Intel Capital adds Israel's SCKipio, Parallel Machines to portfolio

Intel Capital, which is set to surpass out a half-billion dollars of investment through the end of the year, said that Tuesday's announcements brought its total investments in Israel to $300 million.

By NIV ELIS
Updated: NOVEMBER 3, 2015 23:39
Investment graph (photo credit: INGIMAGE / ASAP)
Investment graph
(photo credit: INGIMAGE / ASAP)
SAN DIEGO – Intel Capital on Tuesday announced 11 new portfolio companies, including two Israeli companies, at the chipmaker’s venture capital fund’s global summit.
The first, Ramat Gan-based SCKipio, was among 10 companies that received $22 million of investment. The company builds for G.Fast modems, which allows telecommunication companies to send huge amounts of data over existing infrastructure.
“At SCKipio we are counting on having billions of devices out there, because what we do is connect those devices to the cloud, to the network,” said SCKipio CEO David Baum.
Those devices are increasingly focused on sending and receiving huge media files.
“We hope to solve this bottleneck in the future.”
The second company, Tel Aviv-based Parallel Machines, gave Intel Capital warrants that allow it to invest in the company at a later date. Parallel machines focuses advancing predictive analytics and machine learning.
“It’s a transformative technology,” said Parallel Machines CTO Balint Fleischer.
The platform, he said, would help data scientists be more productive and help make a variety of technologies more precise.
Intel Capital, which is set to surpass half-a-billion dollars of investment through the end of the year, said that Tuesday’s announcements brought its total investments in Israel to $300m. in 75 companies, plus 11 acquisitions in the past decade.
“Israel is an incredible country, there’s so much technology that comes out of that country, it’s impressive,” said Marcos Battisti, Intel Capital’s managing director of Western Europe and Israel.
Aside from financial returns, Battisti says the company picks investments that further the ecosystem Intel operates in.
Intel Capital’s other investments included Prieto Battery, which is developing 3D batteries that could come in a variety of shapes; LISNR, which lets devices communicate using audio at level that humans cannot hear; and FreedomPop, which is creating a free alternative to traditional telecoms.
According to Battisti, Israel’s ecosystem is one of the best.
“If we compare Israel to any country in Western Europe, Israel is ahead,” he said.