Latest / Israel Tech Daily / Nebius eyes another Israeli acquisition, a receiver for OpenWeb, and $2.77 billion raised in September

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Nebius eyes another Israeli acquisition, a receiver for OpenWeb, and $2.77 billion raised in September · Israel Tech Daily

• 0:00
  Noa: Nebius, the Nasdaq-listed AI cloud company, is looking to buy another Israeli company, for up to a hundred and fifty million dollars.
• 0:08
  Eli: And a Tel Aviv court has put a temporary receiver in charge of OpenWeb's assets in Israel.
• 0:20
  Noa: Good morning, it's Thursday, the first of October. I'm Noa.
• 0:24
  Eli: And I'm Eli. Today: Nebius shops for a second Israeli deal, a receiver for OpenWeb, a two point seven billion dollar month for Israeli startups, and Snyk's numbers out in the open.
• 0:37
  Noa: CTech reports that Nebius is exploring the acquisition of an Israeli company for about a hundred to a hundred and fifty million dollars, as it considers expanding its development center here. The report doesn't name the company. The Hebrew site ice, following the story, describes it as a software company.
• 0:54
  Eli: Nebius is led by Arkady Volozh, and CTech puts its Nasdaq market value at around sixty-five billion dollars. According to the report, its strategy combines building high-end hardware infrastructure with buying complementary software companies.
• 1:09
  Noa: And it has bought here before. CTech says Nebius acquired Tavily for an initial two hundred and seventy-five million dollars, with performance targets that could take the deal to four hundred million. Tavily built a real-time search layer for AI agents.
• 1:24
  Eli: Then there's AI21. CTech reports that acquisition talks, first with Nvidia and later with Nebius, at an estimated valuation of about two billion dollars, did not end in a deal. AI21 cut its workforce by about two thirds, refocused on enterprise AI agents, and signed a technology partnership with Nebius instead.
• 1:44
  Noa: And there's the physical side. Nebius was selected in a government tender to build and operate an AI data center in Modi'in, which CTech says will use thousands of Nvidia's Blackwell-generation chips.
• 1:56
  Noa: Now OpenWeb. Yesterday we told you about its insolvency filing, and its claim that its lender demanded twenty million dollars. Today, Globes reports that the Tel Aviv District Court has appointed a temporary receiver.
• 2:10
  Eli: The motion came from that lender, Mars Growth Capital, part of Liquidity Group. Globes says the receiver is lawyer Erez Haver of the firm Amit, Pollak, Matalon, and the lien covers OpenWeb's assets in Israel, including bank funds, customer receivables and intellectual property.
• 2:27
  Noa: Judge Hagai Brenner wrote that, given the company's insolvency and the circumstances in the motion, there are grounds for a temporary receiver. Globes puts the debt at about twenty million dollars as of September thirtieth, and it is still accruing interest.
• 2:42
  Eli: Mars alleges that OpenWeb missed its projections for months, that a sales deal changed materially, and that the end of its partnership with Microsoft wasn't disclosed promptly. The Globes report doesn't include a response from OpenWeb.
• 2:55
  Noa: September's funding numbers are in. According to CTech's monthly count, Israeli startups raised about two point seven seven billion dollars across twenty-eight rounds.
• 3:05
  Eli: And the money was concentrated. Five rounds, for Wonderful, Cyera, Island, Upwind and Covenant, added up to one point nine billion dollars, roughly sixty-nine percent of the total. The largest was Wonderful's five hundred and fifty million, at a five billion dollar valuation.
• 3:22
  Noa: The theme was AI agents. CTech lists security rounds for Reco, AIR Security, Cymphony and Huskeys, all aimed at companies deploying agents, plus Euno and Keewano building infrastructure for them. Its reading is that investors are paying for the plumbing around AI, not just apps that use it.
• 3:40
  Eli: Defense was the other strong area. Covenant emerged from stealth at a valuation above one billion dollars, and AITAN raised forty-one million to take its combat drone technology abroad.
• 3:52
  Noa: Snyk, the developer security company founded in Israel, rarely shows its numbers. CTech has them, from filings in the UK. Revenue grew eleven percent in 2025, to three hundred and nine million dollars.
• 4:06
  Eli: That's a sharp slowdown from fifty percent growth in 2023. The net loss widened to about a hundred and ninety-eight million dollars. The company ended the year with nine hundred and ninety full-time employees, yet wages rose five percent, which its directors put down to more expensive technical roles in AI.
• 4:24
  Noa: There's a change at the top too. CTech says longtime CEO Peter McKay left the board in May, CFO Kenneth MacAskill became interim CEO, and founder Guy Podjarny is back as chairman. Snyk still held about three hundred and sixty-eight million dollars in cash and investments, and its auditors expect it to keep operating through at least 2027.
• 4:46
  Noa: An Israeli founder says he was barred from a San Francisco hackathon because he is Israeli. The Algemeiner reports that Adam Levi, who founded an AI startup, had his invitation withdrawn from a hackathon on building AI agents for investment banking.
• 5:01
  Eli: Levi posted messages in which the organiser cited the 2024 pager attack in Lebanon and called him a safety risk to other participants. According to the Algemeiner, the organiser later repeated the decision publicly, pointing to Levi's service in Unit 8200.
• 5:17
  Noa: Levi told the Algemeiner that investors from Andreessen Horowitz, listed as a sponsor, told him they had removed their sponsorship. He says lawyers have approached him, but he hasn't decided whether to sue, and he still plans to attend San Francisco Tech Week.
• 5:32
  Noa: Now the quick round-up. CTech reports that Pagaya's AI-driven real estate fund, SmartResi Fund One, has lost fifty-four and a half percent since the start of 2022. Investor losses total a hundred and thirty-five million dollars, and the fund now holds eight hundred and eighty-eight American homes, down from fourteen hundred last year.
• 5:53
  Eli: Foresight Autonomous says it will voluntarily delist from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to cut costs and focus on Nasdaq, where most of its trading happens. The company says its last trading day in Tel Aviv will be January first, 2027.
• 6:08
  Noa: Geektime reports that Google has unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, a model with a focus on defensive security, open at first only to a small group of security partners. Google says Wiz, now part of Alphabet, used it to find a critical vulnerability in a system used by hospitals.
• 6:26
  Eli: And Globes reports that OpenAI has made its first go-to-market hire in Israel, Motti Hadas, formerly a vice president at Matrix and a sales executive at Google and MongoDB. Globes says it isn't yet clear whether the role is based in Israel or in London.
• 6:41
  Noa: One thing to watch. Whether Nebius confirms an Israeli acquisition, and which company it is. A deal would sit alongside Tavily, the AI21 partnership and the Modi'in data center, and make Israel a bigger part of how Nebius builds.
• 6:56
  Eli: And at OpenWeb, what the receiver does next with the company's assets in Israel. We'll keep following it.
• 7:03
  Noa: That's Israel Tech Daily for today. If this was useful, follow the show wherever you're listening, and read our startup profiles at Startup to Follow dot com.
• 7:12
  Eli: Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow morning.