Waze founder units up $40m enterprise capital fund

Uri Levine, cofounder of site visitors navigation app Waze, which was acquired by Google for $1.1 billion in 2013, is establishing a $40 million new enterprise capital fund. He’s founding the fund with former Hanaco Ventures accomplice Pasha Romanovski, who managed the investments in firms like Lightricks, Redefine Meat, and Vesttoo, which is underneath investigation by the US authorities for fraud. Romanovski was a director of the corporate however isn’t underneath any suspicion within the affair. He left Hanaco final 12 months after the affair blew up and after he was sued by the singer Omer Adam and investor Ran Nussbaum over allegations of deceiving traders at foodtech firm Infarm.

Levine, who presently lives in Madrid, is a serial entrepreneur that raises cash for his personal firms. The brand new fund referred to as Double Down Can be for funding in Levine’s firms and can deal with development stage startups which have reached the income threshold of tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, a few of that are even working profitably. “Globes” has discovered that members of the brand new fund is not going to be a part of the boards of administrators of the businesses following investments.

Launch of operations – in the direction of the top of 2025

Double Down is a chance fund elevating capital to help current portfolio firms, and won’t make investments in new firms. Thus far, it has raised, in accordance with estimates, about $20 million of its goal, and the launch of its operations is deliberate in the direction of the top of 2025. Levine and Romanovski should not working to boost capital from establishments in Israel, however are specializing in non-public traders and rich households (household workplaces) in Europe, the US and South America.

Among the many firms focused for funding by the fund: Pontera (previously FeeX), a pension plan administration platform for brokers and monetary advisors within the US – which raised $60 million 18 months in the past at an organization valuation of $550 million, in accordance with PitchBook; Oversee (previously Fairfly,) which supplies organizations with a platform that tracks modifications in airfares for ticket bought for workers and managers – and re-tickets when the worth falls. Oversee has overcome challenges posed by the Covid pandemic and struggle, and is now a rising firm.

Different funding targets are: the WeSki tourism platform, which organizes holidays at ski resorts and presently generates thousands and thousands of {dollars} in income – within the ski tourism market price $100 billion yearly; Cahun Medical, which constructions scientific information for Gen-AI use; farming administration firm Citrii, which supplies AI-based data on agricultural produce; software program firm Dynamo; and the parking app Pumba.

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Levine was Waze CEO on its founding, and later determined to relinquish the place in favor of employed CEO Noam Bardin, who ran the corporate till the sale to Google. He then served as president and shortly after the exit, left the corporate to discovered firms with younger entrepreneurs and lift capital for them. Amongst different issues, he was one of many early traders in Moovit and its first board member, earlier than it was bought to Intel. Levine lectures on entrepreneurship at a college in Madrid, and he has written a e book on technological entrepreneurship.

No response has been forthcoming from both Levine or Romanovski.

Revealed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on August 12, 2025.