In just over six months, Genesis Angels, which now goes by trade name Team Singular, had poured USD34.5 million in fresh capital in startups in Israel. The venture capital fund is backed by Kenges Rakishev, who is a Kazakh businessman whose wealth is derived from infrastructure and low technology industry. Other investors who contributed to the fund was Mobli founder and chief Moshe Hogeg, of which Rakishev also backed with USD20 million in September of last year.
In April this year, Rakishev, Hogeg and former prime minister Ehud Olmert launched Team Singular, which used the name Genesis Angels at that time then, with the latter serving as the chairman of the fund. Yuval Rabin, who serves as the fund manager, is the son of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin had served at Beyond Verbal Ltd, a company that developed the technology for emotion analysis, as chairman. Beyond Verbal was a meeting point of sorts for Rakishev, Hogeg and Rabin, and thus paved the way for all three to work together in Team Singular.
The largest investment Singular had made was in mobile hardware developer Sirim's seed funding round. Singular backed Sirim, of which its technology operates under the radar, with USD25 million in investment. Singular also placed a significant investment in StoreDot Ltd, which raised USD6 million from its first financing round in June this year. StoreDot was developing the technology to enable a low-battery iPhone to be fully charged in 30 seconds.
Hogeg explained the fund's investment decisions, "What matters to us in an investment is the synergy between companies, and the added value that we bring to the table through our business connections. A company like StoreDot, which specializes in energy storage, is very relevant in the mobile world, and a portfolio company like Sirim uses its technology, and connects it to its hardware developments for smartphones. We don't invest after the Series A round, which sets us apart from other investment funds."
A foreign tycoon who wanted to remain anonymous had joined Rakishev and Hogeg as its third silent partner.
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