Israel's national water company, Mekorot, has recently expanded its activities in the field of innovation by completing two new investments in Israeli startups Argu and Bimmatch. This investment was carried out by the Innovation Division, led by VP of Engineering Yossi Yaacoby, and marks the company's engagement with 11 different companies. These investments focus on areas such as water supply and quality, operations and maintenance, cybersecurity protections, energy management, and infrastructure maintenance, incorporating artificial intelligence.
The investment in Argu involves real-time video analysis, providing a new layer of protection for critical infrastructure companies that manage vital facilities for the state. Given the complex engineering involved, these facilities require close monitoring of their integrity. Argu's advanced system, based on a smart algorithm that integrates with Mekorot's camera system, can identify and report anomalies in real time related to security and water quality, hazardous materials incidents, physical security, and safety from sabotage events, technical malfunctions, or human error. The system also monitors complex processes in production lines. According to Ori Segal, Chairman of Argu, this solution will help Mekorot strengthen its water security capabilities, reduce the likelihood of failures, and offer a unique ability to analyze and improve processes in real time.
The second investment Mekorot made is in Bimmatch, a company developing a platform based on BIM methodology and artificial intelligence. The platform offers standardization of instructions and regulations through an organizational library, which uses AI to match components between different parts of a project and the organizational standard. Cheli Wasserman, CEO and Co-Founder of Bimmatch, explains that Mekorot's engineers will be able to perform automatic design control on water infrastructure projects, ensuring full compliance with the chief engineer's guidelines and specifications, saving time, reducing design errors, and increasing efficiency in the field.
Yaacoby concludes that the investment in these two companies is synergistic for Mekorot. It effectively expands the portfolio of high-tech companies in which the company has invested, with Mekorot holding up to 20% ownership in companies specializing in water supply and quality, operations and maintenance, cybersecurity, energy management, data analysis, and AI-integrated infrastructure maintenance. The investment in startups arose from regulation that allows Mekorot to invest in Israeli startups, which are used by Mekorot both in its operations in Israel and as part of the consulting and monitoring services it offers to various countries abroad, including Argentina, Italy, Singapore, Azerbaijan, India, and Cyprus.
