Hitech

American Snap, the parent company of the social network Snapchat, acquires the Israeli company Voca.ai. The purchase amount of Voca is about $ 70 million, having so far raised only $ 6 million. Its investors include the strategic investment group of American Express, Lool Ventures, Flint Capital and Group11. The company employs about 35 people who will join Snap. Voca was founded in 2017 by Dr. Alan Becker, and Einav Itamar. Its most recent significant acquisition was in 2019, when it invested in the investment fund of the American credit card giant American Express. Mastercard.

The Israeli start-up Innoviz, which develops Lidar sensors that help autonomous vehicles identify their surroundings, announced today (Friday) that it will be listed for trading on NASDAQ in early 2021. The registration will be done by a merger with SPAC called Collective Grot. (Collective Growth) Collective is a content public company that has raised $ 150 million for one purpose - locating a private merger company. In such a merger process, Invis is expected to gain access to the Spock funds and another $ 200 million from investors, including institutional entities such as the Phoenix...

An innovative agtech company that specializes in vertical farming, has signed an agreement with Moderntrendo S.R.O, one of the largest agricultural distributors in the Ukraine, for a promotion of nationwide deployments of vertical farms. Vertical Field will conduct an initial pilot at Varus, one of the biggest national supermarket chains in the country, in early 2021 before expanding to other chains. Varus operates 95 stores across 25 cities and attracts approximately 260,000 customers daily. Vertical Field has developed and commercialized unique soil-based vertical farms in containers...

South Korea rose to first place in the Bloomberg Innovation Index, after Germany, which was in first place last year, dropped to fourth place. The United States, on the other hand, dropped out of the top 10 after being in ninth place in 2020, while Israel was ranked seventh, down one step from last year. The Asian nation is now in first place in seven of the nine years the index is published. One and ranked second and third respectively. The Bloomberg Index analyzes dozens of criteria using seven equivalent metrics, including research and development spending, manufacturing capacity, and...

The average wage in 2020 was NIS 11,538, an increase of 7% compared to 2019, according to CBS data published today (Thursday). The number of jobs per employee was 3.369 million - a decrease of 10% compared to the past year. Were recorded in the hospitality and food services industry with a decrease of 41% in the number of employee jobs and in the arts, entertainment and leisure industry in which there was a decrease of 35.7% in the number of employee jobs. Since 2012, the average wage in the economy has increased by 1.7% -3.6% compared to the previous year, but due to the corona crisis,...

The hacker group "Black Shadow", which carried out the cyber attack on Shirbit, published announcements today (Saturday) according to which it broke into the servers of an Israeli financing company - KLS Ltd. The group distributed documents of the company's customers on the telegram network, and threatened to publish More information: "Their servers have been shut down, and all the information about their clients is in our hands," they wrote. Black Shadow stated that they asked for a ransom of about NIS 2 million in Bitcoin, but the company refused. "We inform you of a cyber attack against...

A virtual meeting of high-tech experts from the US and Europe who are planning to return to Israel was held at the initiative of the Innovation Authority as part of the launch of the Back2Tech program to return Israelis to Israel and join high-tech companies, development centers and leading startups. The program is designed to allow returnees to pre-close their future workplace in the country, and even start working there remotely thus making the transition smooth and comfortable. At the meeting, Efrat Dagan and Heli Nachman, who previously lived in California and spoke about their...

Intel announces the recruitment of 1,000 new employees in the coming year to the company's various development centers in Israel, along with the recruitment of an additional 400 for the artificial intelligence activity, which is conducted separately. The move comes after the company froze on its staff in terms of recruitment in 2020. At the same time, the company announces the construction of a new campus in the city of Haifa with an investment of $ 200 million. Pat Glasinger, CEO of Intel Global, will visit Israel next week as part of the announcement of the establishment of the center,...

A few days ago, the Israeli government signed a contract with Amazon and Google, the happy winners of the first tender in the "Nimbus Project" for the provision of cloud services to the Israeli government sector. The winners will be required to establish cloud areas in Israel (Region) in the next two years; Until established, the winners will provide cloud services from the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland. The tender is valid for 7 years, with the possibility of extensions up to a period of 23 years in total. The Nimbus project is intended to enable government ministries, security bodies...

Bezeq reported to the stock exchange tonight (Tuesday) that it intends to deploy fiber optics for 80% of households in Israel - within 6 years. The Ministry of Communications, which formulated the fiber outline, managed to push the most significant player in the market after years in which Bezeq refrained from deploying fiber optics and connecting homes to high-speed Internet infrastructure. The company - which has invested hundreds of millions of shekels in the project to date - has reported that it intends to continue investing another Billions of shekels in it