Zeev Ventures, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm founded by Israeli investor Oren Zeev, is leading another multi-million dollar investment round in Spines, a digital publishing company.
Spines is now raising $29 million in equity from Zeev Ventures, Aleph, Dan Senor, and other investors, alongside $35 million in debt financing from Twelve - a new debt fund established by the Galai brothers, cofounders of Outbrain. While the company’s valuation for this round has not been disclosed, it is understood that it has not yet reached the $1 billion mark.
Two years ago, Spines closed its Series A funding round; at that time, its annual recurring revenue (ARR) was $3.5 million, with total revenue for that year reaching $5 million. Today, the company’s ARR is $50 million, with 8,000 authors in its portfolio who have collectively published over 12,000 books.
Spines caters to thousands of amateur authors, willing to pay for self-publishing, who are not served by traditional publishing houses (which fully or partially fund the works of about50,000 professional authors annually). Authors upload their manuscripts to the platform, where the company’s AI agents edit and proofread the text, design the cover, and handle the book’s layout. Spines then distributes the titles across the market, including platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in digital, audio, and print formats. To avoid holding inventory, the company prints physical copies only when an individual order is placed. Audiobooks can be produced using a library of available voices, or by sampling the author’s own voice to train an AI model to narrate the story on their behalf.
Spines does not accept books written by AI. The company employs technology specifically designed to detect AI-generated content. However, for an additional fee, users can hire a human editor to enhance the quality of their writing. The company currently serves the English-speaking market, while also enabling the translation of books from English into Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Polish, and Hebrew. Translations are generated using AI and then reviewed by professionals for whom the target language is their native tongue. Over the next six months, the company plans to expand its service to 20 languages.
"In the US alone, there are about 50,000 professional authors who publish their books through established publishing houses like Penguin and Simon & Schuster; yet, around 2.5 to 3 million new books are published annually," Niv tells "Globes". "The vast majority of these books - 99% - do not succeed in terms of sales. Publishers recoup their investments through the 1% that do become successful. We target a different market: amateur authors, publishing a book for the first time, who might otherwise approach established publishing houses only to be presented with a bill ranging from $10,000 to $150,000. Our typical package costs between $5,000 and $7,000 and within two weeks, these authors have a book of their own."
Unlike large publishing houses, Spines is a commercial publisher that does not necessarily seek "bestsellers" and does not employ manuscript readers. Consequently, the company does not finance the publication of books for talented authors. Nevertheless, the company takes pride in having around 100 authors who have successfully sold several thousand copies of their books.
Spines was founded in 2021 by CEO Yehuda Niv, CSO Lev David, CTO Nir Kenner, and CPO Niv Ovdat. In 2013, Yehuda Niv founded Niv Publishing, which releases over 1,200 titles annually. The company has 350 employeesa including 90 based at its offices in Herzliya, and the remainder in the US, Eastern Europe, and South America.
Oren Zeev said, "When Yehuda first told me what he wanted to build, Spines was still in its early stages. Two years later, I saw that he and his team had built exactly what he described, and the company is growing rapidly. This is precisely what I look for in entrepreneurs. I was one of the early investors in Audible, and I witnessed how innovative technology could transform a long-established market like the book industry. I believe Spines has the opportunity to bring about a similar shift in how books are published."
Aleph cofounder Michael Eisenberg added: "Having written and published nine books, I am well-acquainted with the journey that begins once a manuscript is finished. It is a long, costly, and complex process, requiring coordination with numerous professionals. When we invested in the company during its seed round, we saw an opportunity to leverage AI to make this process faster, more efficient, and accessible to many. The company’s growth since then demonstrates a genuine demand for this. To me, the great opportunity lies in opening up the world of publishing to more people - to a wider array of compelling voices and original ideas."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 9, 2026.
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