BackWeb Completes Second-Round Financing

Goldman Sachs is Lead Investor

NEW YORK, NY, Dec. 10, 1996 -- BackWeb Technologies today announced the completion of a $13 million equity financing, with GS Capital Partners II, an affiliate of the Goldman Sachs Group, L.P., as the lead investor. Trinity Ventures, and two leading Israeli venture capital funds, Polaris and Evergreen, are also investors in this round. BackWeb develops and markets personalized broadcasting software for the Internet, reversing the web so that rich content finds interested consumers rather than consumers having to search for it.

"Personalized broadcasting is a true Internet 'killer app,' with real potential for creating significant commercial opportunities for a wide variety of Internet participants," said Joseph H. Gleberman, a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs. "We think BackWeb has all the right ingredients -- talented people, unique technology, and easy-to-use products that are available today -- to be the leader in the transition to 'push' as the dominant means of personalized Internet communication."

BackWeb was founded in 1995 by BRM Technologies, Ltd., an Israel-based company with a proven track record in the Internet software market. BRM also co-founded Checkpoint Software Technologies, developers of Firewall-1, a market leader in global network security software. The founders of BRM were the primary investors in BackWeb's previous rounds of financing, which have totalled over $4.5 million. Other BackWeb investors include SOFTBANK Holdings, and managing directors of Broadview Associates, a global IT merger and acquisitions advisor.

"BackWeb is one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Internet software startups," said Ron Schreiber, chairman and co-CEO of SOFTBANK Services Group. "Our belief in their approach goes well beyond the early-round investment, to a strong commitment by our companies to build BackWeb Channels. ZDNet, SOFTBANK Expos, inquiry.com, and SOFTBANK COMDEX are all in various stages of building channels to deliver content over the Internet to PC users' desktops using BackWeb's software."

BackWeb provides easy-to-use software tools that enable companies to build broadcast programming channels on the Internet and thereby create one-to-one relationships with customers and prospects. While early players in the personalized broadcasting category have been content aggregators or platform-specific providers, BackWeb's approach is to give channel owners the tools they need to regularly deliver their own rich content and software, in any format and on any platform, directly to customers. BackWeb's ground-breaking "Polite Agent" delivery technology doubles Internet users' bandwidth by sending content during their idle online time, and its "Flash" display technology enables users to be alerted to the background arrival of content in whatever application they're using.

The following Channel owners are already delivering content over the Internet to PC users' desktops using BackWeb's personalized broadcasting software: ZDNet, General Motors, InfoSeek, The Weather Channel, Utopia, The Patricia Seybold Group, Pulver.com, EarthWeb's Gamelan Java Application Directory, and Mecklermedia's iWorld. Users can subscribe to channels by downloading the BackWeb Client for free at www.backweb.com. BackWeb Technologies is exhibiting at Internet World here this week, in booth 381 at the Jacob Javits Center.

GS Capital Partners II, L.P., and its affiliated investment funds are the primary investment vehicles of the Goldman Sachs Group, L.P., a full-service global investment bank.

Trinity Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, specializing in investments in software and branded consumer products and services.

About BackWeb Technologies
BackWeb Technologies is a leading offline Web software company. BackWeb extends the value of technology investments by offering mobile and remote employees offline access to portals, intranets and other Web-based applications and content. The company's products reduce network costs and improve the productivity of an increasingly mobile workforce. At the core of BackWeb's products is its patented Polite® synchronization technology that can distribute large amounts of data even over narrow bandwidth connections. BackWeb® customers include market leaders such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor, Eastman Kodak, GE Healthcare, Guidant, HP, KLA Tencor, Lam Research, Pfizer and more than one hundred other companies. BackWeb also has strategic reseller alliances with software industry leaders: Plumtree, SAP and IBM. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel. For more information, visit www.backweb.com or call (800) 863-0100.

Statements in this news release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities laws, including statements of beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, the ability of BackWeb software to allow customers to gain mobile, disconnected use of their portals and help increase field sales and field service productivity, the integration of BackWeb software with BEA products will help developers extend portal applications for offline use without changing the way they work, and the ability of the resulting applications to help field sales and service organizations realize maximum productivity, cost savings, and process acceleration gains while disconnected from the network. Actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include unforeseen technological issues related to use of the BackWeb software, deployment issues related to implementation, unforeseen software errors, competitive factors and business and expense factors that may affect the perceived efficiencies from use of BackWeb's products, and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in BackWeb's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BackWeb assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release.