Latest news with #Team8
Associated Press
13-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Celery Secures Fresh Funding to Anticipate and Prevent Costly Financial Errors Before They Happen
As demand grows for AI-powered internal audit tools in labor-intensive industries, the company secured a seed funding round led by Team8 TEL AVIV, Israel, May 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Celery, a financial operations platform that leverages artificial intelligence to automate internal controls, today announced that it has raised $6.25 million in seed funding. The round was led by Team8, with participation from Verissimo Ventures, Centre Street Partners, 97212 Ventures, and additional strategic angel investors. This brings the company's total funding to $9 million. Designed for healthcare and other labor-intensive industries, such as construction, hospitality, and manufacturing, Celery replaces hours of manual reviews with intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks, and financial inefficiencies in minutes, with no software setup or system integration required. Celery has rapidly evolved from a payroll auditing tool identifying discrepancies, policy violations, and overtime inefficiencies to a comprehensive financial monitoring system for corporate revenue and expenses. The company's solutions can reduce manual oversight by up to 91%, cut payroll costs by 0.6% on average, and deliver 8x ROI. To date, Celery has processed over 430,000 payslips, analyzed more than $550 million in payroll data, and prevented $2.3 million in losses for its customers. 'Finance leaders today are being asked to do more with less,' said Yuval Brot, CEO and co-founder of Celery. 'Yet, financial controls are still being done manually—often across massive spreadsheets and disconnected systems. We built Celery to replace this outdated workflow with real-time, automated oversight that's accurate, fast, and cost-effective.' Celery was founded by Yuval Brot (CEO), a serial entrepreneur; Noam Slomianko (CTO), a cyber expert and the first employee of Vulcan Cyber (acquired by Tenable); and Hillel Shalev (COO), a CPA and former biotech CFO who knows the challenges of managing complex, error-prone financial systems. 'I spent years chasing down revenue leakage errors and reconciling spreadsheets that should never have needed fixing,' said Shalev, co-founder and COO of Celery. 'I knew there had to be a smarter way—one that could reduce risk, flag unprofitable clients, and detect potential revenue losses, all while giving finance leaders confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.' Celery's solutions are already used by dozens of U.S. healthcare organizations, including New York-based provider Ultimate Care, which reduced its annual overtime and billing discrepancies by more than $200,000 after adopting the platform. Within weeks, the company found hidden payroll issues, gained immediate ROI, and automated their auditing process.. 'Finance leaders are under pressure to cut costs and ensure compliance, yet many still rely on manual oversight,' said Hadar Siterman-Norris, Partner at Team8. 'Celery gives CFOs precision and visibility into risks hidden in their data, enabling smarter, leaner operations. With 82% of CFOs increasing fintech spend in 2025, this is exactly the kind of high-ROI solution they're prioritizing. Automation is solving what manual reviews can't.' The company will showcase its platform later this month at LTC 100, alongside leading fintech investors and CFOs across the healthcare industry. The new capital will be used to expand Celery's go-to-market operations, accelerate product development, and launch new audit agents focused on expense review, fraud detection, and fixed asset controls. The company is also exploring channel partnerships with payroll providers and accounting platforms. About Celery Celery is an AI-driven financial oversight platform that helps finance teams catch costly financial errors — before they impact the bottom line. Built for healthcare and other labor-intensive industries, Celery replaces manual complex reviews with intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks, and inefficiencies in minutes. Starting with payroll audits, the platform has expanded to revenue and expense monitoring, giving CFOs real-time visibility into profit gaps and opportunities for optimization. Founded in 2023, the company is trusted by leading U.S. healthcare providers and supports finance teams nationwide. Celery is SOC 2 certified. Learn more at Media Contact: Sivan Ron LoBello Communications [email protected] View original content: SOURCE Celery
The National
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Building an empire: Coco Gauff merges tennis, fashion and business as she takes control of her career
When Coco Gauff launched a shoe with New Balance back in the summer of 2022, she was the first female tennis player with her own signature sneaker and just the second overall, alongside Roger Federer. It was a groundbreaking move in the tennis performance footwear space, and it came as no surprise that it was an 18-year-old Gauff who was making it. Gauff exploded on to the scene at 15 when she marched to the Wimbledon fourth round, as a qualifier, knocking out seven-time major champion Venus Williams along the way. Four years later, she rose to a career-high No 2 in the world rankings and won the 2023 US Open wearing her New Balance Coco CG1. At the 2024 Australian Open, Gauff wore an iteration of the CG1 inscribed with various inspirational messages, including a quote she'd heard from her father Corey since she was a young girl: 'You can change the world with your racket.' Gauff has always taken those words to heart. From a very young age, she understood the power of having a voice, and a platform, and she never shied away from using them. Whether advocating for social justice in America, or speaking up for the innocent lives lost in Gaza, Gauff has always tried to do her part, in whatever capacity she felt she could. Now 21 years old and ranked No 3 in the world, Gauff has taken new steps towards taking ownership of her career by parting ways with her long-time representatives Team8 and creating Coco Gauff Enterprises, which is being represented and supported by WME. The announcement was made last month, in which Gauff said: 'I'm excited to build something that allows me to take greater ownership of my career while also creating opportunities that extend beyond myself as I continue to grow as an athlete, entrepreneur, and changemaker.' Gauff topped Forbes' list of highest-paid female athletes in 2024, with estimated earnings of $34.4 million ($9.4 million on court, $25 million off court) over the 12-month period. She was named one of Time's Women of the Year and attended the gala wearing custom Prada. She was the cover star for the magazine's May issue. In July, she was Team USA's flag-bearer at the Paris Olympics, alongside LeBron James. In a recent interview with The National, Gauff explained she always imagined blazing her own trail, ever since her first days in the sport. The idea of setting up her own company to manage all her different ventures was something her father suggested. She felt that now was the right time to get this plan in motion. 'It was ultimately up to me if I wanted to do it. My dad has great ideas and I was like, 'You know what? That's pretty cool',' she said. 'I have other interests outside of tennis. And I want to get on the foundation side and starting the process of building that. 'And it's just a lot of things that I want to be able to do off court when my career is over. But I think I just want to start the process now so that when my career is over, it's not so much of a starting from the beginning type situation.' Among Gauff's other interests is fashion. This week in Rome, she made a huge splash by debuting a match kit created for her by New Balance and Miu Miu, who have teamed up in a one-of-a-kind collaboration that includes clothing, footwear, and co-branded accessories Gauff will wear at three WTA tournaments this season, starting with the ongoing Italian Open. Miu Miu, an Italian fashion house and sister brand to Prada, first collaborated with New Balance on a shoe in 2022, but this venture into tennis, centred around Gauff, takes their partnership to a whole new level. Not since Serena Williams' collaboration with Off-White has a fashion alliance made this much noise in tennis. And given how extensive this New Balance x Miu Miu collection is – with on-court performance gear, off-court activewear, footwear and accessories – it's fair to say Gauff has inspired an unprecedented fashion statement in the sport. 'I'm very lucky,' said Gauff. 'We were really pushing for it. Sometimes it's harder to get these big designer houses on board. Obviously, New Balance is a go for anything I want to do. So, yeah, it was really exciting.' There are three different colourways in the collection, one for the tournament in Rome, one for the tour's grass-court event in Berlin, and one for the WTA's stop in Cincinnati. Gauff said she was 'pretty involved' in the design process, and chose from a selection of patterns and colours presented to her by the designers. She ultimately decided to 'go for the more simple aesthetic', to match the 'timelessness' of the world of Prada and Miu Miu. 'I wanted to create a timeless outfit. And I feel like when you're working with a big designer house, I don't want to do anything too crazy,' she added. 'Because I feel like with New Balance already, we've already done crazy cutouts. We've done literally game emojis on my shirt. So, I was like, I want to do something timeless that everyone can wear.' For Gauff, this collaboration is more than just a tennis outfit. The Florida-based player is a fan of mixing culture with sport, and has been at the centre of that crossover. Whether it's through a cameo appearance on a popular TV show – like the one she did on All American: Homecoming – or attending the Oscars in custom Miu Miu, or getting a shoutout from Tyler, the Creator on his latest album, Gauff is keen on popularising tennis among the younger generation, as well as bringing culture into the sport and vice versa. She feels she can help achieve some of those things with this new high-fashion collaboration. 'I think one of my goals, I always said as an athlete, was to bring culture to the sport – not that it's not already there. But I guess bring more culture to the sport,' she said. 'I feel like fashion, especially in Gen Z, is very important now. With TikTok trends and all of that. So, I feel like trying to bring that fashion to tennis can bring more people who maybe never heard of the sport, or heard of it but never knew any players other than Serena or Roger. 'So just getting them to know more niche players. That's, I feel like, my job on the court. And obviously, just doing the best I can. But I like to dress up. So I'm just trying to bring what I'm interested in and hoping other people will be interested as well.' With 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and another 800,000 on TikTok, Gauff's influence on the younger generation continues to grow. Conversations about the New Balance x Miu Miu collab began at the end of last year, and it was admittedly an ambitious and quick turnaround for everyone involved. Evan Zeder, New Balance's director of global sports marketing for tennis, says that as challenging as it was, they all knew it was worth it. The collaboration was seen as an 'opportunity to do something that transcends the sport, to elevate your athlete, to elevate all of the brands,' Zeder told The National. 'I think that it was so unique because it hasn't really been done this way before. And so for us, it was an opportunity to speak to where we are as a brand, to speak to where Coco is in her career and to speak to the strength of our partnership with Miu Miu. 'And ultimately, there really is no better athlete than Coco to do that with.' Gauff's relationship with New Balance started when she was 14 and it's a partnership that has gone from strength to strength. After debuting the Coco CG1 at the Atlanta Open in 2022, Gauff and New Balance dropped the CG2 last summer and launched a more accessible Coco Delray shoe at the Miami Open in March this year. 'We were ambitious, but not frightened at the fact that Coco was going to be the first female tennis player with a signature shoe,' said Zeder. 'For us, there was a commitment when we signed Coco to tell her story and do it in an authentic way. 'And I think that this is Coco evolving. When we signed Coco, this wouldn't have been an opportunity. We've evolved, Miu Miu's evolved. And so I think that timing is everything when you have things like that, they come together so beautifully.' Zeder added that New Balance 'are unbelievably pleased with how the CG has performed' but acknowledged this is just the beginning of what he believes will be a long journey with Gauff in this space. 'We have to remind ourselves that we're still at the start with her. She's still only 21 years old. And even though we've built this incredible foundation with her, this is just the beginning,' he said. While forever impressed by Gauff, Zeder admits he stopped being surprised by her many years ago. Growing up with strong family values and parents who encouraged her to develop her own, outspoken, character, Gauff making moves in the business world, and setting up Coco Gauff Enterprises, seems like a natural evolution for a woman who has long voiced her ambition to become 'the greatest of all time'. 'She's always had confidence, but I think that her experiences continue to build confidence in making harder decisions at a younger age. She was thrust into the limelight at 15 years old at one of the biggest stages in all the sport. And that's really hard. And I think she's handled it with incredible grace,' said Zeder. 'She's involved in everything that she does. She's very aware with what's going on, not just with tennis, but outside of the sport. And she sees success and she sees how people make an impact in the world. 'We put it on the CG1, 'You can change the world with your racket', the quote from her dad. And I think that that still holds true. 'Like when you have that mindset at such a young age that doesn't leave you, it only gets emboldened over time.'
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How a bank CEO turned VC investor thinks about AI — and uses ChatGPT to handle emails
Rakefet Russak-Aminoach transitioned from corporate banking to venture capital at Team8. She was CEO of Israel's largest bank and founded Israel's first mobile-only bank. Russak-Aminoach told BI that dramatic disruption is coming as a result of AI. Rakefet Russak-Aminoach started her career as an accountant, and today she's the managing partner of an Israeli startup foundry. Her unconventional path was made even more indirect by multiple stops in C-suites on the way. She was CEO of KPMG Israel. And then she was the CEO of what is now Israel's largest bank. At Bank Leumi, she orchestrated a massive, disruptive technological shift, becoming Salesforce's first customer in Israel and bringing — sometimes dragging — the bank into the digital age. She also founded Israel's first mobile-only bank. But now, she's moved off the corporate ladder and into venture capital as Managing Partner of Team8 — a startup foundry. Russak-Aminoach spoke to Business Insider about how her corporate career informs her tech investing. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length. How did you get into VC? When I decided to step down from the bank, I didn't have the option that many CEOs have — to take on a larger company. Because there wasn't one. I decided that I wanted to be in the best industry in Israel, and that was tech. To transform Bank Leumi, I often didn't build the technology; many times, I worked with fintechs. As an organization, we always asked ourselves, 'Should we buy? Or should we build? This is how I built Israel's first neobank. I made Bank Leumi much, much more advanced with digital tools, but I wanted to have an app to attract more youngsters to the bank. This became Israel's fastest-growing bank. So I was very much into the high-tech world. And even more than that, at a certain point, I said, 'How come we don't have a bank tailored to startups in Israel?' So I built Leumitech, which is a very successful segment of Bank Leumi today. Two years into my tenure, I had a cybersecurity event at the bank, and I needed help. I met Nadav Zafrir, the CEO of Check Point Software, a cybersecurity company. The incident itself was terrible, but they were amazing. And I gained a friend. Eventually, when I decided to leave banking, the only thing that was interesting to me was tech. So he said, 'Why don't you try building Fintech?'. Fast-forward five years, and we lead a group of cyber, fintech, data, enterprise tech, and digital health startups. Our company, which has 80 employees, 12 partners, has helped build 23 startups and invested in 25 more. Do you think job losses from AI are going to increase at some point in the future? Absolutely, because when the tool is there and you don't disrupt yourself, you don't make this change to your organization — someone else will. No one can continue to work without AI when there is AI. Take banks, for example. In any bank, there are so many parts that you can now replace with AI, processes, people, just everything. And if you are a responsible CEO, you must do that. You have lots of functions that were built with people, and you start to embed AI within them. It takes time to see the result. AI is still new for many, and I don't think we have seen the full impact. It's just the beginning. In a few years, many parts of financial services —and other organizations — will be built from scratch with AI agents, and then you will embed the human within. Does it scare you from a societal standpoint? No, because I remember that conversation around the digital revolution. I started my tenure at Bank Leumi with 14,000 people. I ended after seven years with 9,000. And now, five years later, there are 7,000. So people ask me, 'What's going to happen to the workforce?' New jobs. The world is changing, and the way people work is different, and people find different things to do. I don't think that people will be out of work. I extensively research the credit world because that's my professional background. I think tech can be used to enhance credit underwriting. It will be much more efficient, and it will be less risky because humans make mistakes, and the user experience will be better. So it will be just win, win, win. And then the question is, what will all of these credit officers do? Something else — I'm not worried about that. At this point, I've seen many technological advancements, and it has never gone the wrong way. How do you use AI? It's not nice to say, but I don't know how I ever just Googled things. I completely left Google. I only use ChatGPT now, but I'm not sure that it's the best one either. It's just the one I use. It writes my emails. It helps me with every question. I just live with it. And a few months ago, I didn't even know it existed. Talk me through that. If you have 30 emails to write in a day, what do you do? I dictate, I don't even write. I'll say, "'I need an email saying XYZ.'" Many of my emails are just an answer to another email. So I copy it and I say, 'Answer this email positively.' And then, at the end, ChatGPT will ask, 'Do you want it to be more casual, or more polite, or more formal?'. It's incredible. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Outpacing Security: A Cyber Resilience Mandate For Modern Leaders
High quality 3D rendered image, perfectly usable for topics related to big data, global networks, ... More international flight routes or the spread of a pandemic / computer virus. Textures courtesy of NASA: Fraud is as old as commerce itself. From Ponzi schemes to phishing scams, bad actors have always exploited moments of technological or systemic transition. But with the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, we've entered a new era—one where the tools used to enhance performance, automate workflows, and elevate customer experience are also being weaponized in real time. At EXCELR8, we've work closely with global banks and enterprise institutions for years - often with their digital and IT divisions. What we're seeing firsthand is that AI's transformative promise is accompanied by an equally urgent need for robust, adaptive cybersecurity strategies. In other words, when the way we work and interact changes this fast—so too do the threats. According to Team8, AI-powered impersonation attacks increased by over 300% year-over-year—making financial scams the fastest-growing category of fraud in banking. What was once limited to clever emails and forged documents is now a world of deepfakes, synthetic identities, voice clones, and hyper-personalized scam attempts that can be deployed at scale. In efforts to dig deeper, I reached out to some experts. As fellow tech founder and entrepreneur Roy Zur - CEO of Charm Security - puts it, 'Generative AI has dramatically amplified scam risks for financial institutions by enabling highly convincing scams at scale. Financial losses are only part of the story—it's also about reputational damage, trust erosion, and regulatory exposure.' For many of today's leadership teams - depending upon the industry, fraud prevention can no longer be confined to the domain of cybersecurity or compliance alone—it has become a core business imperative, demanding organization-wide alignment. As generative AI accelerates both the sophistication and scale of fraudulent activity, executive accountability has expanded accordingly. Encouragingly, 84% of senior bank executives and board members now identify scams and cyber-enabled fraud as top-tier threats, according to Bank Director's 2025 Risk Survey. Yet despite this heightened awareness, most institutions still lack a comprehensive, cross-functional strategy—particularly one that addresses the human element of fraud: behavioral vulnerability, organizational blind spots, and the cultural norms that shape how risk is recognized and escalated. Financial institutions are leading the way in this area. Banks like JPMorgan Chase, which suffered $500 million in losses due to fraud last year, are now using AI models that continuously learn from new data to detect and block suspicious activity, resulting in lower levels of fraud and a better customer experience, with account validation rejection rates cut by 15-20 percent. Ironically, the very technologies that introduce new risks also represent our best defense. From machine learning that monitors behavioral anomalies to generative AI agents that model fraud scenarios before they occur, cybersecurity is evolving into a predictive discipline. Global banks are now deploying AI tools to: Even more advanced institutions are running AI-powered red-team (a process we used in the Navy SEAL teams to poke holes on our mission plans) simulations to proactively train fraud teams in real-time scam defense—ensuring organizations are prepared for evolving threat vectors before they materialize. At EXCELR8, we've observed how these security advancements must be embedded not just into tech stacks, but also into leadership thinking, culture, and execution platforms. Gone are the days when fraud prevention was relegated to a risk department or IT function. In today's landscape, cybersecurity must be a cross-functional priority that spans operations, leadership, product, and workforce enablement. What we're seeing in our work with enterprise organizations is a shift toward shared ownership models: This is where organizations often fall short—not in tools, but in coordination. And that's what separates the reactive from the resilient. Despite advancements in AI-driven security, human error remains one of the most vulnerable entry points. Social engineering, phishing, and manipulation still succeed because systems are fallible—but so are people. Leading institutions are changing that. We've seen them go beyond standard compliance training and implement: Cybersecurity awareness is becoming less of a task and more of a team trait. It's about creating a workforce that doesn't just follow security protocols—but thinks in terms of security instinctively. The next era of organizational growth will not be shaped solely by AI innovation—but by how confidently and securely that innovation is deployed. It's about building environments where velocity and vigilance coexist. Enterprise AI must be built on trustworthy, transparent systems that support secure collaboration, role-specific visibility, and AI-driven decision support—without ever compromising data privacy, regulatory integrity, or user autonomy. In our work with financial institutions, we've seen that the most successful leaders don't just prepare for cyber threats—they engineer resilience into the organization itself. They combine advanced technology with governance. They pair performance acceleration with risk mitigation. They understand that if speed is the strategy, security is the foundation. AI will continue to redefine how we operate, compete, and collaborate. But it's not neutral. It amplifies whatever systems, behaviors, and risks we've already built. Which is why every conversation about innovation must be matched by a conversation about integrity, security, and trust. Because in the age of intelligent systems, fraud prevention isn't just a function—it's a leadership mandate.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Friday soars to the 70s with storms possible
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A large storm system will bring several chances of rain and storms tonight through Friday evening for West Michigan, some of which could be strong. A round of strong storms is expected after midnight through the early morning hours. It is possible this line of storms won't fully cover all of West Michigan. Currently the greater threat for Friday morning's storms will be north of I-94. It looks like a wet commute Friday morning for most. Small hail is possible with lightning expected. These storms are expected to clear quickly, giving way to a breezy and warm day. Storm Team 8 Forecast The forecast is leaning towards a break in the clouds Friday afternoon, especially south of Grand Rapids. If this takes place, temperatures will easily lift from 70 degrees to the upper 70s. It will be breezy with winds gusting in from the south at 30 mph. If temperatures are able to climb into the upper 70s, there is a good chance we will see strong to severe storms form quickly in the evening hours. The timeframe to watch for severe storm development is starting at 4 p.m. and lasting through midnight. Download the free Storm Team 8 weather app Most of us will not see severe weather, but it is important to stay weather aware on Friday, especially if you have evening plans. It can be dangerous to travel in severe weather. If a severe storm does form near you, it will likely be out of your area within 30 minutes. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, currently has all of West Michigan at a level 2 of 5 risk for the chance of a few severe storms. Pockets of large hail and damaging wind gusts are the primary threat. A few showers may linger into Saturday morning, especially south of I-94. The most likely outcome for Saturday is a mostly cloudy day in the mid 50s. Radar and Satellite Rain may slide into Michigan later in the afternoon Easter Day. Plan for areas of light rain and temperatures in the 50s. The higher threat of showers and thunderstorms will be overnight Sunday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
