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The word “Firgun” (pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an informal modern Hebrew term and concept in Israeli culture (originally Yiddish), which describes genuine, unselfish delight or pride in the accomplishment of the other person. It’s the opposite of “schadenfreude”. Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for someone else’s accomplishments, good fortune, or well-being. More about Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
This week, the body of Itay Svirksky was recovered from G**a and brought for burial in Israel in a special operation, and new evidence showed that American/Israeli Omer Neutra, who moved to Israel from Long Island and was thought to have been held hostage, was killed on Oct seven 2023 and his body is held in G**a. May their memories be a blessing. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME NOW.
Despite the war, Israel’s technology industry presented record figures for mergers and acquisitions according to a new report from Vintage Investment Partners. M&A deals set a new peak this year of $10.5 billion, 22% higher than the previous peak of $8.6 billion in 2021.
In the wider tech world, there’s been a non-stop string of announcements by big tech players. Amazon brought Jeff Bezos back from retirement and he’ll be spending most of his time on AI. Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Nova, a family of multimodal AI models designed to power text, image, and video generation with speed and efficiency as well as text generating models. Google‘s much anticipated AI video generation model Veo is now available on Vertex AI in private preview. Staying on video: Tencent dropped Hunyuan Video, new open source AI text-to-video model which seems to offer high quality. Microsoft launched co-pilot vision, a tool that read your screen and act as a personal helper (US-only). OpenAI started their 12 days of announcements with the launch of ChatGTP Pro, a new $200-per-month subscription tier that provides unlimited access to all of OpenAI’s models. It also announced a partnership with Anduril Industries. Google also launched Genie-2, technology that can generate playable virtual worlds from images. Publicly traded dutch company Nebius announced it has raised $700M from VCs and strategics like NVIDIA to build out a full-stack AI infrastructure – including large-scale GPU clusters, cloud platforms and tools and services for developers. Bitcoin crossed the $100K mark for the first time this week. Google DeepMind released GenCast, a very accurate weather forecasting model. ElevenLabs now offers the ability to building conversational AI agents. A judge ruled that Elon Musk is not entitled to the $56 billion Tesla bonus, but don’t worry, SpaceX value jumped to $350 billion this week, up $100B from last month. Last but not least Spotify became the first European company to hit a $100 billion market cap.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Technology and science are our most powerful diplomatic tools. They transcend borders and connect humanity.” – Prof. Eliat Shemesh, Interdisciplinary Research Leader
NEW VENTURE ROUNDS
- Now it’s confirmed, it’s time to congratulate Amiram Shachar and team Upwind Security on their $100M series B at a $900M valuation for their cloud security platform!
- Kol hakavod Dave Waiser and team Accumulator on raising $46M to help founders navigate illiquid wealth with an equity pooling platform!
- Well done Zohar H. and team D-Fend Solutions on securing $31M in funding for their RF cyber-takeover techniques to safely neutralise rogue drones without collateral damage!
- Congrats Brian Verrier and team OSSIO on raising a $27.6M series D to replace metal implants as the standard of care!
- Kudos Gadi Shenhar and team Droxi on raising a $21M series A to help doctors manage administrative burdens!
- Way to go Alon Mashkovich and team enSights on securing $10M series A for an AI-powered, cloud-based clean energy optimisation and management platform!
- Mazel tov Or Israel and team bananaz on coming out of stealth with $5.3M seed investment for your platform focused on design change management for R&D and engineering teams!
- Thumbs up Gadi Benjamini and team Firedome on your $4.5M seed round to transform autonomous wildfire defence!
EXITS
- Kudos Boaz Wachtel and team Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies Ltd on the acquisition by Clearvue, however sadly, out of bankruptcy.
NEW FUNDS
- Big congrats Omri Casspi on raising $60M for Swish Ventures to invest in early stage Israeli AI and infrastructure startups!
- Good news Justin Borus and team Ibex Investors on your new $40M secondaries fund dedicated to Israel!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- Israeli tech M&A deals reach new peak in 2024 – report – Globes
- Tenable in talks to acquire Israeli startup Vulcan for hundreds of millions
- Prof Amnon Shaashua, co founder of Mobileye (Israel’s largest exit to date) and other companies, announced his new AI startup AAI with a new research paper shared on X
Global:
- Australia bans social media for under-16s
- The 2024 VC Survey by European Investment Fund (EIF)
- 2025 tech predictions –
- The 2024 year in review by YouTube
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
It’s time to build. Three month average VC funding of Israeli startups are on the up trend. By Startup Nation Central.
Despite data serving as the cornerstone of every decision, many institutions are grappling with legacy infrastructures, fragmented systems, and inconsistent data practices. Startups (and AI) are here to help. Check out the Financial services AI data market map by Insight Partners (source)
Only 50% of seed companies graduate to series A according to data by Carta
But, on a positive note, VC investment is up 17% compared to the equivalent period in 2023. Most of the increase is being driven by late stage investments, and early stage (pre-seed to series A) is either flat or slightly down.
Lots of interesting data in the marketech gen ai survey. For example, take a look at the most popular use cases of Gen AI in the enterprise. (source)
Staying on Marketing tech – Marketing’s self-driving moment: Systems of Agents will put an industry on autopilot by Foundation Capital (source)
Venture capital is at a crossroads. Much less funds get raised. What’s next for the early stage venture capital ecosystem? Three interesting scenarios shared by Precursor Ventures‘s Charles Hudson (source)
When people talk about the ‘creator economy’, there’s OnlyFans and all the rest. Since 2019, OnlyFans has paid out at least $21.5B to creators ($6B in 2024 alone) – by Matthew Ball (source)
That’s all for this week. There’s much to celebrate in our “small” community. Keep on creating!
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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