17 Fintech and Big Data remain robust systems and sensitive information, continue to be a center of attraction and focus for various local and global investors, including VC and private equity funds," adds EBN’s Yael Benyayer. In December 2021, Japanese investment giant SoftBank co-led a USD 400 million investment in Israeli cybersecurity firm Claroty. Cybersecurity company SentinelOne completed its NYSE offering in June 2021 at a value of USD 9 billion, one of the year’s striking IPOs, while other proactive Israeli cyber unicorns include Armis, Cybereason, BigID, Cato Networks, and Axonius. “AI and Fintech are here to stay and grow, and still attract investors” adds Lipa Meir’s Amir Zolty. In fin-tech, there is also a large presence of unicorns: eToro is the Israeli-founded insurance company that had a valuation of USD 10.4 billion in 2021. There is also Forter, Next Insurance, Rapyd, Riskified, Melio, Lemonade and Payoneer, which went public in 2020 and 2021 respectively, and just in March 2022, Capitolis joined the unicorn club, cementing Israel’s position as a leader in Fin-Tech. “One of the hottest areas currently is Web3 and specifically, infrastructure technologies supporting Web3 applications. Other areas that continue to attract significant capital and top tier investors are developers and dev-ops platforms,” adds Herzog’s Yair Geva. “Big data continues to be a hot commercial field, with aspects of how to collect, verify and utilize the data coming into play,” agrees Kobi Ben-Chitrit, M&A partner at Yigal Arnon - Tadmor Levy, the firm’s name since this year’s landmark merger of Yigal Arnon and Tadmor Levy, today the third largest law firm in Israel. He adds: “Businesses are becoming ever more reliant on data in their operations, and being agile enough to collect and process data in real time has become a significant competitive advantage,”. In a recent transaction, we assisted IBM in acquiring an Israeli data observability startup called Databand.” “Israeli companiesbenefited fromtheextremely activeglobal capitalmarkets in 2021, with technology companies in particular attracting significant foreign investment capital and a number of Israeli companies — including ad-tech platform Taboola — taking the opportunity to list in the US, often via SPAC business combinations,” adds Davis Polk’s Lee Hochbaum, M&A partner at Davis Polk in New York. In addition to Taboola, the vibrant ad-tech
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