Israeli venture capitalists Esther Barak Landes and Adi Ostry Matalon have completed the first closing of new venture capital fund Alma Ventures. The fund will eventually raise $40 million. The fund will focus on mental health, cognitive health and longevity. Sheba Medical Center will participate in the fund through its ARC center for digital innovation.
Barak Landes was a cofounder of the investor club Israel Angels and managed Igal Ahouvi’s investment firm, Partam High-Tech, achieving exits in companies such as Playtika, StoreWize, and biotech firm Prolor. She also directed the Nielsen Innovate technological incubator and was a cofounder of the OpenValley coworking space and has served as a consultant for companies in the medical cannabis sector. In 2023, she founded Flora Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on the AgTech and FoodTech sectors, which raised $50 million.
Astori Matalon, formerly Bank Leumi head of business innovation and big data, has been a partner in several venture capital initiatives. Most recently, she was a cofounder of the "Resilience-Tech" (Hosen-Tech) incubator in Sderot, which she led for one year.
According to the World Health Organization, more than one in four people lives with a mental or neurological challenge, making this the largest category of disease globally. While this has always been the case, the field of mental health, following years of neglect, has gained renewed attention and saw a reduction in stigma during the Covid pandemic. In Israel, the need for, and engagement with this field have intensified, partly due to the trauma stemming from October 7 and the subsequent war.
Advancements in psychiatric and neurological medications, combined with the opportunity to augment traditional talk therapy with technological support, enabling the scaling of mental health services (which were previously constrained by the limited availability of human resources) have further fueled interest in this sector.
As life expectancy increases, there has been a rise in both public and private investment in brain health and preventive medicine, aimed at extending longevity. The investment now required to address mental health conditions, brain disorders, and age-related diseases threatens to place a heavy burden on global economies, necessitating the development of new solutions.
135 companies within the Sheba ecosystem
Sheba Impact CEO Avner Halperin said today, "At Sheba, we value collaborating with experts in specialized fields. Mental health is a highly significant area for us. It is the medical domain where the gap between need and available response is greatest. Companies in this field have already emerged at Sheba, such as Mentaily (an AI system designed to support the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions). We are also highly interested in the realm of cognitive health, covering both neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, and traumatic brain injuries.
"Today, we have a very extensive ecosystem comprising 135 companies. We founded roughly half of them, while the other half are companies with which we established partnerships after their founding. We maintain a framework of collaborations to advance and fund the continued growth of these companies. This includes a joint medical device fund with TriVentures; Shoni Health Ventures, which focuses on digital health; the Edge medical device incubator (in which we are partners); an angel investor club that has already invested in 11 of our companies; the embARC accelerator; a joint venture with the Ministry of Welfare to launch new companies; innovation centers in East Jerusalem, Kafr Kasim, and Sderot; and a network of dozens of other innovation hubs at hospitals worldwide that are part of our global innovation network."
These initiatives have already led to successful exits for companies such as Innovalve, Belkin Vision, and BioProtect. Furthermore, several of the companies that were established and became well-established now pay royalties to Sheba. "A portion of this revenue is dedicated to improving hospital operations, while another portion is reinvested into further innovation. These 135 companies together have about 4,000 employees."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 19, 2026.
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