Grove Ventures: Dov Moran's Deep-Tech Israeli Fund

Grove Ventures is the Tel Aviv-based deep-technology venture capital firm founded in 2015 by Dov Moran — the M-Systems founder who invented the USB flash drive (Disk-on-Key) and sold M-Systems to SanDisk in 2006 for approximately $1.55 billion. Grove closed Fund II at $120 million in early 2020 and now operates with a reported current fund size of approximately $185 million. The firm invests at seed and Series A into semiconductors, quantum computing, computational biology, industrial technology, and adjacent deep-tech categories. Portfolio: Quantum Source, Teramount, Wiliot, Ramon.Space, RapidAPI (acquired), TriEye, Navina, UnifabriX. Managing partners: Moran, Lotan Levkowitz, Lior Handelsman, Renana Ashkenazi.

Founding — Moran, 2015

Grove Ventures was founded in 2015 by Dov Moran as an early-stage deep-technology investment platform built around the thesis that Israel's hardest venture returns would come from technology at the intersection of engineering, hard science, and market need. Moran assembled the founding investment team around a small partnership; Sigalit Klimovsky and Omri Green joined the founding leadership as partners at Fund II's close.

By the announcement of Fund II in early 2020, Grove had positioned itself as Israel's most active venture investor in semiconductors and had built out Israel's largest Industry 4.0 conference. The Grove Ventures I portfolio delivered strong follow-on activity: portfolio companies had raised more than $100 million in additional funding from other leading investors by the point of the second-fund close.

The Moran founder profile — M-Systems and the USB flash drive

Dov Moran founded M-Systems in 1989 and led the company as CEO through the invention and commercialization of the DiskOnKey — the USB flash drive category-defining product. M-Systems was acquired by SanDisk in 2006 for approximately $1.55 billion, one of the largest Israeli technology exits of the era and a defining transaction for the Israeli semiconductor and storage cluster. Moran is also the founder of Modu — the modular-mobile-phone company — and has served across the Israeli venture and startup landscape as an operator, angel investor, and board member.

The Moran operator profile is the structural feature that defines Grove Ventures. Israeli deep-tech companies working on semiconductors, quantum computing, and hardware-adjacent categories can validate a Grove-led round through the founder's domain credibility in a way that generalist venture funds cannot replicate.

Fund architecture — Fund I, Fund II ($120M), Fund III ($185M)

Grove Ventures I launched in 2015 and closed with commitments from institutional investors, strategic investors, and Israeli technology operators. Grove Ventures II closed at $120 million in commitments in February 2020, oversubscribed against its initial target. Reporting through the Signal (NFX) database identifies the current fund vintage at approximately $185 million.

The Grove check-size profile is characteristic seed-and-early-stage venture: reported investment range of $250,000 to $5 million, with a sweet-spot check of approximately $2.5 million and follow-on capacity through the growth of the fund. Tracxn data shows 17 seed investments at an average $8.1 million round size, 12 Series A investments at an average $18.8 million round size, and follow-on participation into Series B rounds — a pattern consistent with a fund that leads seeds and follows into A and B.

The Grove LP base combines institutional investors, strategic investors, and globally recognized industry leaders. The stated positioning of the fund as a bridge for Israeli deep-tech companies into European and US markets reflects the LP composition — the strategic-investor and industry-leader component of the LP base is what enables the platform to open commercial and partnership doors for portfolio companies internationally, alongside the capital commitment itself.

Managing partner bench

Alongside Moran as Managing Partner, Grove's leadership team includes Lotan Levkowitz, Lior Handelsman, and Renana Ashkenazi as Managing Partners. Handelsman joined from SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ: SEDG), where he was a co-founder — a background that anchors Grove's positioning in the industrial-technology and hardware-adjacent categories. Levkowitz and Ashkenazi lead deal sourcing across the semiconductor, quantum, and enterprise-infrastructure categories.

Investment thesis — deep tech, semiconductors, quantum

The Grove thesis is early-stage deep technology, defined as companies developing hard-to-replicate solutions at the intersection of technology, science, and market need. Category emphasis has run across semiconductors, quantum computing (with Grove positioned as one of Israel's most active quantum-computing investors), space technology, edge computing, robotics, digital health, industry 4.0, and computational biology.

The stage focus is seed and Series A. Grove is deliberately not a growth fund — the platform invests early into deep-technology categories where the fund's operator-founder credibility and domain-technical diligence produce a meaningful edge, then supports through follow-on participation as portfolio companies scale.

Portfolio — Quantum Source, Teramount, Wiliot, RapidAPI

Grove's most-cited portfolio position is Quantum Source — the photonic quantum-computing company Grove co-led at $15 million seed in 2022 alongside Pitango First and Eclipse Ventures, subsequently extended to $27 million and later raised a $50 million round. Additional named positions include Teramount (scalable optical connectivity for the semiconductor industry), Wiliot (battery-free Bluetooth tags), Ramon.Space (space-resilient super-computer systems), TriEye (short-wave infrared sensing), Navina (clinical AI, $55 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity in April 2025), and UnifabriX (memory fabrics for GPU/CPU clusters).

The exit column includes RapidAPI (the API marketplace, subsequently acquired) and follow-on liquidity across the portfolio. Grove's category positioning as Israel's most active quantum-computing investor is anchored by the Quantum Source position and additional platform-scale positions across the emerging Israeli quantum layer.

The Israeli semiconductor race and Grove's category positioning

Grove's positioning as Israel's most active semiconductor venture investor is a structural feature of the Israeli deep-tech layer. Israel's semiconductor cluster runs across Intel's Kiryat Gat fab, Tower Semiconductor's manufacturing footprint (including the acquired Migdal Ha'emek facility), Nvidia's Israeli engineering presence (anchored by the 2019 Mellanox acquisition), Marvell, Qualcomm, and a growing layer of native Israeli semiconductor startups. Grove sits inside that layer as one of the reference early-stage-capital sources for the emerging Israeli chip and semiconductor-adjacent generation of companies.

Moran has been publicly active on the Israeli semiconductor policy conversation — including through his commentary on the 'Israel in the Global Semiconductor Race' report and his participation at the NEXT2026 Summit and other Israeli semiconductor-industry gatherings. The intersection of Israeli semiconductor policy and Grove's investment thesis is a defining feature of the firm's positioning.

Position in the Israeli deep-tech venture cluster

Grove Ventures sits at the top of the Israeli deep-technology venture layer alongside Pitango First (which has co-led with Grove into positions including Quantum Source), Vintage Investment Partners, Team8, and adjacent institutional deep-tech investors. Grove's distinguishing feature inside that layer is the operator-founder profile (Moran) and the semiconductor-and-quantum stage lean — categories that most generalist Israeli VCs are less well positioned to lead.

Primary Sources

Grove Ventures corporate materials (grovevc.com). Business Wire, "Grove Ventures Closes Second Fund with $120 Million in Commitments," February 17, 2020. Medium / Dov Moran, "Announcing Grove II, Our New $120M Fund," 2020. Signal (NFX) — Dov Moran investor profile. Startup Nation Central investor profile — Grove Ventures. Tracxn — Grove Ventures investor profile, 2026. Medium / Dov Moran, "Investing in Quantum Source: Quantum Computing and the Photonic Promise," July 2022.

Related Olam coverage

Pitango: Chemi Peres and Israel's Oldest Institutional VC (olam.business/pitango-venture-capital). Israeli VC: Pitango, Aleph, Vintage, Glilot, NFX, Team8 — Who's Leading What (olam.business/israeli-vc-pitango-aleph-vintage-glilot-nfx-team8-whos-leading-what). Who Funds Israel: The Venture Capital Fund Map (olam.business/who-funds-israel-the-venture-capital-fund-map). Team8: The Build-and-Invest Platform (olam.business/team8). aMoon Fund: Marius Nacht's $1B+ Israeli Healthtech Venture Platform (olam.business/amoon-fund).