"Israeli company Ossio is setting up a second plant in Palmetto, Florida and hiring 100 employees." This item in the local media came as a surprise. Ossio has barely featured in the Israeli media and has grown unnoticed. The company currently has 265 employees including 100 in Caesarea. To date Ossio has raised more than $100 million and several days ago the company received a credit line of $50 million. Revenue is expected to reach $60 million in 2026 and the company is considering an IPO in the coming years.
"It’s not that we decided to stay under the radar," founder and Chief Innovation Officer Orahn Preiss-Bloom tells "Globes." "Nobody asked."
The company develops implants to repair injuries such as sports injuries, bunions (deformities in the big toe) and hand injuries ("Anyone who punches a wall, for example, will need our products"). So far, Ossio has focused only on the US market, but its products will soon reach Israel.
Glass instead of metal
Preiss-Bloom is actually well known in the Israeli biomedical market. He is a biomedical engineer, and before Ossio in 2007, he founded LifeBond with Ishay Attar, to develop products that prevent bleeding in response to the tragic injuries of soldiers in the Second Lebanon War, to which both entrepreneurs were exposed. LifeBond eventually adapted its products to treat intestinal ulcers, but the startup did not take off and was sold in early 2021 to medical device company Bard for about $60 million - similar to the amount it had raised. Preiss-Bloom and Attar had left the company by that time. Attar founded tissue engineering company BioChange, while Preiss-Bloom founded Ossio after leaving LifeBond in 2014.
He founded Ossio in an effort to replace the metal implants that had been the standard in orthopedics for years. "They don’t really fit naturally into the bone, they apply loads that constantly break down the bone around the implant, in a way that creates side effects, the need for repeated surgeries, not to mention the pain during the change of seasons and setting off detectors at airports," he says. As long as metal was the only solution in the orthopedic market, the public had to put up with these problems. "But in 2014, I already recognized that in any type of orthopedic surgery where a good alternative to metal was offered, the market adopted it."
After a period of searching for the most suitable material, the company focused on bioactive glass (BioGlass). These materials are already accepted in the orthopedic world, in the field of bone filling. "We created a kind of mineral fiber from this material that bone can grow around and into, and over time they degrade."
Preiss-Bloom added, "It took several years to get the fiber to do what we want. The secret is in the internal structures of the fibers inside the implant, each of which is less than a millimeter thick, and ultimately you must build something stronger than bone out of them."
The company started out in his kitchen. "I ordered home materials to experiment with for $10,000. Customs didn't understand what I wanted. That was basically my first pitch. I had to convince them that what I was doing was reasonable." After he figured out what he wanted to produce, "I went to the village of Zarzir, to a factory run by a father and son who used to make soccer balls and foam cubes. They are number one in the field of foam games in the country and they made the first molds for us."
The company recruited reinforcements such as Dr. Taly Lindner, who had just returned to Israel from a postdoctoral position at CalTech and joined as the company's VP science and regulatory affairs, and Ronit Merchav-Feuermann as VP clinical and medical affairs, who also returned from abroad, with experience in veterinary surgery, which allowed the company to conduct the necessary experiments on animals.
Preiss-Bloom began to market the product, and Udi Gilboa, known as the financial man behind companies such as Alcobra, Bioblast, and others, also joined the company. "He was the first chairman and helped us raise our first funds - initially from doctors who were enthusiastic about the product. He also brought Brian Verrier to the board of directors, who came from Covidien/Medtronic, and became the company's CEO. He is a serious mentor to me."
Launching just before the pandemic
After trials, receiving FDA approval, losing a supplier of one of the ingredients, and repeating the approval process again with the new supplier, "We launched the first product a week before the whole world shut down due to Covid." Since then, the company has launched another product or two every year.
How did you manage the market penetration phase?
"I knew very little about this topic, so Brian, the CEO, and Brennan Marilla, Chief Commercial and Operating Officer, were very important. They understood that it would be almost impossible to enter the field of traumatic injuries (like car accidents), because these are huge contracts with hospitals, but rather in the field of elective surgeries, around sports injuries. There is a great need there. We knew that we had to work with distributors, because this is an area where every surgery needs a salesperson to help use the product, and if they only work on your product, it is not worth keeping them. Over time, we built a complete network of distributors in all our fields, through very hard work."
How did you get insurance indemnity?
"Insurance companies know how to reimburse for implants. There are places where, in addition to reimbursement, the hospital makes a percentage of what the implant costs, and then they like us because we are a little more expensive. In other places, the payment to the hospital is fixed, and then the hospital's incentive is that the product will save them time. We also market directly to the patient, who can decide whether they are willing to pay for the product out of pocket, to avoid complications and inconvenience.
"We are very strong in pediatric care, because parents are willing to pay for a product that will not need to be removed or replaced later. We just closed a distribution agreement with the leading distributor in the field of pediatric orthopedic surgery in the US." Another relatively accessible clientele are people with metal allergies, who have no choice.
The company's products are suitable for both bone fusion processes and situations where bone to soft tissue fixation is required. This is done, for example, to postpone the need for knee surgery, which is one of the company's popular procedures.
The company recently opened a second factory in the US because of the tariffs, and because doctors like to see the products with their own eyes. But doctors also come to see their products in Caesarea. About $100 million has been invested in the company to date. Among the investors are Questa Capital, MVM Partners, OCV, Ortho-Vision and Courage Capital. The company also recently received a credit line of up to $50 million from Horizon Technology Finance and Monroe Capital Support. "If we wanted to be profitable now, that would be possible, but we hope to grow."
Is there interest in an exit?
"We have a few options on the table but we seem to be heading towards an IPO. Not this year, maybe in 2027 or later."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 19, 2026.
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