Cipia

The product: a camera that watches the driver

Cipia (officially Cipia Vision), formerly known as eyeSight Technologies, started out in gesture recognition using computer vision, and later extended the technology to driver monitoring systems, a field known by the abbreviation DMS. Its main product, Driver Sense, was designed to be built into new vehicles: a camera in the cabin and computer vision algorithms track visual cues such as the eyelids, the pupils and the direction of gaze, and detect fatigue, distraction or dangerous behavior such as holding a phone while driving. When the system detects danger, it issues an alert. Alongside it, the company developed Cabin Sense, for monitoring the driver and passengers together, and Cipia-FS10, a device for vehicle fleets that combines driver monitoring, video recording and alerts to the fleet manager.

The regulation that drove the market

Demand for the product relied heavily on regulation. According to the company, the European safety rating body Euro NCAP added driver monitoring to the safety rating of future vehicles, with the most comprehensive requirements starting in 2025, and the European Parliament required these systems to be phased into new vehicles between 2024 and 2026. This meant that carmakers in Europe had to choose a supplier, and that is exactly the market companies like Cipia were aiming at.

The Tel Aviv IPO

In November 2021, Cipia completed an initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and raised NIS 68 million, about $22 million according to the company's announcement, at a pre-money valuation of NIS 354 million. In March of that year the company had hoped to raise up to NIS 120 million at a higher valuation, but the retreat of the tech IPO wave led to a more modest amount. At the time of the IPO, the company held production contracts for 17 car models from four manufacturers in the United States and China, and its revenue in the first half of 2021 was about $2.6 million. It also had a partnership with Mobileye, under which Driver Sense was integrated into a Mobileye chip. Shortly afterwards, the Cipia-FS10 device was named an Honoree in the CES 2022 Innovation Awards.

The years that followed

In March 2025, the company announced 67 design wins in car models from 11 manufacturers in the United States, Europe and China, and presented with Arm a demonstration of its driver monitoring system running on standard processors, without a dedicated accelerator. The reasoning was cost and power savings for carmakers. These were announcements by the company itself, and the sources checked do not say how many of these wins turned into production and revenue. A month and a half later, in April 2025, Globes reported a very different picture: a "going concern" warning had been attached to the company's financial statements, and the board had adopted an efficiency plan that included laying off half of the employees, out of 62 employees at the end of 2024. The company's revenue in 2024 was $5.7 million, its loss was $8 million, and since its founding it had burned through more than $100 million. The company's shares had by then lost 93% of their value since the IPO.

From tech company to public shell

By November 2025, Calcalist was already describing Cipia as a public shell: a public company whose operations are no longer what gives it value. That same month it became known that Tomer, a food importer controlled by Doron Kimlov, would merge into it. In January 2026 a binding agreement was signed under which Cipia acquires Tomer in exchange for allotting most of its shares to Kimlov, who ultimately held 70.99% of the merged company. The merger was completed on 19 May 2026 at a valuation of about NIS 100 million, Kimlov was appointed chairman and CEO, and the company asked to change its name to Tomer Food Marketing or a similar name. The sources checked do not say what became of the driver monitoring technology or of the team that developed it. The case illustrates a common ending for small tech companies that went public in the 2021 wave: the stock market listing survives, and the business it was listed for is replaced by a completely different one.