Saar Wilf is an Israeli innovator, businessman, angel investor and poker player who provides capital for start-up businesses.

Career

Wilf served in the

Israeli Defense Forces Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (b ...

' intelligence

Unit 8200 Unit 8200 ( he, יחידה 8200, ''Yehida shmone -Matayim''- "Unit eight - two hundred") is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption. Military pu ...

. He initially worked as a developer and programmer. Wilf's first start-up, in 1997, was Trivnet.com, a payments company, which was sold to

Gemalto Gemalto was an international digital security company providing software applications, secure personal devices such as smart cards and tokens, and managed services. It was formed in June 2006 by the merger of two companies, Axalto and Gemplus ...

in 2010. His second start-up was Fraud Sciences Ltd, which was acquired by

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

through

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

in 2008 for $169 million, where he worked until 2010. By 2017, he invested in about 15 companies. His companies have included ClarityRay (acquired by

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

), Pointgrab, Deep Optics. and CallApp, Crosswise (acquired by Oracle), Supersonic (merged with

IronSource ironSource Ltd. is an Israeli software company that focuses on developing technologies for app monetization and distribution, with its core products focused on the app economy. Among others, ironSource was chosen as one of the '20 hottest star ...

). As of 2014, Wilf was the chairman of Wikiwand, a mobile app and web browser extension for Wikipedia.

Bzigo Bzigo is a technology start-up company that develops autonomous devices for a pest-free life. Its first product detects and locates mosquitoes, and future products will both detect and eliminate mosquitoes and other pests autonomously. The company ...

, that he co-founded in 2016, has developed a machine which scans a room for

mosquitos Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning "gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "litt ...

and tells mobile phones where they are, describing itself as "an

Iron Dome Iron Dome ( he, כִּפַּת בַּרְזֶל, Kippat Barzel) is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. The system is designed to intercept and destroy short- ...

for mosquitos". In 2020, its machines were scheduled for delivery to customers in 2021. In 2017, Wilf founded Rootclaim, which uses probabilistic analysis to predict the likely solution to questions about controversial events such as war crimes, murder cases, and airline crashes. For example, it attributes the 2013

Ghouta chemical attack The Ghouta chemical attack, was a chemical attack carried out by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in the early hours of 21 August 2013 in Ghouta, Syria during the Syrian civil war. Two opposition-controlled areas in the su ...

in Syria to the Syrian opposition and the downing of

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Cont ...

to the Russia-aligned Donetsk People's Republic. In 2018, he founded payments system Quahl (originally known as Initiative Q), backed by American economist Lawrence H. White and branded a " pyramid scheme with grandiose ideas" by the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

.'' However, Mashable disagreed explaining "The important bit is that there's no money changing hands here". Seven million users had signed up within a year. Wilf donated $100,000 to fund the Brain Preservation Foundation Prize, which was won on March 13, 2018. Wilf has been playing Poker since 2005, with career earnings of over $1.3 Million as of 2023.

References

Israeli poker players Israeli businesspeople Israeli inventors Living people Date of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) 1974 births {{israel-business-bio-stub