Recapping 2018 — Our Biggest and Best Year Yet
The new year is off to a fast start (how is it February already?), and we have some exciting things in the works we can’t wait to share. But first, we wanted to put a bow on what was an incredibly exciting and fruitful year for the UpWest family. Here are a few highlights!
UpWest Raises Fund III
We started off 2018 with the closing of our third, and largest, fund to date. The $18 million Fund III builds upon our founding mission of bringing innovative, amazing Israeli startups to the US market. We continue to scale our investments, community, and network, and today have the largest portfolio of Israeli startups headquartered in the US. Nearly all of our previous limited partners, including institutional LPs, family offices, corporations, and entrepreneurs participated again in our third fund. We’re excited to put this fund to work backing more exceptional founders.
We made awesome new investments in 2018.
2018 was active with eight new investments (four of which we announced early last year); each from different tech domains and all solving unique and very timely problems in the world today. We doubled down on deep tech + diversity with three exceptional female founders joining our portfolio!
Founded by Omer Davidi, Michal Roizman, and Itai Kanot, BeeHero is using IoT sensors in beehives to monitor hive conditions, keep bees healthy, and make them better pollinators to increase crop yields for farmers. BeeHero’s unique technology based on machine learning algorithms enables stronger and healthier hives, allowing bees to do what they do best. Saving the bees, and improving business for farmers — two very worthy causes!
Founded by Gal Zabib and Yevgeni Krupetsky, Altostra is developing an intuitive serverless development platform that is an end-to-end solution for designing, developing, and deploying serverless apps across any cloud vendor. In other words, Altostra provides a higher calling for cloud developers!
InnerPlant is the world’s first biosensor sentinel plant platform. Founded by CEO Shely Aronov, InnerPlant is solving the costly farming information gap by sensing molecular changes directly from the plant and providing farmers with early, specific, and actionable data. That’s right, they’re making it possible to actually communicate with plants!
Snipe is a badass behavioral analytics platform for esports and gamers. Snipe uses AI to predict player behavior and game outcomes to match players up based on how compatible they are with each other. Snipe also provides game streamers with tools to grow their audiences with viewers likely to subscribe and engage with their community based on shared interests. The team is comprised of AI and gaming experts and founded by Alon van Dam, Saar Berkovich, and Michael Ostrovsky. Snipe gives gamers the teammates and insights they need to dominate!
Portfolio News
It was a big year for UpWest-backed portfolio startups. Our companies have now raised a total of $700 million in follow-on funding to date, and several of our portfolio companies raised new rounds this year as they continue to scale. Here are some noteworthy ones:
Airobotics Raises $30M and Opens US Headquarters
Airobotics’ industry-leading autonomous drone platform raised another $30 million in funding this year and expanded to the US, opening up its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The company is growing rapidly and plans to hire 80 people in Arizona by the end of this year. Airobotics’ biggest market is in mining; one of the world’s largest mining companies, BHP, which has extensive operations in Arizona, is now Airobotics’ first US customer.
CyberX Raises $18 Million Series B
CyberX provides the most widely deployed industrial cyber security platform for continuous, non-invasive risk assessment and M2M anomaly detection. The company’s purpose-built platform enables organizations to detect and respond faster to risk in their industrial networks. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, with participation from other prior investors including Glilot Capital Partners, Flint Capital, ff Venture Capital, and more.
Codefresh Raises $8 Million Series B
Codefresh is the first Kubernetes-native continuous integration and delivery platform. Codefresh combines CI/CD, image management, and on-demand staging environments to create a complete container delivery toolchain that brings developers and developer operations into a shared platform. This latest round was led by M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), with participation from Viola Ventures, Hillsven Capital, and CEIF.
SecuredTouch Raises $8M Series A
SecuredTouch is transforming the digital fraud security market, providing continuous behavioral biometrics authentication that tracks the user by monitoring over 100 various behavioral parameters to identify the true identity of the user. The round was led by Germany-based Arvato Financial Solutions, with participation from RDC and others.
Stampli Raises $6.7 Million Series A
Stampli is the first cloud-based Accounts Payable solution that reduces time spent chasing invoice approvals by as much as 80%. Stampli already manages more than $4 billion in invoices through its AI-driven interface. SignalFire led the round, with participation from Bloomberg Beta and Hillsven Capital.
Genoox Raises $6 Million Series A
Genoox developed the first cloud-based platform for genomic data. By automating data interpretation and providing millions of in-house and public data points through a proprietary search engine, Genoox improves patient outcomes with increased accuracy and efficiency, making personalized medicine a reality. The round was led by Triventures, with participation from prior investors Inimiti Capital and Glilot Capital Partners.
Excited for Another Big Year Ahead!
As we begin 2019, we look forward to continuing our active investment in pre-seed and seed stage opportunities and partner with Israeli founders looking to break early into the US market. We still see areas such as cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and developer tools as prime opportunities, however we are just as excited about seeing how AI continues to transform “unsexy industries” such as industrial, healthcare, agriculture, transportation and manufacturing.
Know any startups that fit the bill? Drop us a line: info@upwestlabs.com
