sequoia Capital, which led the previous round, also participated in this round of funding.

The Israeli startup also announced its mobile content delivery service has reached 10 million users worldwide. Snaptu service is bringing social networks, news, sports, and weather sources to mobile devices that do not have advanced smartphones.

"Reaching the 10 million mark shows the appetite from people with regular phones to have the same experiences and access to services that the relatively few people with the top-end phones enjoy," said Ran Makavy, Snaptu CEO.

"Snaptu is addressing the under-served large majority of mobile users world-wide by proving that a superior user experience is possible on any data-capable mobile device," said Rina Shainski, a General Partner at Carmel Ventures. "Snaptu has experienced exponential viral growth since it launched. By bringing high quality, simple to use services to all mobile users, Snaptu is changing the face of the mobile web."

Snaptu, formerly known as Moblica, was founded in August 2007 by Lior Tal, the company VP Business Development. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in London, UK." (source)

(TECH) AR Gaming Startup Ogmento Raises $3.5 Million From Chart Venture Partners & CNF Investments

"Augmented Reality (AR) gaming startup Ogmento has raised $3.5 million in first round of equity financing led by Chart Venture Partners with participation from CNF Investments.

Ogmento will use the funding to expand development of its AR game platform and operations in New York and Los Angeles. The company will also use the proceeds to expand the core features of its technology as it prepares the release of several game titles in the coming year.

Ogmento has already developed interactive Augmented Reality experiences for Penguin Publishing, SAP, Orange Telecom, and PBS. The company is currently producing games in collaboration with leading media, CPG, and sports enterprises and will continue to partner with game developers and augmented reality labs around the world.

“This investment allows us to expand our operations to support our growth while putting development resources into our own intellectual property,” said Ori Inbar, co-founder and CEO of Ogmento. “Chart and CNF bring a strong track record of identifying disruptive technologies early, and working with founders to build strong companies.”

Ogmento is developing the next generation of video games that let users directly interact with their surrounding environment. The company is currently developing AR content for a range of mobile devices and platforms including iPhone, Android, PC, and traditional game consoles. Global mobile gaming revenue is projected to reach $11.4 billion in 2014, from 2009 revenue of $4.7 billion, according to Gartner.

Ogmento (formerly Pookatak Games) was founded in 2009 by Inbar, Brad Foxhoven (CMO), Brian Selzer (President), Oriel Bergig (VP R&D) and Nate Hagbi (Chief Wizard). As part of the financing, Cole Van Nice, a partner with Chart, will join Ogmento’s management team directly as COO to help drive strategic planning. The company has offices in New York and Los Angeles." (source)

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(TECH) Brightsource Energy Raises $150 Million From Alstom, CalSTRS, VantagePoint, Morgan Stanley & DFJ

"Solar thermal power plants developer BrightSource Energy has raised $150 million in a fourth financing round. New investors including Alstom and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) joined existing investors, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ).

The new round brings BrightSource’s total equity financing to more than $300 million and positions the company for significant growth. As part of the financing, global power-generation leader Alstom has committed to invest up to $55 million in its first move into the solar market.

The additional financing will be used to support BrightSource's 2,610 megawatts in contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and Southern California Edison to build 14 solar power plants in the US southwest by 2016. The funds will also be used by BrightSource to further its international expansion plans.

“BrightSource Energy’s market-leading solar-tower thermal-power technology complements Alstom’s strong portfolio of renewable energy solutions, building on our strength in hydro, geothermal, wind, tidal power, biomass and waste-to-energy solutions. Following this investment, both companies intend to enter into an industrial relationship, which will enhance BrightSource’s leading position in this industry,” said Philippe Joubert, Alstom Power President.

In February 2010, BrightSource received a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for $1.37 billion in loan guarantees to support the financing of BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project – the first of its US-based power projects. Once constructed, Ivanpah will be the world’s largest solar energy project, nearly doubling the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the US today.

BrightSource Energy provides clean, reliable and low cost solar energy for utility and industrial companies worldwide. BrightSource Energy’s solar plants are designed to minimize their impact on the environment and help customers reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, BrightSource Energy is a privately held company with operations in the United States, Israel, and Australia. BrightSource Industries (Israel), formerly known as Luz II, headquartered in Jerusalem, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BrightSource Energy." (source)

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(TECH) Bitstream To Acquire The Business Flow Automation Systems Developer Press-Sense For $6.5 Million

"Software development company Bitstream will acquire the developer of business flow automation systems Press-sense for $6.5 million. The Acquisition expands Bitstream's global presence and strengthens the Pageflex product line and sales channels to better serve multi-channel customers.

Press-sense is a developer and supplier of business flow automation solutions for the Print Industry. By applying process automation to the print service provider's business, the company's Press-sense iWay, and Press-sense manager solutions offer printers the tools to fully manage, control and automate their online and offline business operations.

The company's solutions provide commercial printing and digital service providers with business management tools that maximize production efficiency, monitor and reduce costs, and increase profit ratios. The comapny has an install base of more than 1,500 customers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

"In the past few years we have seen a dramatic increase in the demand for automated processes in the document production space," said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, Bitstream President and CEO. "Our Pageflex product line leads the industry in tackling the front-end of the process: order taking and document production. Press-sense provides the most extensive business management tools for the back-end of the process enabling companies to monitor and reduce their operating costs. Through this acquisition, Bitstream becomes the only entity able to offer the full complement of solutions required by document producers."

Press-sense is a privately-held company founded by Amir Karbyin 2001 and funded over the years by several venture capital firms. Bitstream goal is to retain the Press-sense staff worldwide and incorporate them into its team. Bitstream will maintain an office in Israel, which will include product development, sales, and customer support capabilities. The Israel office will allow Bitstream to expand its real-time support for existing customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

Bitstream will also continue to support Press-senses' existing customers and OEM partners, including the Indigo division of Hewlett-Packard (HP), Oce, and Xerox, all of whom private label Press-sense software for distribution to their digital print customers and have expressed their support of the acquisition.

Bitstream develops software technologies and applications for the graphic art and mobile communications industries. The company total revenue increased by 4% to $5.2 million in the first quarter of 2010. Bitstream is traded on NASDAQ (BITS) with a market cap of $76 million." (source)

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(TECH) PHP Solutions Provider Zend Raises $9 Million From Greylock, Intel, SAP, Azure, Index & Walden

"PHP solutions provider Zend Technologies has raised $9 million in venture funding led by Greylock Partners, with participation from all other Zend investors including Azure Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Intel Capital, SAP Ventures, and Walden.

The investment will supporte the Company's accelerated product development and market expansion. Zend is the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications. PHP runs 35% of the world's Web sites.

In 2009, Zend added 4,000 new customers, achieved record sales, and expanded into key geographies such as the UK, the Netherlands and India. Zend now has more than 1,000,000 registered users.

"Technology cooperation with IBM, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft and other industry leaders further enables us to deliver Zend PHP solutions broadly into corporate IT departments where simple yet powerful and scalable solutions for rapid application development are in high demand," said Andi Gutmans, CEO and co-founder of Zend.

Zend offers an end-to-end PHP solution for rapid development, deployment and management of web-based applications. Zend's integrated PHP web solutions include: Zend Framework, an enterprise framework for systematic PHP projects; Zend Studio, a PHP integrated development environment, and Zend Server, the Company's PHP Web application server, which was a primary driver of Zend’s business growth last year as a result of increasing demand.

Zend is headquartered in Cupertino, California, with worldwide operations in France, Germany, Ireland and Israel." (source)

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(TECH) CDN Service Provider Cotendo Raises $12 Million From Tenaya, Sequoia & Benchmark Capital

"CDN (Content Delivery Network) and site acceleration services provider Cotendo has closed a $12 million investment round led by Tenaya Capital and joined by its current investors, Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital. The new funding will help Cotendo will to scale its domestic and international market expansion, as well as accelerate the development of innovative technology.

"We see Cotendo's technology as game-changing in this market, and we are excited to contribute to the company's advance to the next level with their site acceleration services," said Tom Banahan, Managing Director of Tenaya Capital.

The CDN market is crowded with about 50 vendors, but only four of them have revenues that exceed $50 million. The market leader is Akamai with market cap of $6.6 billion with revenue of $860 million and net income of $146 million for 2009. According to Jim Davis, Senior Analyst with Tier1 Research, “Dynamic site and application acceleration services will be a key growth driver for the CDN market through 2012 when it is expected to reach the $2 billion mark. Network performance will become increasingly important as enterprises continue to ramp up adoption of cloud-based applications during that time frame."

Cotendo provides CDN and site acceleration suite that significantly improves the ability of Internet content providers, including high-volume transactional enterprises, online retailers, financial services companies, advertising networks, professional news and social media sites, to offer fast, secure and reliable 'whole site' acceleration of both static and dynamic content to online customers and site visitors. Cotendo costumers include Web and social network sites such as Facebook, Digg, Meebo, Payoneer, Adbrite, Conduit and Seeking Alpha.

Cotendo was founded in 2008 by Ronni Zehavi (CEO), David Drai (CTO) and Udi Trugman (VP Research and Development). The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with R&D based in Netanya, Israel. The company had recently opened a local presence in France and Germany." (source)

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(TECH) Google Acquires Web Apps Developer LabPixies For $25 Million

"Google has acquired the developer of web applications LabPixies. This is the first time ever that Google buys an Israeli company. Google did not give any financial details of the deal, but Israeli financial news website TheMarker estimated that Google paid $25 million for LabPixies.

LabPixies is a provider of personalized gadget applications for iGoogle, Android and the iPhone. The widget apps range from handy tools such as calendars, news feeds and to-do lists to entertainment and games. LabPixies was one of the first developers to create gadgets for iGoogle, and Google and LabPixies teams have worked on many projects together including the launch of global OpenSocial based gadgets.

As part of the deal, the LabPixies team will be based in Google Tel Aviv office and will anchor the company's iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

LabPixies was founded in 2006 by Ran Ben-Yair (CEO), Oded Poncz (VP R&D), Udi Graff (Creative Director) and Nir Tzemah (VP Business Development). Prior to LabPixies, all the company founders worked at the Israeli branch of Samsung's Research and Development Center." (source)

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(TECH) Amdocs To Acquire Mobile Internet App Development Platform Provider Streamezzo

"Customer experience systems provider Amdocs will acquire Streamezzo, a mobile internet application development platform, in order to broaden its solutions in digital services delivery. Amdocs did not give any financial details of the deal, which expect to close during the third quarter 2010.

Streamezzo is a provider of a development platform for the creation and the deployment of rich mobile Internet applications across multiple mobile operating systems and devices. In May 2009, the French startup company has raised €4 million in an investment round led by Innovacom, with participation by existing investors, Sofinnova Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, Qualcomm, NTEC and Telecom Valorisation.

Last month Amdocs acquired MX Telecom, a mobile payments and messaging aggregator with operations in Europe, United States and Australia, for approximately $104 million in cash. The move will aloo Amdocs to continue building its presence in mobile payments and expand the OpenMarket footprint outside of the US.

MX Telecom will become part of Amdocs’ OpenMarket, a leading mobile transaction hub in the United States. OpenMarket provides a comprehensive set of payment, messaging and emerging services to meet mobile business needs. The joint OpenMarket MX Telecom business will provide a hosted platform to extend mobile payment and messaging capabilities through an integrated network and product portfolio." (source)

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(TECH) Digital Video Solutions Provider Imagine Communications Raises $10 Million

"Digital video solutions provider Imagine Communications has raised $10 million from existing investors: Court Square Ventures, Columbia Capital and Carmel Ventures. This round of financing is bringing total venture capital investment in Imagine Communications to more than $34 million.

The investment will be used to expand support to the company's leading MSO customers, while accelerating the commercial deployment of Imagine's solutions for MPEG-4 encoding and transcoding.

Imagine offers scalable digital video platform, enabling system operators to cost-effectively increase both the quality and quantity of digital video services over virtually any system. The Imagine ICE platform can enable up to 50% more streams over existing infrastructure, while Imagine ICE-Q video quality measurement algorithms ensure the highest video quality at any given bit rate.

"This new capital enables us to accelerate the development and deployment of our real-time h.264 encoding, transcoding and streaming solutions to support the growing demand for Internet and mobile video content delivered in multiple formats, including 3D. The core innovations of ICE and ICE-Q are directly applicable to the TV Anywhere challenge," said Imagine's President and CEO, Jamie Howard.

Imagine was founded in 2005 by Doron Segev, SVP Technology and Architecture at Imagine Communications, and Ron Gutman, the company CTO. Imagine is headquartered in San Diego with R&D and engineering in Netanya, Israel." (source)

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(TECH) Secure Email Solutions Provider PostalGuard Raised $4 Million

"Secure email solutions provider PostalGuard had raised $4 million from Israeli venture capital fund Genesis Partners and a group of private investors.

PostalGuard develops a secure email distribution channel platform that allows banks and financial institutions to enhance their relationships with clients, by offering direct bi-directional email communication.

PostalGuard’s solutions allow banks to provide a variety of new services that complement their current interaction platforms, such as branches, website and call centers. These solutions offer significant cost savings, associated with distribution of statements and notifications, as well as the opportunity to increase the number of transactions and enhance customer satisfaction.

"Most banks in Israel and abroad operates large web sites for the benefit of their clients, but the majority of customers continues to use the services provided by the branch and phone,” said Aryeh Mergi, PostalGuard President and Founder. "PostalGuard solutions allow banks to improve the relationship with their clients, leverage marketing offering by using the net and save money on costs associated with paper and postal service.”

PostalGuard has already applied for 6 patents and provisional applications, and has more than 10 additional patents in development. The company's technology was uniquely developed for the banking environment and allows smooth integration with the banking systems, while ensuring reliability and scalability.

In the past year PostalGuard has entered into a strategic partnership with and Syntron following the roll-out of PostalGuard’s secure email solution at a bank in Switzerland. In addition, the First International Bank of Israel has selected PostalGuard as another channel for the transfer of information via encrypted e-mail between customers and bank staff.

PostalGuard was founded in 2007 by Mergi and Ram Cohen, the company’s chief software architect. Mergi was a co-founder of Msystems, which was sold to SanDisk for $1.6 billion on 2006. Prior to working at PostalGuard, Cohen has served the Development Manager of Aliroo, a developer of enterprise information security and management solutions including content assurance and secure messaging solutions." (source)

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(TECH) Social Video Sharing Platform Provider Qlipso Purchases Video Content Web Site Veoh

"Social video sharing platform provider Qlipso has purchased Veoh, an Internet Television company delivering broadcast-quality video programming. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Veoh, founded in 2004, is an established media site with tens of millions of unique monthly visitors. It raised approximately $70 million from venture capital and media investments.

The Qlipso platform enables spontaneous socializing on any website with any type of rich media – video, music, games, PowerPoints, photo slideshows, streaming music and more. The purchase will enable Qlipso's synchronized media sharing and socially-interactive environment to tap into Veoh's library of more than one million videos, TV shows, online games and other interactive content, as well as Veoh's millions of active monthly users.

"By bringing together features of both Qlipso and Veoh, we are taking the best of social, multiplayer online gaming and applying that to mainstream digital content, such as videos and music, for a mainstream audience," said Jon Goldman, CEO of Qlipso. "This provides not only a terrific user experience, but also a vastly improved target audience for advertisers."

"We are thrilled to support Qlipso, a JVP Media Studio graduate, in this strategic move," said Erel Margalit, JVP founder and managing partner. "There has yet to be a significant mainstream social approach to online media sharing that parallels how people consume media in offline social settings. We believe this transaction answers that need, as it provides users with a means to socialize around their favorite media content in a relaxed and social setting."

Qlipso was found in 2007 by Goldman and Ishay Pnueli, the company current CTO. Located in Jerusalem, Qlipso is backed by Israeli venture-capital fund Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP)." (source)

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(TECH) Minicom Digital Signage Raises $6 Million From JVP & Aviv Ventures

"Minicom Digital Signage (MDS), a vendor of media distribution solutions for the Digital Signage and Digital out of Home (DooH) marketplace, had raised $6 million in a new financial round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and joined by Aviv Ventures.

MDS' advanced multimedia platforms enable the transmission of customized rich-media messages in real-time from media players to multiple digital displays located hundreds of meters/feet away. MDS' technology is currently deployed on over 400,000 screens worldwide, and facilitates the distribution of content to consumers in retail, education, finance, transportation, and hospitality environments.

"This investment is the natural next step in MDS' lifecycle. The support of our investors positions us to explore inorganic growth options and to drive the acceleration of our product roadmap towards the establishment of MDS as a full scale enabling platform in the digital signage market," said MDS' CEO, Ronni Guggenheim.

MDS was spinout in 2009 from Minicom Advanced Systems, a developer of KVM remote access, extension and management solutions designed to expedite and simplify IT services. MDS headquarters in Jerusalem, Israel, with offices in the UK, Switzerland, and the US." (source)

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(TECH) Fabless Semiconductor Company Lucid Raises $8 Million From Rho Ventures, Giza & Genesis

"Fabless semiconductor company LucidLogix Technologies (Lucid) has raised $8 million in funding from current investors Rho Ventures, Giza Venture Capital and Genesis Partners, bringing total capitalization to $40 million.

Lucid has developed a real-time distributed processing engine (system-on-a-chip) that allows efficient load-balancing of multi-GPU environments using any GPU vendor. Lucid HYDRA 200 real time distributed processing engine use in consumer gaming and professional PC devices.

The HYDRA 200 Chip already integrated into Intel Core i7 and Core i5 processors and with the Intel P55 Chipset. In addition, the world-leading graphics card and mainboard manufacturer, MSI, has announced a technology partnership with LucidLogix to deliver a more advanced gaming experience.

“The confidence level of our investors has come from our ability to successfully launch and deliver our second generation HYDRA 200 product to mass production, which is already on motherboards from one of the top three manufacturers in the world, MSI, and with more partners in the pipeline,” said Moshe Steiner, Lucid CEO. “The additional investment will enable the company to expand to international markets and boost sales.”

“Lucid is making the natural transition from a research and development startup to a silicon-product company,” said Offir Remez, Lucid co-founder and President. “We are working with leading strategic partners in the PC market during this critical time to deliver on our promises and grow the company, therefore the ongoing support by our investors is extremely valuable.”

Lucid is a fabless SoC provider, headquartered in Kfar Netter, Israel with sales and marketing in Santa Clara, California. Lucid’s innovations are protected by more than 60 patents and patents pending." (source)

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(TECH) Mobile Application Network Provider Snaptu Secures Funding From Sequoia Capital

"Mobile application network provider Snaptu, Formerly known as Moblica, has secured funding from leading global venture capital fund Sequoia Capital.

Snaptu is bringing popular social media, news, and sports sources like ESPN, Accuweather, Associated Newspapers, BBC, Reuters, Facebook, and Twitter, to more than 2,000 mobile devices via its unique mobile application infrastructure. The application works on virtually any phone and has been downloaded to over 4 million phones worldwide.

"We're excited by Snaptu's technology and vision and look forward to working with them to fulfill it," said Sequoia Capital partner Gili Raanan. "We see huge value for consumers and mobile operators in Snaptu's unique approach to bringing mobile applications to virtually any phone."

"With Snaptu, millions of people around the world can now use their existing phones to access their most popular Internet sites and enjoy a user experience comparable to the latest smartphones,” said Snaptu CEO Ran Makavy. “Sequoia supports our strategy of using the Snaptu application infrastructure to bring the full capability of the mobile web to virtually any phone, anywhere."

Snaptu offers online service providers, media companies and content owners a fast track into the world of mobile Internet. By enabling an easy and rapid deployment of any online service as a full-featured mobile application, in order to reach to every Internet-enabled mobile device.

Snaptu was founded in August 2007 by Lior Tal, the company VP Business Development. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in London, UK." (source)

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(TECH) Online Ad Verification Solution Provider DoubleVerify Raises $10 Million

"Online ad verification solution provider DoubleVerify has closed a $10 million in a second financing round led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), and with the participation of existing investors. In May 2009 DoubleVerify had closed a $3.5 million first investment round led by Blumberg Capital, with participation of First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures and private investors.

DoubleVerify provides a technology solution that delivers transparency and accountability for agencies, marketers, publishers and ad networks running online ad campaigns. The company currently verifies over 25 billion impressions per month.

Studies that DoubleVerify had conducted on behalf of several leading U.S. brand advertisers had shown non-compliance and waste between the media plan and actual ad delivery averaging at 20% of advertising budgets. These non-compliance situations range from ads that are delivered to the wrong audience on the website or at the wrong time. According to DoubleVerify's estimations, media delivery non-compliance costs online advertisers over $3 billion annually and may exceed $10 billion within 5 years.

“We feel fortunate to experience such rapid growth in the past year, and this funding will help us continue expanding quickly and innovating for our customers,” says Oren Netzer, CEO of DoubleVerify. “The increased demand for verification and our leadership position in the space has allowed us to attract top-tier venture capital firms such as IVP."

DoubleVerify was founded in February 2008 by Netzer and Alex Liverant, the company CTO. DoubleVerify is headquartered in New York City, with engineering offices in Tel Aviv, Israel." (source)

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