MONETA Venture Capital announces the first closing of a new Fintech fund
12 April, 2018, For immediate release:
Major investors in the new fund include: Israel Discount Bank, which has joined as an anchor investor, a leading private equity fund from Asia, a European Fintech fund and family offices from the United States. Many of the investors in Moneta Seeds (2015) have invested again in the Moneta Capital fund (2018).
Moneta Venture Capital announces the first closing of a new Fintech fund called Moneta Capital. The new fund will invest in Fintech companies, at the revenue-growth stage. It will act in parallel with the Moneta Seeds Fund, which was set up in early 2015 and which invests in the very early stages (seed). The new fund will manage $80 million, and over half of this amount was raised in the first closing. The new fund is expected to complete its fund raising in the next few months. Concurrently with the first closing news, Moneta gave notice of the approval of its first two investments. The names of the invested companies will be published upon the closing of the investment process.
Moneta Venture Capital focuses on Fintech and Insurtech ventures that incorporate data analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) and financial technologies. The Fund’s unique model is based on a strategic partnership with Israel Discount Bank and with world’ leading banks that assist the Fund in evaluating new ventures, and subsequently may become design partners or even customers for the investee ventures. During the past 3 years, Moneta Seeds has invested in 11 companies, and in most of these, its strategic partners have co-invested and/or established a strategic cooperation with the young startups. For start-up companies, the ability to join forces with a leading bank, serves as a springboard to business success on a global scale.
The seed Fund’s portfolio companies include: Tipranks– which rates analysts’ performance and produces research products, trading analysis products and signals based on big data analysis. The company’s products are integrated within the largest trading companies in the United States. Atidot – an artificial intelligence technology for the life insurance industry, which significantly improves actuarial processes and the profitability of insurance companies. Atidot has recently signed significant contracts with some of the world’s largest life insurance companies.
Moneta was founded by Adoram Gaash and Meirav Har Noy, both of whom are experienced investors who have been working together since 2013. Ami Shafran (Major General, Res) joined the new Fund as a partner to strengthen the data technology side. Adoram Gaash founded and managed companies that have been sold to leading companies in the United States. In the early 2000s, he founded and managed the StageOne VC Fund, which specialized in the communications infrastructure sector. Meirav Har Noy managed technological investments at Intel Capital and at the APAX Partners Fund. Maj. Gen. Ami Shafran is the former head of the IDF Information and Communications Technology Command (C4I). He was also head of Mafaat, the research and development agency of the Ministry of Defense, and he is considered to be a world-leading technological expert who lectures and consults to major institutions around the world.
Adoram Gaash, a founding partner of Moneta: “In recent years, financial technology is becoming a focal area of innovation at a global level. The Fintech revolution that began in the United States and in China, is rapidly spreading to other countries. We have identified this trend already five years ago and began to specialize and invest in this field. Over time, the Israeli high-tech scene has fallen in love with Fintech. All of the banks have set up innovation centers that encourage entrepreneurship in the Fintech sector. This, together with the plethora of creative entrepreneurs who specialize in algorithms and enterprise software, are creating a huge deal flow, which is transforming Israel into a global Fintech center.” Meirav Har Noy, a founding partner of the Fund: “We have founded the new fund in order to offer entrepreneurs an investment house which is engaged in the fields of AI, data science and Fintech and which covers the entire span of the venture’s capital development, starting from the seed round and all the way to the growth rounds. We are extremely proud that world class investors have joined the Fund, and also, that many of the investors in our seed fund have joined the investment in the new fund.”
Yael Weisburd Sucari, Innovation and Fintech Manager at Israel Discount Bank: “The investment in the Moneta Fund is an important step for Israel Discount Bank, which has set itself the goal of becoming a leading bank in the Fintech sector in Israel. Israel Discount Bank, as an anchor investor in the Fund, will be exposed to state-of-the-art solutions at the cutting edge of financial technology in Israel, which will support the implementation of the strategy that we have previously declared of developing innovative models through collaborations with Fintech companies. This investment is the fruit of joint efforts put in by the Strategic, Planning and Finance Division, managed by Ziv Biron, and Discount Capital, Israel Discount Bank’s investment arm, managed by Hila Himi Alpert, which work together to make investments in the Fintech sector. This collaboration is reflected in the investment in specialist Fintech funds and direct investments in companies that will strengthen Discount’s technological capabilities in the New World.”
