Intel announced the purchase of Banana Labs for $2 billion. The deal comes about 3 years after the acquisition of Mobileye for 15 billion dollars. The Israeli company Habana Labs develops artificial intelligence chips.
The company’s employees and investors will register in the current exit one of the most significant returns on investment, in a start-up when most of them will register a return of 15 times or more on the investment. This is actually the largest private exit in Israel in a cash transaction and the largest purchase of a private chip company at the international level as well.
This is an extremely high exit for a company that raised only 120 million dollars. In 2018, the company Labs raised 75 million dollars in a second fundraising round led by Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel. Other investors in the company include the Bessemer funds, Battery Ventures, WRV Capital and more. The list of shareholders of Bana Labs includes a surprising number of investors, including Cisco, Samsung, the A&E investment fund and other private investors.
Altogether, since its inception, Habana Labs has raised $120 million in three major rounds, with the seed round invested in the company by the super entrepreneur Bigdor Vilanz and one of its founders and a number of other private investors who join Avigdor in most of his investments. Adam Fisher Walden’s Bessemer Ventures fund invested in the company in the following rounds
