The Israeli start-up raised seed money at the end of 1999 from JVP, which also provided a bridge loan until the current financing round.

Yanay Alfassy

Israeli start-up Sphera has raised $13.5 million in a financing round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), which invested $4.5 million and Gemini, which invested $5 million. Other participating investors were European fund Reuters Greenhouse and Japanese fund CSK Venture Capital.

The company raised $3.5 million in seed money at the end of 1999 from JVP, which also provided a bridge loan this year, until the current round.

Sphera developed a software platform for Web-hosting and ASPs, which supports various operating systems (Unix NT, Linux), enabling centralized management of applications dispersed over various servers throughout the world. Among other things, the software offers a virtual separation between the various sites on one server, with individual managing and control for each of them, as if they were on separate servers.

Sphera, founded in 1999, has a 55-staff development center in Israel, offices in New York and sales offices in London and Washington with a total of 80 employees. The company has customers in the US, Europe and the Far East.