Latest / Israel Tech Daily / GrowthCurve buys control of TailorMed, XTEND cuts 10% of staff, 42AI emerges with $62.5 million

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GrowthCurve buys control of TailorMed, XTEND cuts 10% of staff, 42AI emerges with $62.5 million · Israel Tech Daily

• 0:00
  Noa: An American private equity firm is buying control of the Israeli health tech company TailorMed, in a deal Globes and CTech value at about $250 million.
• 0:16
  Noa: Good morning, it's Tuesday, the third of November. I'm Noa.
• 0:19
  Eli: And I'm Eli.
• 0:21
  Noa: Today, the TailorMed deal, drone maker XTEND cuts jobs two months after listing in New York, and 42AI comes out of stealth with $62.5 million.
• 0:32
  Noa: GrowthCurve Capital, a US private equity firm, is buying a majority stake in TailorMed. Globes puts the company's valuation at about $250 million, and CTech says the deal is valued at about that, though the companies did not disclose a price.
• 0:48
  Eli: For most of TailorMed's investors, this is the exit. Both outlets say the company has raised about $60 million, so its backers, including several Israeli funds, come out ahead. They include Triventures, Accelmed, Samsung Next and Discount Capital.
• 1:04
  Noa: TailorMed was founded in 2016 by chief executive Srulik Dvorsky and technology chief Adam Siton. Its platform finds financial assistance programs for patients in the US, where out-of-pocket costs for medication can be high.
• 1:18
  Eli: The company says its network reaches more than 950 hospitals, 4,700 clinics and over 3,000 pharmacies, and that it has helped patients get about $7.4 billion in financial assistance. CTech notes that is support for patients, not TailorMed's revenue.
• 1:35
  Noa: One listed winner: the Hebrew site ice reports that Almeda Ventures, which holds about three percent, will receive about $7.6 million in cash, roughly three times its $2.4 million investment.
• 1:48
  Eli: TailorMed keeps its management and its development center in Tel Aviv. Globes says the center has about 60 of the company's 130 employees, while CTech puts it at about 50 of 120. Dvorsky says GrowthCurve may buy more companies to build around TailorMed.
• 2:05
  Eli: Time for a short break, and a word from this episode's sponsor, SkillSim. You can build an interactive AI hiring scenario in about a minute and send it straight to candidates. Replies are timed and pasting is off, so the answers come from them, not a chatbot. Try it free at skillsim.co.
• 2:23
  Noa: Back to the news. The Israeli drone maker XTEND is laying off about ten percent of its staff, CTech reports, two months after it started trading on the New York Stock Exchange at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
• 2:36
  Eli: Its market value has since fallen to about $350 million, a drop of more than seventy-five percent. XTEND employs 267 people, about sixty percent of them in Israel.
• 2:48
  Noa: XTEND didn't go public through a regular offering. It merged with JFB Construction Holdings, a listed real estate company, and a group of private funds agreed to invest. CTech says that investment was planned at $152 million, was cut to about $100 million, and $60 million is due in the coming days.
• 3:09
  Eli: The company says the changes are about efficiency, and points to a $40.5 million US military order for 6,000 STRIKER drone systems under the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program. CTech notes that further orders aren't guaranteed.
• 3:22
  Noa: The numbers show the pressure. Revenue in 2025 was about $20 million, up twenty percent, while the net loss widened to $27 million. In the first quarter of this year, revenue was $5.8 million and the loss was $11.5 million.
• 3:40
  Noa: Next, a company coming out of stealth. TechCrunch reports that 42AI, an Israeli startup, has $62.5 million in seed funding for what it calls a behavioral world model, a system meant to predict how people will act.
• 3:55
  Eli: The money came over three years from the founders and Infinity Group, and chief executive Amit Gal-Or told TechCrunch it was not all from outside investors. Infinity was founded by his father, Amir Gal-Or, who is 42AI's chairman and a co-founder. The technology chief is Ehud Ezra.
• 4:14
  Noa: Its first customers are brokerages. The company says it works with ten large brokerages, which use it to manage liquidity, margin and hedging, and that it earns more than seven figures in revenue, without giving a number.
• 4:28
  Eli: It also says the model is 98 percent accurate, but Gal-Or told TechCrunch that means trading flows land within a predicted range, not that each trade is called correctly. TechCrunch raised the risk of misuse, and the founders pointed to regulation, monitoring and an internal ethics committee.
• 4:45
  Noa: 42AI says it wants to move beyond finance, into gaming, fraud prevention and cybersecurity, and that it plans to raise more money.
• 4:54
  Noa: In defense, Elbit Systems says it has won a contract worth about $170 million from Israel's Ministry of Defense to build and run a training and simulation center for the IDF Artillery Corps, Globes reports.
• 5:08
  Eli: The contract runs for fifteen years. The center will train crews on two new systems, the ROEM self-propelled gun, known as SIGMA, and the LAHAV precision rocket launcher, known as PULS. Elbit says it will have mission and driving simulators and AI-based features.
• 5:26
  Noa: Elbit says the center should shorten training times and cut wear on the real equipment. It will also provide training, maintenance and support for the life of the contract.
• 5:35
  Noa: And one more round of job cuts. Atera, the Israeli IT management software company, has laid off about ten percent of its workforce, mostly in Israel, CTech reports. Globes and Geektime have the same story.
• 5:49
  Eli: CTech counts about 320 employees, so roughly 30 people, while Globes puts the staff at about 350. The company says it is focusing on strategic priorities and will keep investing in its platform and in Robin, its autonomous IT technology.
• 6:05
  Noa: Atera was founded by chief executive Gil Pekelman and technology chief Oshri Moyal. CTech says it raised $77 million in a Series B in 2021, bringing its total funding to about $100 million.
• 6:19
  Eli: Now the quick round-up.
• 6:20
  Noa: Globes reports that Israel Aerospace Industries' Barak MX and the French SAMP/T NG are the two finalists in a Swiss air defense plan with a total budget of six billion Swiss francs, about $7.2 billion. The winner would work alongside Switzerland's Patriot systems.
• 6:39
  Eli: Israel's National Cyber Directorate has told supermarket chains, food companies and logistics centers to check their refrigeration control systems, after hackers in Europe took over fridges and freezers at dozens of stores, The Jerusalem Post and JFeed report. It wants remote access locked down and default passwords changed.
• 6:57
  Noa: Ground Up Ventures has made Navot Volk a general partner, CTech reports. He will lead the firm's Israeli activity from Tel Aviv with David Stark. The firm manages more than $65 million across two funds and invests at pre-seed and seed.
• 7:13
  Eli: And Intel's slide continued. CTech says the shares traded around $60 on Monday, back to April levels and more than half below where they were in late September.
• 7:24
  Noa: What to watch: XTEND's next order. CTech says more Pentagon orders depend on how its drones perform in later stages of the Drone Dominance Program, and after a seventy-five percent fall in its value, the next contract will say a lot.
• 7:38
  Eli: This episode was brought to you by SkillSim. Team leads hiring for their own group can see each applicant handle a tricky, true-to-life problem, live and unassisted, before anyone books an interview. Check them out at skillsim.co.
• 7:53
  Noa: Follow Israel Tech Daily in your podcast app, and read more at startuptofollow.com.
• 7:58
  Eli: See you tomorrow morning.