After two and a half years of activity, Israeli start-up Cyvera Ltd. is close to the end of the road as a private company. Information security company Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW), co-founded by Israeli Nir Zuk, is in talks to acquire Cyvera as part of Palo Alto's plans to establish a development center in Israel. Palo Alto, which has a market cap of $4.8 billion, could pay $100-150 million for Cyvera, most of which will probably be in shares.
Cyvera was founded in June 2011 by co-CEOs Netanel Davidi and Uri Alter, and Moshe Ben-Abu. The company focuses on the hotter side of information security, now known as cyber, in other words, threats that traditional information security systems could not deal with, and usually never even identified.
Just 18 months ago, Cyvera held a fairly substantial second financing round, raising $11 million. It has raised $13 million altogether. The main investors are Blumberg Capital and Battery Ventures, as well as a strategic investor, an unnamed computer giant. It also has a number of private investors, some of whom the founders met in the IDF. The most prominent private investors are Prof. Ehud Weinstein and Dr. Ofir Shalvi, two of the three founders of Anobit, which was sold to Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: APPL).
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 10, 2014
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