18 Food-tech and ag-tech catch the eye sector includes unicorns - AppsFlyer, SimilarWeb and ironSource, which just announced a merger with U.S. games developer Unity, with a joint value of USD 13 billion. Pharmaceutical, life science and healthcare service companies continue to attract investors, fueled by innovations in biotechnology and patient services and ongoing digitization. Israel has a high-quality public healthcare system, with the nation’s medical records stored in a centralized database. Within this, medical devices is key. “This industry is still hot and Israel is at the forefront. The medical device industry will continue to witness the integration of AI and that is another area where Israeli companies excel,” explains Guy Ben Ami, who leads Carter Ledyard & Milburn's Israeli crossborder practice. An increasing number of food-tech and ag-tech companies are indeed catching the investor eye. The U.S.-based research firm, Start-up Genome ranked Tel Aviv and Jerusalem fourth for ag-tech globally, trailing Silicon Valley, New York City and London in first place. Benyayer of EBNagrees: “We havewitnessed a surge in interest in the FoodTech industry, with skyrocketing fundraising. We represented S2G Ventures andManta Ray Ventures in the impressiveUSD347million Series Bfinancing round in Future Meat Technologies Ltd., which developed a technology to produce lab grown meat products, making it the largest single investment round in the cultivated meat industry.” Also, the success of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods shows that there is consumer demand for plantbased meat alternatives. There was also a USD 105 million investment in cultivated meat start-up Aleph Farms and MeaTech. Israeli food tech startup Redefine Meat announced plans to commercially launch its plant-based alternative meat products abroad. “Food and ag-tech are definitely getting interest from devoted VCs as well as government funding, motivated by public interest,” agrees Kobi BenChitrit, while Dr. Ziv Preis, head of Tech, Corporate and M&A at Lipa Meir, adds “I expect to see the continuation of certain sectors, which have been strong in the last 2-3 years, including ag-tech, food-tech, telehealth and intense use of applied artificial intelligence.”
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