Top investment opportunities
Startup of the Week: BetterSeeds, adapting crops for tomorrow's challenges
March 8 online: The promise of next-gen 3D printing
Welcoming CT Governor Ned Lamont to Jerusalem
PulmOne brings lung tests to any doctor's office
BlueTree naturally removes sugar from fresh juice
OurCrowd agtech startups featured at Expo2020 in Dubai
Classiq raises $33M, expands quantum platform
Klook strikes $31M multi-year deal with Saudi travel giant
Introductions
More than 4,500 high-tech jobs

Startup of the Week:
BetterSeeds: Adapting today's crops for tomorrow's challenges

Population growth and changing consumption patterns mean the world will need to increase food production by 70-100% in the next 50 years. Land, water, energy and other natural resources are already strained. BetterSeeds is a pre-revenue Israeli startup that uses CRISPR gene editing technology to produce seeds for cash crops with increased nutritional value and higher yields, suitable for automated harvesting, and adaptable to changing climate conditions. BetterSeeds was chosen for strategic collaboration by Merck Pharmaceuticals and granted first access to Merck's 38 CRISPR patents as the sole Israeli licensee. The company is planning its commercial launch in 2022, focusing on cannabis, tomato, legumes, vegetable seeds, and perennial crops for targeted customers including seed and cannabis companies. It has 16 patents covering both genes expressing specific game-changing traits and its CRISPR delivery system. It has a pipeline of five additional patent drafts covering additional CRISPR and crop genetics technology. BetterSeeds aims to complete an IPO within 18 months. OurCrowd is joining this $7M round with an up to $2M allocation.

March 8 online: The promise of next-gen 3D printing

3D printing, usually associated with small items and models, is growing up. The technology can now produce items up to industrial strength, larger-than-life size, and even food. Innovative startups are using 3D printing to address major shortages across multiple industries in raw materials, trained manpower and natural resources, and creating stronger, cheaper, more sustainable products. Join me on March 8 when I'll be hosting three CEOs whose companies harness the transformational technology of 3D printing to target very different markets and customers, plus two leading venture capitalists investing in them. My guests will include Ofek Ron, Co-Founder and CEO of Plantish, Avi Reichental, Co-Founder and CEO of Nexa3D, and Ronen Orr, Co-Founder and CEO of Largix.

Welcoming CT Governor Ned Lamont to Jerusalem

It's great to see visitors returning to Jerusalem after nearly two years of pandemic border controls. I sat down for breakfast this week with Ned Lamont, Governor of Connecticut, to discuss the outsize role that Israeli startups can play in creating jobs and prosperity in the US. We were joined by Dr. Barry Stein, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer at Hartford HealthCare, Prof. Radenka Maric, Interim President of the University of Connecticut, Prof. Daniel Weiner, Vice President for Global Affairs at the University of Connecticut, Michael Kraines, Chief Financial Officer of the Digital Currency Group, together with my colleagues Ori Sobovitz and Adi Lavi from OurCrowd's Government Relations team.

PulmOne brings lung tests to any doctor's office

More than half a billion people around the world suffer from lung disease but diagnosing them can be complicated. Our portfolio company PulmOne has created the MiniBox+, a device the size of a desktop computer, which can replace bulky and expensive pulmonary testing machines normally found only in hospitals, Noa Shapira writes in the Times of Israel. "Since it is very simple and easy to use, it can be used in many more circumstances, allowing many more patients to have access to pulmonary function tests," says Dr. Jonathan Wiesen, a pulmonary specialist at Ben-Gurion University's Soroka Medical Center. PulmOne is now funding on the OurCrowd platform.

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Helps airlines improve profitability by reducing aircraft turnaround times, identifying potential delays, improving safety and recognizing hazards.

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Binah.ai enables vastly improved telehealth care with vital sign monitoring that needs no equipment other than a smartphone.

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Cell-based seafood company specializing in healthy and sustainable shellfish using a proprietary nutrient recycling system that dramatically cuts production costs.

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Top Investment Opportunities

D-ID: AI photo animation tech moves into the Metaverse

D-ID is the startup behind Deep Nostalgia, the viral photo animation app from MyHeritage that swept the world last year, bringing old photos to life. In addition to the multimillion-dollar deal with MyHeritage, D-ID had 22 new deals and 7 upsells with existing customers in 2021, including Josh (India's TikTok), Mondelēz, and Warner Bros. D-ID has two more products: Speaking Portrait can automatically create talking-head videos from written text. Face Lit allows users to digitally change the emotional expressions of images. The company has created a Metaverse team led by Prof. Lior Wolf to develop effects for personalization in the Metaverse, including full body reenactment from still image to 3D video. It has partnerships with AR/VR specialists The Glimpse Group and CGI experts The Artery. OurCrowd is joining this $25M Series B, with participation from Pitango, AXA and other existing investors. Further details available only under NDA.

Rewire: Neobank for millions of underserved migrant workers

"If you look at the financial services across the globe, there are so many great ways to disrupt," says Yahoo! Founder Jerry Yang, explaining his decision to invest in Rewire. Israeli insurance giant Migdal is leading this $25M investment round that OurCrowd investors can still join. The strategic investment by Migdal, alongside Yang, BNP Paribas and others, will help Rewire expand its insurance and neobanking services to its migrant worker customers, Calcalist reports. Many of the 270 million migrant workers around the world are excluded from the traditional banking system. Rewire enjoyed strong growth through the pandemic, doubling its user base in Europe, increasing deposit volume by 3.5X, and increasing order values and revenue there by 4X. Retention rates were equally impressive, with 75% of customers returning even after three years. Sign the NDA now for more details.

Kicksnation: Try your personal sneaker shopper for free!

Kicksnation is a personalized, AI-powered shopping platform addressing the $40B annual US sneaker market. A quick quiz tells Kicksnation what the customer wants in their sneakerbox™. The customer pays a $15 styling fee, and the company puts together a curated selection of three unique pairs of sneakers to try before the customer buys. The customer has five days to try on the shoes and make their selection, only paying for the ones they keep. Shipping and returns are free.The platform supplies 34 brands on demand and has strategic partnerships with 26 brands including On, Birkenstock, Veja, CLAE, and Cariuma. Returning customers order once every four months on average. 60% of orders shipped result in a sale with $161 total average revenue per order. Existing investors include e-commerce angels Tamim Mourad, Omar Mourad, Cory Rosenberg (Pricegrabber.com, eSalon.com), and Vy Nguyen (Avocado Green Mattress). Join this up to $3M Seed round led by OurCrowd, in which Designer Brands, owners of DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse with over 500 US branches, is investing $1M. Use the coupon to try it for free.

OncoHost: Enabling personalized cancer treatments

The cancer treatment that can save one person's life can be totally ineffective, or even cause harm, to another patient. As some courses of treatment cost over $100,000, and outcomes are discovered long after treatment starts, knowing beforehand whether it will be effective is a vital economic question for the medical system and a matter of life and death for the patient. OncoHost is an Israeli company that uses AI and proteomics - the large-scale study of proteins - to predict with high accuracy which patients will respond to which immunotherapy or combination treatment. OncoHost's clinically proven platform predicts the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy on a specific patient - instead of discovering outcomes up to 6 months into treatment. This dramatically increases the current only 20% chance of success for immunotherapy. The company has opened a lab in North Carolina and expects imminent certification enabling it to begin commercialization this year. OncoHost expects that reimbursement will be received 6-24 months after launch through Latham & Watkins in Washington, the company's reimbursement advisors. Partners include Somalogic (NASDAQ:SGLC), the Mayo Clinic, Yale University, IBM Research, CNR, the Weizmann Institute, and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Nobel Prize-winner Aaron Ciechanover is a member of the company's advisory board. Guardant Health, valued at $6.4B, checks 70 genes, while OncoHost scans 7,000 proteomic biomarkers. This up to $35M Series C is led by new investor Alive VC. Existing investors include Caesarea Medical Holdings and IHC.

Moodify: Creating the Internet of Scent

Moodify is an Israeli startup that is set to transform the way we research, develop and deploy scent. Based on a database of thousands of functional MRI tests mapping chemical input to perceptual response in the brain, Moodify can predict the perception of smells, and create formulas that generate a similar response. Moodify has a fast-growing consumer base. Its strategic partners and customers include Valeo, Procter & Gamble, Henkel, and Philip Morris International and other Fortune 500 automotive, tobacco, consumer goods and perfume companies. The company is in advanced post-POC negotiations and expects to close a deal with a strategic partner in Q1 2022. Moodify's Functional Fragrance technology harnesses the power of implicit and explicit smells by emitting safe, non-intrusive signals that have an immediate impact on emotional and physiological condition, for example, by masking bad odors, reducing stress, or waking up someone who is drowsy. The company's Geodor platform digitizes scent at the molecular level, based on 15 years and $50M worth of research on neuroscience and chemo-signals at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. OurCrowd is investing in a $5M SAFE at a 10% discount in anticipation of a Series B round. Existing investors include P&G, Toyota Venture, Taisho Pharmaceuticals and Next Gear Ventures.

Snowflake and Cellcom choose Anodot

Anodot, which provides continuous business monitoring so corporations can detect anomalies before they impact customers or revenue, enjoyed a blistering start to 2022 by signing multi-year agreements with several new customers. Cellcom, Israel's largest cellular provider, selected Anodot's monitoring system to improve service availability and provide early detection of potential network issues before they impact customers. Big data giant Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) added Anodot as a partner to its marketplace, providing the companies that use Snowflake with the tools to detect and diagnose issues early before they turn into crises for their millions of customers. Anodot's impressive customer base across multiple sectors includes Fidelity, Transferwise, Overstock, T-Mobile, King, Playtika, ironSource, and PubMatic. OurCrowd is leading this $15M CLA.

Top Tech News

BlueTree naturally removes sugar from fresh juice

As the food and beverage industry looks to create healthier options, BlueTree Technologies has figured out a way to naturally remove sugar from fresh juice while keeping the great taste, NoCamels reports. The company is collaborating with international supplier of natural ingredients and compounds Prodalim, to distribute 100 million liters of juice. BlueTree is currently funding on the OurCrowd platform.

OurCrowd agtech startups featured at Expo2020 in Dubai

OurCrowd agtech startups are front and center during Agriculture Week at the Israel Pavilion at Expo2020 in Dubai. Three of our portfolio companies, CropX, Taranis and Tevel Aerobotics are presenting their groundbreaking technologies, NoCamels reports. "Israel has always been a global leader in agriculture, and today Israeli agri-tech plays a key role in finding innovative solutions to address climate change and our food security," says Oded Forer, Israel's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, "The Expo event puts this in the spotlight."

Classiq raises $33M, expands quantum platform

Our portfolio company Classiq raised another $33M in a Series B funding round as it looks to take the lead in software design for quantum computers, Venture Beat reports. The funds will be put toward further development of its algorithm design platform, which may be the closest thing yet to no/low-code development for quantum computing. The company has raised $48M so far.

Klook strikes $31M multi-year deal with Saudi travel giant

Tourism innovator Klook has partnered with Saudi travel agency Almosafer to create a digital platform for activities, tours and events in the country, Arab News reports. The five-year, $31M deal will see Almosafer provide administrative support for operations and monetary injections.

THE FOREGOING DETAILS ARE BASED ON INFORMATION RECEIVED FROM, AND VERIFIED SOLELY BY, THE RESPECTIVE PORTFOLIO COMPANIES. CERTAIN INFORMATION IN THIS COMMUNICATION CONTAINS "FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION" UNDER APPLICABLE SECURITIES LAWS ("FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS"). THESE MAY INCLUDE, AMONG OTHERS, PROJECTED PERFORMANCE; EXPECTED DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPANIES' BUSINESS, PROJECTS AND PARTNERSHIPS; EXECUTION OF THE COMPANIES' VISION AND GROWTH STRATEGY; AND THE LIKE. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS ARE NOT GUARANTEES OF FUTURE PERFORMANCE AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED ON IN ANY WAY.

Nothing contained in and accompanying this communication shall be construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation to purchase any security by OurCrowd, its portfolio companies or any third party. Information regarding OurCrowd's limited partnerships and/or portfolio companies and the investment opportunities on OurCrowd's website is intended and available for accredited investors only (criteria at OurCrowd). OurCrowd urges potential investors to consult with licensed legal professionals and investment advisors for any legal, tax, insurance, or investment advice. OurCrowd operates in Canada through OurCrowd Canada Inc., an exempt market dealer registered in the Provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.