Sources inform "Globes" that Orni Petruschka and Rafi Gidron, together with Pitango Venture Capital, are in the initial stages of founding a start-up. The company, reportedly to be called Prologue, will operate in nanotechnology.
Pitango is partnering the two entrepreneurs in examining and evaluating the ideas, and will probably invest in the start-up’s first financing round. A source close to Prologue said that the fund and the entrepreneurs were still in the initial evaluation stages, and had not finally formulated the idea.
As far as is known, Prologue intends to contact universities all over the world developing nanotechnology ideas, and develop jointly with them products that can be brought to market.
Petruschka and Gidron were responsible for the most successful exit in Israeli high-tech history. Urban broadband optical communications company Chromatis Networks, which they founded, was sold to Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) in early 2000 for the tidy sum of $4.8 billion. The love affair between Lucent and Chromatis was short-lived; one year after the acquisition, Lucent closed down Chromatis.
In all probability, the duo’s share of the giant deal amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. Since then, they have stayed out of the headlines, and have not returned to technological entrepreneurship since, as far as is known.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on February 16, 2005