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Monday.com celebrates its IPO at the Nasdaq, June 10, 2021.
Source: Nasdaq

In April, Insight Partners’ Jeff Horing hopped on a flight to Israel for a breakfast with tech CEOs. It was also an opportunity to pay a visit to his firm’s first international office, which had opened less than two years before.

Now, CEOs from two of those companies are visiting him in New York. They’re actually coming to ring the bell on the Nasdaq, as Israel’s high-growth companies line up to hit the public markets.

Last week, collaboration software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor Monday.com held its IPO and closed on Friday with a market cap of $8.2 billion. This week, fellow Israeli software company WalkMe, whose technology is designed to simplify enterprise software and applications, is scheduled to go public with a valuation of up to $2.6 billion

Insight is the biggest investor in both. The firm owns a 43% stake in Monday.com and controls 32% of WalkMe. Its combined ownership in the two companies is currently worth about $3.9 billion.

“For a long time, Israel has been the start-up hub, a hive of activity,” Horing wrote in an email, in response to written questions. “But these start-ups are scaling successfully at a more rapid pace.”

Money is flooding into Israeli tech. The country’s start-ups raised $5.37 billion in the first quarter, more than double the amount a year earlier and 89% above the fourth quarter, which was a record period, according to a report from IVC and law firm Meitar.

Game developer Playtika, based in Herzliya, went public in January and has a market cap of $10.6 billion, making it the fourth most-valuable publicly traded tech company in Israel, according to FactSet. Monday.com ranks fifth and WalkMe is poised to crack the top 10.

For Insight, the launch of an Israeli operation in late 2019 marked the firm’s first office opening outside the U.S. since its founding in 1995. But Insight had been investing in and around Tel Aviv for over two decades.

Horing said the firm did its first deal in Israel in 2000. He highlighted Enigma, a developer of software to manufacturers, and Shunra, a network virtualization company that was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, as two early investments.

“I’ve always loved visiting Israel and have many memories at tiny market restaurants eating incredible food, arguing for hours over different technologies and SaaS strategies,” Horing said. “My team and I spent countless hours flying back and forth to Israel, often spending weeks at a time getting to know entrepreneurs and working alongside our portfolio companies.”

Prior to Monday.com, Insight’s marquee investment had been in website creation software company Wix, which went public in 2013. Insight co-led a $40 million round in 2011 and had a 12% stake at the time of the IPO.

Wix’s stock price has since multiplied 17-fold, giving the company a $15 billion market cap, second only to Check Point Software among Israeli tech companies.

“Wix was a foundational investment for Insight in Israel,” Horing said. Wix co-founder Avishai Abrahami is also on Monday.com’s board. Along with Abrahami and Nir Zohar, Wix’s operating chief, “we’ve co-invested in many Israeli deals over the years,” Horing said.

Acquiring an Israeli firm’s portfolio

The most glaring detail on Monday.com’s cap table is the size of Insight’s stake.

Typically when a venture-backed company goes public with a multibillion-dollar valuation, the top firm would hold no more than 30% of the outstanding shares, often much less.

Insight took a unique approach to get to 43%. In February 2019, seven months before opening its Tel Aviv office, Insight purchased the majority of a fund portfolio held by an Israeli firm called Genesis Partners, whose partners were leaving for other ventures.

Within that fund, which closed in 2009, Genesis had invested in Monday.com’s seed and Series A financing rounds. Insight first came in as part of the $25 million Series B in 2017.

After acquiring the contents of the Genesis fund, Insight was able to merge the two firms’ holdings, building a stake that’s now worth $3.1 billion. Genesis was also an early investor in two other Insight-backed companies: online music learning company JoyTunes and business intelligence company Sisense.

Monday.com co-founder and co-CEO Roy Mann told CNBC that Insight was tapping into a big change happening in Israeli tech.

“They had a very strong conviction in Israel and the Israeli ecosystem,” Mann said in an interview after the IPO. “The whole industry matured to a level where entrepreneurs want to build big companies and want to hold them for a long time. Insight was early on to recognize that and really go and back a lot of amazing Israeli companies.”

Horing joined co-founders Mann and Eran Zinman in ringing the Nasdaq’s opening bell on Thursday. The company also had 250 employees come in from cities across the U.S.

Horing will have the opportunity to do it again this week for the WalkMe IPO. In 2017, Insight led a $75 million investment in WalkMe. By following on over the course of two more financing rounds, Insight built up a 32% stake that’s worth $750 million at the top end of WalkMe’s IPO range.

Horing said Insight now has 80 “operating experts” in Israel working with portfolio companies and has expanded in Tel Aviv to take over the space formerly occupied by JFrog, which went public on the Nasdaq last year.

As for what Horing finds most exciting coming out of Israel these days, he said there’s no shortage of opportunities to put money to work.

“Israel is firing on all cylinders,” he said. “Of course cyber is a strong sector but it is much broader to a wide group of SaaS, infrastructure, fintech, gaming, and ad tech.”

WATCH: JFrog CEO on the company’s public debut and outlook

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder and CEO, Circle 

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The S1 lays the groundwork for Circle’s long-anticipated entry into the public markets.

While the filing does not yet disclose the number of shares or a price range, sources told Fortune that Circle plans to move forward with a public filing in late April and is targeting a market debut as early as June.

JPMorgan Chase and Citi are reportedly serving as lead underwriters, and the company is seeking a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion, according to Fortune.

This marks Circle’s second attempt at going public. A prior SPAC merger with Concord Acquisition Corp collapsed in late 2022 amid regulatory challenges. Since then, Circle has made strategic moves to position itself closer to the heart of global finance — including the announcement last year that it would relocate its headquarters from Boston to One World Trade Center in New York City.

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation.

Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation. It makes up about 26% of the total market cap for stablecoins, behind Tether‘s 67% dominance. Its market cap has grown 36% this year, however, compared with Tether’s 5% growth.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on the company’s most recent earnings call that it has a “stretch goal to make USDC the number 1 stablecoin.” 

The company’s push into public markets reflects a broader moment for the crypto industry, which is navigating renewed political favor under a more crypto-friendly U.S. administration. The stablecoin sector is ramping up as the industry grows increasingly confident that the crypto market will get its first piece of U.S. legislation passed and implemented this year, focusing on stablecoins.

Stablecoins’ growth could have investment implications for crypto exchanges like Robinhood and Coinbase as they integrate more of them into crypto trading and cross-border transfers. Coinbase also has an agreement with Circle to share 50% of the revenue of its USDC stablecoin.

The stablecoin market has grown about 11% so far this year and about 47% in the past year, and has become a “systemically important” part of the crypto market, according to Bernstein. Historically, digital assets in this sector have been used for trading and as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto investors watch them closely for evidence of demand, liquidity and activity in the market.

More recently, however, rhetoric around stablecoins’ ability to help preserve U.S. dollar dominance – by exporting dollar utility internationally and ensuring demand for U.S. government debt, which backs nearly all dollar-denominated stablecoins – has grown louder.

A successful IPO would make Circle one of the most prominent crypto-native firms to list on a U.S. exchange — an important signal for both investors and regulators as digital assets become more entwined with the traditional financial system.

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

The Hims app arranged on a smartphone in New York on Feb. 12, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hims & Hers Health shares closed up 5% on Tuesday after the company announced patients can access Eli Lilly‘s weight loss medication Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro, as well as the generic injection liraglutide, through its platform.

Zepbound, Mounjaro and liraglutide are part of the class of weight loss medications called GLP-1s, which have exploded in popularity in recent years. Hims & Hers launched a weight loss program in late 2023, but its GLP-1 offerings have evolved as the company has contended with a volatile supply and regulatory environment.

Lilly’s weekly injections Zepbound and Mounjaro will cost patients $1,899 a month, according to the Hims & Hers website. The generic liraglutide will cost $299 a month, but it requires a daily injection and can be less effective than other GLP-1 medications.

“As we look ahead, we plan to continue to expand our weight loss offering to deliver an even more holistic, personalized experience,” Dr. Craig Primack, senior vice president of weight loss at Hims & Hers, wrote in a blog post.

A Lilly spokesperson said in a statement that the company has “no affiliation” with Hims & Hers and noted that Zepbound is available at lower costs for people who are insured for the product or for those who buy directly from the company. 

In May, Hims & Hers started prescribing compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s GLP-1 weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The offering was immensely popular and helped generate more than $225 million in revenue for the company in 2024.

But compounded drugs can traditionally only be mass produced when the branded medications treatments are in shortage. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that the shortage of semaglutide injections products had been resolved.

That meant Hims & Hers had to largely stop offering the compounded medications, though some consumers may still be able to access personalized doses if it’s clinically applicable. 

During the company’s quarterly call with investors in February, Hims & Hers said its weight loss offerings will primarily consist of its oral medications and liraglutide. The company said it expects its weight loss offerings to generate at least $725 million in annual revenue, excluding contributions from compounded semaglutide.

But the company is still lobbying for compounded medications. A pop up on Hims & Hers’ website, which was viewed by CNBC, encourages users to “use your voice” and urge Congress and the FDA to preserve access to compounded treatments.

With Tuesday’s rally, Hims and Hers shares are up about 27% in 2025 after soaring 172% last year.

WATCH: Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

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Meta’s head of AI research announces departure

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Meta's head of AI research announces departure

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta’s head of artificial intelligence research announced Tuesday that she will be leaving the company. 

Joelle Pineau, the company’s vice president of AI research, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, saying her last day at the social media company will be May 30. 

Her departure comes at a challenging time for Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, investing billions of dollars in an effort to become the market leader ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google.

Zuckerberg has said that it is his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.

“As the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau wrote. “I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.”

Vice President of AI Research and Head of FAIR at Meta Joelle Pineau attends a technology demonstration at the META research laboratory in Paris on February 7, 2025.

Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty Images

Pineau was one of Meta’s top AI researchers and led the company’s fundamental AI research unit, or FAIR, since 2023. There, she oversaw the company’s cutting-edge computer science-related studies, some of which are eventually incorporated into the company’s core apps. 

She joined the company in 2017 to lead Meta’s Montreal AI research lab. Pineau is also a computer science professor at McGill University, where she is a co-director of its reasoning and learning lab.

Some of the projects Pineau helped oversee include Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies like the PyTorch software for AI developers.

Pineau’s departure announcement comes a few weeks ahead of Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference on April 29. There, the company is expected to detail its latest version of Llama. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, to whom Pineau reported to, said in March that Llama 4 will help power AI agents, the latest craze in generative AI. The company is also expected to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot, CNBC reported in February

“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.” 

Pineau did not reveal her next role but said she “will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”

WATCH: Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

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