AI21 Labs, a startup formed by veterans from an elite tech unit in the IDF to build AI systems, announced on Thursday it raised $34.5 million in total equity capital to work on its AI-based writing solutions and offerings. The funding includes a seed round of $9.5 million in January 2019 and the latest round of $25 million led by Pitango First, the seed and early-stage fund of Pitango's investment platform. Pitango is Israel's largest venture capital fund and was co-founded by Chemi Peres, the son of former president Shimon Peres. The VC focuses on core technologies like deep tech, AI, and machine learning. Other investors in the latest funding round included TPY Capital, another VC headquartered in Tel Aviv.

Two years ago, Gal Salomon's mother developed sepsis during a stay in the hospital. "It was a big hospital with a lot of patients and no one saw or understood it was happening," Salomon recalls bitterly. "We lost her after two days." So when Salomon, then a partner at Israeli venture capital firm Pitango, was introduced to Clew Medical, he knew immediately that he had to get involved. Clew develops software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to predict which patients in a hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) are at the highest risk of imminent deterioration, and it alerts staff so they can intervene early.

Pitango is a specialist in financing very successful FX industry ventures. Now the VC firm has launched a $175 million fund for machine learning and artificial intelligence. The cost of operating a retail FX brokerage has been a major concern for many executives over recent years, and during the course of 2016, many methods of automating specific practices and operational aspects are now under development and consideration. This month, the ability to be able to assign R&D budget to such automation gains further ground as Israeli venture capital firm Pitango has launched an early-stage fund with $175 million under management, that will be used to invest in companies at seed level and upwards. Aside from various'trendy' sectors such as life sciences, the new fund will specialize in interesting technological innovation such as Internet of Things, enterprise infrastructure and artificial intelligence.

Pitango Venture Capital, one of the most active VCs in the Israeli startup scene, has announced its seventh fund, Pitango Venture Capital 7. The fund will have $175 million under management, and invest from seed upwards. The new fund focuses on IT and life science investments, specializing in enterprise infrastructure, IoT, artificial intelligence and digital health. The new fund joins Pitango's first Growth Fund, which focuses on late-stage companies and which came out last year. This latest move brings Pitango's recent capital raising to a total of $400 million in both funds, taking its total assets under management to $2 billion. Pitango Venture Capital 7's first investment is in Graphcore, a developer and manufacturer of an intelligent processing unit for machine learning, as part of a $32 million investment round, with Bosch VC, Foundation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, Samsung's investment arm and other leading technology companies.