The 50 most Promising Startups in Zion 2016

To mark Israel’s 68th Independence Day,, Calcalist, a leading business publication in Israel, ranked the 50 most promising private Israeli startups. The ranking was put together by soliciting feedback from some of Israel’s top venture funds, including Carmel Ventures, Aleph, 83 North, Magma, Battery Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Marker and others. Five of the companies from last year’s ranking were acquired for a total of $1.2 Billion.

1. Via Transportation – On-demand shared transit (Raised $137M)
2. Ironsource – Software Discovery, Distribution and Delivery Platform (Raised $123M)
3. Payoneer – Last mile and cross border payments in 200 countries (Raised $53M)
4. SiSense – Business Intelligence and analytics (Raised $100M)
5. Taboola and Outbrain – Content distribution, discovery and recommendations (Raised approx. $150M each)
6. Zerto – Data Replication and Disaster Recovery for Virtual IT Infrastructure (Raised $110M)
7. Fiverr – The world’s largest marketplace for digital services (Raised $53M)
8. Perfecto – Clound based mobile app testing (Raised $90M)
9. Optimal+ -Enterprise-wide Test Management for Semiconductor Manufacturers (Raised $72M)
10. Valens -Transmission Chips for Ultra-High Definition (HD) Video over Copper or Fiber Cabling (Raised $40M)
11. Cybereason – Identification of cyber attacks in real time (Raised $90M)
12. Tabtale – Children mobile applications (Raised $14M)
13. Playbuzz – Content creation and publisher tools (Raised $31M)
14. NSO – Offensive cyber espionage tools for governments (Raised $130M) – 60% of the company is owned by PE fund Francisco Partners
15. Infinidat – Information storage solutions for large enterprises (Raised $230M)
16. Plarium – Multi player games for social networks (Raised Unknown)
17. R2Net – Graphic visualisations for Jewellery eCommerce (Raised $25M)
18. Pyramid Analytics – Business Intelligence for large corporates (Raised $36M)
19. Forter – Fraud prevention in eCommerce (Raised $57M)
20. Jfrog – Binary Repository Solution and Software Distribution Social Platform (Raised $62M)
21. Similar Web – Traffic monitoring and analysis of web and mobile(Raised $65M)
22. Kenshoo –  Programmatic advertising in search engines and social networks (Raised $65M)
23. Kaltura – IPTV for mobile carriers and internal video management for corporates (Raised $106M)
24. Moovit – Mobile application for public transport information in real time (Raised $84M)
25. MyHeritage – Family tree based social network (Raised $49M)
26. Personetics – AI-powered Bot providing personalized banking services (Raised $18M)
27. Ctera – Private cloud for corporates (Raised $45M)
28. Gett – Taxi hailing and deliveries in Israel, Russia and UK (Raised $102M)
29. Celeno – Chip for processing home media in high quality (Raised $68M)
30. Appsflyer – Effectiveness measurement of mobile advertising campaigns (Raised $28M)
31. Clicktale – User behaviour analysis for web services (Raised $55M)
32. VatBox – Automated International VAT refund processing for corporations (Raised $30M)
33. Walkme – A service for increasing user-engagement in commercial websites (Raised $43M)
34. Fundbox – Small business loans directly from your accounting software (Raised $109M)
35. Scio – Nano spectrometer detecting ingredients in food and meds in seconds (Raised $14M)
36. Yotpo – Clever product reviews in eCommerce websites (Raised $29M)
37. Zooz – Payments platform enabling merchants to route transactions to multiple payments providers (Raised $40M)
38. Credorax – Provider of Online Payment Processing and Acquirer of Bank Services for Online Merchants (Raised $139M)
39. Logz.io – Predictive ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana) log analytics cloud service (Raised $8M)
40. Redis Labs – Enterprise-grade open source NoSQL database (Raised $27M)
41. Lightricks – Visual processing engine for mobile platforms, creators of Facetune and Enlight (Raised $10M)
42. Beamr – significantly reduces the bitrate of video streams while maintaining video quality (Raised $25M)
43. Argus Cyber Security – Automotive cyber security protection, both hardware and cloud enabled (Raised $30M)
44. Vayyar – Developing RF Based 3D Imaging Sensors (Raised $35M)
45. Behalf – Purchase financing for small businesses (Raised $134M)
46. BlueVine – Online Solution for Business to Streamline their Cash Flow (Raised $65M)
47. Kaminario – Enterprise-class Flash Storage Arrays (Raised $133M)
48. Fortscale – Autonomous, machine-learning based user behaviour analytics to detect and eliminate insider security threats (Raised $16M)
49. Capriza – Mobile-enable critical business workflows without the need to access source code, APIs, or integration (Raised $51M)
50. Stratoscale – Distributed Operating System for data centres (Raised $70M)

Interestingly, the public ranked slightly different than editorial, and indicated the top five spots should go to AppsFlyer, WalkMe, Fiverr, Plabuzz and Similar Web.