Yozma, Yozma Program, or Yozma Fund was a venture capital organization in Israel that initially started out as a government funded program in 1993 to help kick start

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

angel investing An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups A startup or start-up is a company or p ...

, and

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

in Israel's economy. $20 million of government subsidies went to the Yozma Fund, the other $80 million the government provided went to match other foreign and domestic firms, at 40%, to create their own venture capital funds in Israel. The VC companies could buy-back the governments equity stake over a 5 year period, and most did. The Yozma Fund

privatized Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation w ...

in 1997 and became the Yozma Group.

Background

Inbal is a

government owned State ownership, also called public ownership or government ownership, is the ownership of an Industry (economics), industry, asset, property, or Business, enterprise by the national government of a country or State (polity), state, or a publi ...

insurance company that underwrote and guaranteed up to 70% of losses for venture capital firms from 1992-1998. The Israeli Government helped start and fund

business incubator A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services, starting with management training and office space, and ending with venture ...

s and an R&D cluster during the 1990s. Many immigrants came to Israel during the

fall of the soviet union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of Nationalities, Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. :s: ...

in the

1990s post-Soviet aliyah In the years leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and for just over a decade thereafter, a particularly large number of Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet countries. The majority of these emigrants made ...

and about ⅓ of them were skilled enigineers and scientists.

Yozma funds

Yozma 2.0

In 2024, the

Israel Innovation Authority The Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) is the support and investment arm of the Israeli Government, Israeli government, in charge of planning and executing the country’s innovation policy, promoting technological innovation and Science and techn ...

has launched a Yozma 2.0 with government funds of $155 million, looking to raise $700 million from private institutional venture capital investors, at a 30% match.

Hebrew translation

Yozma Yozma, Yozma Program, or Yozma Fund was a venture capital organization in Israel that initially started out as a government funded program in 1993 to help kick start venture capital, angel investing, and private equity in Israel's economy. $20 mi ...

translates from

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

to English as initiative.

References

{{Reflist
Venture Capital Policies in Israel
Finance in Israel Science and technology in Israel Venture capital firms of Israel Economy of Israel

Background

Yozma funds

Yozma 2.0

Hebrew translation

See also

References