Tech Buzz: Verbit, Moon Active raise large rounds

It is another wild week in the Start-Up Nation, with more frenzied investment activity and two reported mega-rounds.

Israeli start-ups have raised more than $22 billion so far this year, more than twice as much as has been raised in any year before.

Verbit, a voice AI transcription and captioning company, raised $250 million in a Series E funding round led by Third Point Ventures. Since Verbit raised its $157m. Series D round last May, the company’s valuation has doubled to $2b., after raising a total of more than $550m. since it was founded in 2017. Verbit has more than 2,000 clients across the media, education, corporate, legal, and government sectors, and employs 470 workers, along with 35,000 freelancer transcribers and 600 professional captioners globally. This new round demonstrates investor confidence in Verbit’s promise to revolutionize the $30b. transcription market.

Reports in the Hebrew press say that Tel Aviv-based gaming company Moon Active raised $300m. at a company valuation of $5b. The round, composed of secondary transactions, was led by Insight Partners, Calcalist said. Moon Active is the developer of Coin Master, one of the world’s most popular mobile games, in which players build up villages by winning coins to upgrade items. The nine-year-old company acquired European gaming company Melsoft last year for an estimated $100m.

Mindspace, which provides flex office solutions, raised $72m. to support its expansion in Europe, the United States and Israel. Mindspace, founded in 2014, currently operates 32 branches in 17 cities in 7 countries, spread over 100,000 square meters (over 1 million sq. ft.). In the past year alone, Mindspace launched new branches in London, Tel Aviv, Philadelphia and a new hub and spoke location outside Tel Aviv, at Yakum. While most of the commercial real estate industry took a hit as a result of COVID, the market for flex office space is expected to keep growing over the coming decade, the company said.

8fig, a Tel Aviv-based provider of equity-free flexible funding and supply chain management tools for eCommerce sellers, raised $50m. in Series A funding round to accelerate growth and expand its lending capabilities.

Whatslly, a Tel Aviv-based provider of a conversational sales platform for customer-facing interactions, raised $11m. The two-year-old company’s no-code plug-and-play solution connects with WhatsApp and other messaging products to help companies track interactions with customers and provide sales insights.

Zenity, a cybersecurity platform for Low-Code/No-Code applications, exited stealth mode with a $5 million Seed funding round, led by Vertex Ventures and UpWest. The company was founded in April in Tel Aviv, and includes Fortune 500 companies among its customers.