Pitango: Chemi Peres and Israel's Oldest Institutional VC

Pitango Venture Capital is the Tel Aviv- and Herzliya-based venture capital firm founded in 1993 by Rami Kalish, Chemi Peres, Aharon Dovrat, and Habib Hazzan — Israel's oldest continuously operating institutional VC alongside JVP. Managed AUM: over $3 billion across 14 funds. Portfolio: more than 300 companies, with over 90 NASDAQ and NYSE listings and strategic acquisitions by Apple (Anobit), IBM (WorkLight), Microsoft (VideoSurf), Covidien (superDimension), and Cisco. Recent liquidity: Riskified (NYSE: RSKD), Taboola, Via Transportation IPO, TScan IPO. Current fund structure: Pitango First (early stage), Pitango Growth, Pitango HealthTech — with $300 million raised across Pitango First and Pitango HealthTech in November 2025. Chemi Peres is the son of Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres and chairs the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation.

Founding — Kalish, Peres, Dovrat, Hazzan, 1993

Pitango Venture Capital was established in 1993 by Rami Kalish, Chemi Peres (Nechemia J. Peres), Aharon Dovrat, and Habib Hazzan. Alongside Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), which launched in the same window, Pitango is one of the two oldest continuously operating institutional venture capital platforms in Israel and one of the defining institutions of the modern Israeli venture cluster.

The firm's headquarters are at the Sarona compound in Tel Aviv, with a second office in Herzliya. Pitango operates approximately 40 professionals across the platform's investment, portfolio-services, and operations teams. Since inception, Pitango has raised 14 venture funds — including a 2020 vintage of $750 million (the largest single venture fund raised in Israel at that point) — and additional early- and late-stage vehicles.

Chemi Peres — the Peres Center chairman and Shimon Peres's son

Chemi Peres is Managing General Partner and Co-Founder of Pitango. He is the son of Shimon Peres — Israel's ninth President, former Prime Minister, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Beyond Pitango, Peres chairs the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation, chairs the Al-Bawader Fund (a public-private venture vehicle focused on the Israeli Arab minorities sector), and serves as a board member at Social Finance Israel and the advisory board of Impact1st.

Peres serves on the boards of Pitango portfolio companies including Taboola and Via Transportation. Rami Kalish, Pitango's co-founding managing general partner, is a former senior executive at Orbotech and a foundational figure in the modern Israeli VC layer. Aaron Mankovski, Rami Beracha, Isaac Hillel, and Zeev Binman are named as additional Pitango partners across the firm's operating history.

Fund architecture — 14 funds, three current platforms

Pitango operates today across three current fund vehicles: Pitango First (the early-stage technology fund), Pitango Growth (the growth-stage vehicle), and Pitango HealthTech (the healthcare and life-sciences fund). In November 2025 Pitango closed $300 million across two of those vehicles — approximately $150 million into Pitango First and approximately $150 million into Pitango HealthTech — as the firm's ninth-generation fund vintage.

The Pitango First team is led by Managing Partner Eyal Niv, alongside Dr. Ayal Itzkovitz, Gad Huldai, and Yair Cassuto. Pitango HealthTech is led by Ittai Harel and has already invested in eight new companies including QuantHealth, Somite, Leafix, and Guardoc since launch. Pitango has been reported to have the largest single count of Israeli portfolio companies generating more than $100 million in annual revenue — a distinguishing feature that reflects the platform's depth of exposure to Israel's late-stage venture layer.

Investment thesis — deep tech, AI, digital health, quantum

The Pitango thesis is Israeli-anchored venture, invested through category-specialist teams inside a unified platform. Current category emphasis runs across vertical SaaS, digital health, deep tech, fintech and insurtech, DevOps, generative AI, quantum computing, and food technology.

Pitango's leadership position in AI and quantum-computing investment inside the Israeli venture cluster is a distinguishing feature of the current fund vintage. The firm's Quantum Source position — co-led with Grove Ventures and Eclipse Ventures at seed, subsequently extended and grown across follow-on rounds — is one of the reference quantum-computing positions in the Israeli venture layer.

Portfolio and exits — Riskified, Anobit, Taboola, Via, TScan

Pitango's exit column includes some of the defining Israeli venture returns of the past two decades. The Anobit Technologies acquisition by Apple in 2011 remains one of the reference Israeli semiconductor exits. Additional named exits include WorkLight (acquired by IBM), VideoSurf (acquired by Microsoft), and superDimension (acquired by Covidien). The Pitango portfolio's public-listing column includes Riskified (NYSE: RSKD), Taboola, Via Transportation, TScan, and additional NASDAQ and NYSE listings across the platform's 30-year operating history.

The 2025 exit and liquidity activity — Vertos acquisition, TScan IPO, Riskified and Taboola liquidity — anchors the current-vintage fund's return profile. Total exits and liquidity across the platform's operating history exceed several billion dollars. Prior fund-vintage performance is what supports the LP base's continued commitment to successive Pitango funds; Managing Partner Eyal Niv publicly noted in November 2025 that Pitango's long-standing LP investors remained part of the ninth-vintage close, alongside new institutional investors.

The Pitango portfolio's positioning inside the largest count of $100 million-plus revenue Israeli companies is a category-defining feature. Boxee, Anobit (acquired by Apple), fring, mySupermarket, and DudaMobile were prior-vintage anchor positions; the current vintage anchors on Taboola, Via Transportation, Riskified, and TScan alongside the growing AI, quantum, and healthtech portfolio.

The Al-Bawader Fund and impact-investing layer

Alongside the core Pitango platform, Chemi Peres chairs the Al-Bawader Fund — a private-public partnership between Pitango and the Israeli government dedicated to investment in the Israeli Arab minorities sector. Peres also serves on the board of Social Finance Israel (the country's social-impact bonds platform) and chairs the advisory board of Impact1st, Israel's first impact-investment technology platform. The impact-investing layer sits alongside the core Pitango venture platform as a distinct set of Peres-family-anchored institutions inside the Israeli capital-markets architecture.

The combination of Peres's role at the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation, the Al-Bawader Fund, and the broader impact-investing bench places Pitango's leadership at the intersection of Israeli institutional venture and the country's public-private cooperation infrastructure — a positioning distinct from most other Israeli VC platforms.

Position in the Israeli venture cluster

Pitango sits at the top of the Israeli institutional venture layer alongside Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), Aleph, Vintage Investment Partners, Team8, and Glilot Capital Partners. The distinguishing feature of Pitango inside that layer is the multi-stage, multi-category platform structure — Pitango First covers early-stage; Pitango Growth covers growth; Pitango HealthTech covers life sciences — and the platform's exposure to the largest count of $100M-revenue Israeli portfolio companies. JVP, founded in the same 1993 window by Erel Margalit, is Pitango's closest peer on operating tenure; Aleph, Vintage, Team8, and Glilot represent the more recent generations of institutional Israeli venture platforms.

Primary Sources

Pitango Venture Capital corporate materials (pitango.com). Calcalist / Ctech, "Pitango raises $300 million across two new early-stage funds," November 6, 2025. Wikipedia entry on Pitango (current as of 2025). Crunchbase Pitango VC organizational profile. TechCrunch, "Boxee, Anobit, DudaMobile Backer Pitango Closes $150M In Newest $250M Fund" (Pitango VI). Startup Nation Central Pitango investor profile. Golden Pitango profile.

Related Olam coverage

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). Grove Ventures: Dov Moran's Deep-Tech Israeli Fund (olam.business/grove-ventures). aMoon Fund: Marius Nacht's $1B+ Israeli Healthtech Venture Platform (olam.business/amoon-fund). Team8: The Build-and-Invest Platform (olam.business/team8).