After the Jewish holidays and several less-than-optimistic reports that were recently published regarding the state of the ecosystem, which indicated a decrease in the rate of capital being raised and a continuous decrease in the number of new startups opening, it shouldn't be a surprise that October was not a good month for Israeli startups.

In the last month, only 18 Israeli startups reported raising capital for a total of $534 million. And yes, if that sounds a little to you, it’s because it is. This is an amount reminiscent of the middle of 2020 – which was during the peak of the COVID-19 craziness. It is also important to note that this month’s fundraising summary would have been significantly different without three companies: OpenWeb, Trigo and Vesttoo – which together raised $350 million (170 for OpenWeb, 100 for Trigo and 80 for Vesttoo). We also welcomed Vesttoo into the unicorn club– something that has become rare in recent times.

As expected, growth-stage companies (Series B and above) continue to bring in most of the money, but at the same time make up a relatively low percentage of the number of investments compared to the younger companies. In the last month, six companies in the growth stages reported raising capital compared to 12 companies in the pre-seed to Series A stages. Moreover, there were no acquisitions this month, unlike in September when we saw several Israeli companies be acquired by technology giants.

After a few "dry" months, this month we had one IPO by an Israeli company: Mobileye. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 for $15.2 billion, and for the past 4 years has worked under the technology giant. Intel announced that it planned to take Mobileye public at a 50 billion dollar valuation. However, last week Mobileye was officially listed on Nasdaq, but at a significantly lower value – $17.6 billion, which is not far from the amount that Intel paid for it.

October 2022’s fundraising

October 2022 exits

  • Mobileye was issued on the Nasdaq at a valuation of $16.7 billion