OurCrowd raises $72 million in Series C funding round

The Jerusalem-based equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd said Wednesday it has closed $72 million in a round of Series C funding.

Participants in this latest cycle include financial institutions, family offices, and private investors from five continents, the company said in a statement. UOB Group, one of Singapore’s leading banks, is an investor in the current round.

“OurCrowd has grown exponentially since our launch in 2013 to become the leading global platform for equity crowdfunding,” said the company’s CEO, Jon Medved, in a phone interview. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest funding round any crowdfunding company globally has raised.”

The company will use half of the funds to expand its global operations and offices and also to further develop the technology platform, he said.

“The other half will be used to make sure that each and every company that raises funding on our platform receives participating investment from us on the same terms as the crowd,” Medved explained. “This new capital will help us hit our goal of investing $1 billion annually by 2020.”

OurCrowd is sector agnostic, and looks at investments in all areas, Medved said. “But we are very excited about continued investment in medical technology and devices, cyber security, machine and deep learning; and we are making a big commitment to agriculture technology.”

To date, OurCrowd has invested in 100 portfolio companies and funds on its platform — bringing its total investment to more than $300 million. Around 70 percent of its investments were in Israeli firms, whereas around 90 percent of OurCrowd’s funding comes from foreign investors, Medved said.

“Israel’s tech ecosystem is off the charts,” he said. “We are being inundated by investors from all over the world. This is a golden age for Israeli high tech. And although we shouldn’t rest on our laurels, and we should make sure our future is assured through education, we should also be able to smell the roses” as they bloom, he continued.

OurCrowd has had nine exits to date from its portfolio investments — two IPOs and seven acquisitions. These include ReWalk, which held an IPO on NASDAQ; Crosswise, bought by Oracle; Replay Technologies, bought by Intel; and NextPeer, bought by Viber.

“OurCrowd continues to lead the equity crowdfunding market not just in numbers, but in the quality of their deal flow and number of their exits,” said Dr. Richard Swart, a former director of crowdfunding research at UC Berkeley in the statement. “They have consistently proven that crowdfunding can deliver not only the best deals, but also healthy returns. OurCrowd’s impressive new funding round should enable them to address the considerable challenge of scaling up their their business to the billion-dollar level.”