Boomi buys Elementary, TTM pays $650 million for Ophir's optics business, and doubleAI launches Maxwell

Noa Boomi has bought its third Israeli startup. CTech reports it is paying about $40 to 45 million in cash and stock for Elementary, a seventeen-person company that checks whether the data feeding AI agents can be trusted.

Noa Good morning, it's Tuesday, the twentieth of October. I'm Noa.

Eli And I'm Eli. Today, a $650 million deal for a fifty-year-old Jerusalem optics maker, Amnon Shashua's doubleAI shows its first product, and a laser company behind Iron Beam heads for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Noa Boomi, whose platform connects data and applications for more than 30,000 customers, has acquired Elementary Data. CTech puts the deal at about $40 to 45 million. Elementary makes data observability software, tools that spot problems in the data before they break a report, a model or an AI agent.

Eli The founders are CEO Maayan Salom and Or Avidov, both veterans of Unit 8200. By the end of 2022 they had raised $8.5 million from TLV Partners, Cowboy Ventures and Y Combinator, CTech says. Customers include Fiverr and Patagonia.

Noa It started as an open-source project. The company says more than 1,500 data teams use it, and the open-source tool gets over a million downloads a month. Boomi says the open-source project carries on, with no immediate changes.

Eli The pattern is the interesting part. Boomi already bought Rivery for data integration and Lunar.dev for connecting AI agents to systems. CTech notes Elementary adds the quality layer, so the three cover moving data, accessing it and checking it. All 17 employees stay in Israel, and Boomi plans to expand locally.

Noa Boomi's CEO, Steve Lucas, put it simply: AI is only as trustworthy as the data behind it.

Noa The biggest price tag of the day is in Jerusalem. TTM Technologies, a US manufacturer, says it has agreed to buy the Ophir Optics business from MKS for about $650 million in cash.

Eli Ophir Optics makes infrared thermal imaging and laser optics, used for night vision and surveillance in defense, and in industry. It works out of Jerusalem and Romania. Globes says it has about 250 employees and is run by CEO Kobi Lasri.

Noa Not everything is in the sale. Ophir's laser measurement business stays with MKS, and so does the Ophir brand. TTM expects to close in the second quarter of 2027, after regulatory approvals.

Eli Ophir has changed hands a lot. Globes tells the story: founded in 1976 by three physicists, listed in Tel Aviv in 1991, sold to Newport in 2011 at a valuation of about $230 million, then bought with Newport by MKS in 2016. TTM says the price is roughly ten times the unit's expected adjusted earnings for 2027.

Noa Next, doubleAI, the startup co-founded by Mobileye's Amnon Shashua, has unveiled its first product. It is called Maxwell, and the company calls it a code execution model.

Eli The idea, as Globes describes it, is that Maxwell changes how live code runs on the hardware, while the source code stays the same. The goal is to get more out of GPUs and CPUs. A built-in verifier checks the generated code and only accepts parts that are mathematically proven correct.

Noa The timing is about cost. The Wall Street Journal, as reported by PYMNTS, cites SemiAnalysis data showing the hourly cost of renting Nvidia H100 chips on a one-year contract rose 60 percent in the past year.

Eli The company says one early customer cut its computing costs by 67 percent, according to the Journal's report, carried by Korea's Digital Today. doubleAI takes a share of customers' savings as its fee. Globes says it has raised about $200 million, from investors including Nvidia, Dell, Lightspeed and Bessemer.

Noa Shashua's own line for it: the first form of AI that works for the machine, rather than for the programmer.

Noa Now an IPO plan. Globes has learned that Civan Lasers is preparing to list in Tel Aviv at a pre-money valuation of 1.2 to 1.8 billion shekels, aiming to raise 250 to 350 million shekels in the coming months.

Eli Civan was founded in 2008 by Eyal Shekel and makes high-power lasers, first for welding, then for defense. Globes says it supplies one of the core technologies for Iron Beam, the laser interception system built by Rafael and Elbit. Globes puts an Iron Beam interception at about five to ten dollars, against about $30,000 for Iron Dome.

Noa There is a history with Elbit. It owns about five percent of Civan and had exclusive rights to sell its lasers to militaries. After a dispute and mediation by the Defense Ministry, Globes says Civan can now sell systems under one kilowatt abroad on its own.

Eli And Elbit itself has a new contract. It says it will supply EXTRA-MR rockets, with a range of up to 80 kilometers, and PULS launchers to a European country, worth about $235 million over three years. Sources told Globes the client is Azerbaijan. Elbit did not name it.

Noa CTech adds that Elbit's earlier rocket deals with Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark are estimated at more than $1.2 billion together.

Noa Now the quick round-up.

Noa Transmit Security has a new CEO. Calcalist reports co-founder Mickey Boodaei is handing the job to Matt Thompson, formerly president of Securonix, and becoming active chairman. Transmit raised $543 million in 2021 at a valuation of about $2.3 billion.

Eli Drone software company High Lander says its total funding has reached $30 million, after more money from EDGE Group and STEP, Protego and Kinetica joining. Ynetnews notes it did not disclose the size of the new round. The money goes into US expansion.

Noa Esther Barak Landes and Adi Ostry Matalon have held a first closing of Alma Ventures, a fund that will reach $40 million for mental health, cognitive health and longevity, Globes reports. Sheba Medical Center is taking part.

Eli At Intel's plant in Kiryat Gat, a suspected nitrogen trifluoride leak was reported on Monday, less than a week after an explosion there killed two workers, CTech reports. Intel says its monitoring caught it while gas tanks were being removed. Fire and Rescue Services said it was contained inside the plant.

Noa And Pelephone, part of the Bezeq group, is close to buying mobile operator Wecom for about 265 million shekels, according to Ice. A final agreement is expected in the coming days.

Eli One thing to watch: doubleAI's savings claims. Maxwell is in early access now, and Digital Today, citing the Journal, says wider supply starts from late October.

Noa If more customers report cuts anywhere near that 67 percent, it matters for everyone paying for compute.

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Noa See you tomorrow morning.