The Jerusalem Post, Benson Oak Ventures has already secured $25 million and is seeking another $75 million.
Benson Oak is an investment banking firm founded in 1991 and is based in Prague, Czech Republic. Benson Oak provides debt financing, equity raising, mergers and acquisitions, risk management, and project finance advisory. Its clients include Czech, Slovak, and regional companies and financial institutions. It has raised over $5 billion since 2003, with its first fund including support for internet security company AVG.
Benson Oak Managing Partner Robert Cohen, said in a statement:
“I believe that there are great entrepreneurs in Israel who are leading the platforms of the future, with creating and disruptive use of blockchain technologies. I moved to Israel six years ago, and with a passion to build companies, I have established Benson Oak Ventures as a new platform to provide financial and operational capital to the best entrepreneurs in Israel and around the world.”
While it’s not clear when these funds will be available, or exactly who they are going to benefit, the fact that such a huge amount of money is being poured into the Israeli blockchain industry could be a sign of the nation’s ambitions for the technology.
While just the latest step in the firm’s Israeli activity, blockchain forms a new direction, with details of potential participants in the fund still to be released.