Your next cyber threat may apply for a job
What ANY.RUN’s investigation into North Korean IT workers teaches founders about hiring, access and trust
AI Watermarks and the Trust Layer
AI watermarking is becoming a trust layer for the synthetic web. As regulation pushes providers toward machine-readable provenance, leading AI companies are combining invisible signals, visible labels and C2PA metadata. These systems are imperfect, but they can make AI-generated content more accountable and deception more costly.
Weekly FIRGUN Newsletter – August 14 2026
Rumours are more than just gossip in tech. When you hear that Anthropic may acquire Decart for $6 billion, or that Wonderful is looking to raise $500 million at a $5 billion valuation, it signals where capital and strategic buyers are directing their attention. There has been plenty of that in Israeli tech this week.
Why Anthropic May Want to Acquire Israel’s Decart
Anthropic is reportedly considering a $6 billion acquisition of Israeli AI startup Decart. Beyond its eye-catching video models, Decart’s real value may lie in technology that makes AI inference faster and cheaper—while giving Anthropic a significant foothold in Israel’s thriving AI ecosystem.
The $9 Billion Bet on Forward Deployed Engineers
The SaaS playbook was built to keep engineers away from customers. AI is reversing that logic. As AWS, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic invest billions in forward deployed engineering, founders and VCs must decide whether FDEs represent an expensive return to consulting, or a powerful engine for product discovery, enterprise adoption and long-term defensibility.
Weekly Firgun Newsletter – August 7 2026
While August tends to be quieter as most people are still on their summer holidays, this week Israeli startups announced $314 million in disclosed funding plus Visa’s $2.4 billion acquisition of BioCatch
Israeli Defence Tech on the Rise
Defence-tech investment is reaching record levels, and Israel is emerging as a major centre of innovation. A visit to Los Angeles—now a hub for companies such as SpaceX and Anduril—highlighted the potential to connect Israeli technology with American capital, customers and manufacturing.
Weekly FIRGUN Newsletter – July 31 2026
This week in Israeli tech, the cyber and AI-agent-security boom kept compounding: four separate Israeli startups building tools to secure AI agents and machine identities: Onyx, Mate, Hush Security and Way Security, all announced funding within days of each other.
The Next AI Opportunities Are the Problems AI Created
AI is making code, content, intelligence and product creation abundant. But every new abundance produces a new scarcity: understanding, trust, reliability, distribution and control. In other words, what AI made abundant, created scarcity in other areas, that's where the next big opportunities lie.
Weekly Firgun Newsletter – July 24 2026
Israeli tech showed its enduring strength in cybersecurity, with three startups emerging from stealth after raising a combined $340 million. But the same week brought another painful wave of layoffs, including monday.com cutting 20% of its workforce. AI-driven automation is part of the story, but so is the unusually strong shekel, which is increasing dollar-denominated costs and shortening runways for Israeli companies.
Vertical AI Market Map 2026: Israeli Startups and Funding Rounds
Israeli vertical AI just crossed a real threshold in H1 2026, from copilots that help people work to systems that run entire industry workflows. But the funding tells a more complicated story: $716M went to just 24 companies, half of it swallowed by three mega-rounds, and several "hot" categories are far more crowded than they look. Here's the full market map, by industry, with every funding round verified.
Requests for Startups: Fall 2026 Edition
Investors spent H1 2026 heavily on agents, cyber, enterprise AI and defence. This data-backed Fall 2026 wishlist looks beyond crowded categories to ten problems founders should solve next