Two major American venture capital firms are strengthening their Israel operations, filling the vacuum left by other firms like Tiger Global and SoftBank that have greatly reduced their investments in Israeli startups.
The first venture capital firm returning to Israel is Greylock, one of the biggest in Silicon Valley, which operated in Israel through a dedicated venture capital fund until 2015, and has now appointed Mor Chen as its local representative. In the past Greylock has invested in Facebook, Palo Alto Networks and Airbnb.
In contrast to its previous Israel activity, in which it granted the Greylock brand to an Israeli fund that was raised by Israeli partners and designated for investments in Israel, it now continues to invest directly from its global venture capital fund, as it has been in recent years, except that it will now have a local representative. Recent Greylock investments in Israel include in cybersecurity companies Wiz, Upwind and Apiiro.
Until recently Mor Chen was a VP at Accel and jointly managed with foreign partners Andrei Brasoveanu and Philippe Botteri investments in Israeli companies such as Cyera, Melio and Snyk and Oasis. Chen is a graduate of the IDF's 8200 intelligence unit. Greylock Israel founded the 83North venture capital fund, without any connection to Greylock, together with partner Laurel Bowden.
The second major venture capital firm to strengthen its presence in Israel is Sequoia Capital which has appointed Dean Meyer as its representative. Sequoia has a similar story to Greylock operating in Israel with a dedicated fund called Sequoia Israel until last decade, managed by Shmil Levy, Haim Sadger and Gil Raanan. In recent years Sequoia has continued investing directly in Israel, mainly through veteran partner Doug Leone.
No response has been forthcoming from Mor Chen and Greylock.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 2, 2024.
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