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In the spirit of celebrating milestones (big and small), I’m happy to share that this week the #FIRGUN newsletter crossed the 6,000 subscribers mark! Thank you for your continuous support.
The word “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ 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
The moment we’ve all been praying for the past 468 days is within grasp. The ceasefire deal was signed and the Israelis taken ho***ge will start returning home in drips, starting on Sunday. It’s been an emotional week, with lots of ups and downs, and while it’s gut wrenching to negotiate with te****ists saving the living and ending the nightmare for the families of all 98 Israelis held in G**a should be a priority. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME NOW.
The various 2024 reports of Israeli tech and venture were published this week. The sentiment is positive: investments were up over 31% officially, although the real number of investments made is believed to be closer to $12.2 billion (over 40% higher than 2023). Exits were up 70% in 2024. All this in the middle of a war and with less connectivity to the global market. A tremendous sign of resilience for the Israeli startup ecosystem, and an optimistic start to 2025.
In the wider tech world, it’s also been momentous. The US is moving to impose tough new restrictions on the export of advanced computer chips and other AI technology to dozens of countries, including Israel. The UK announced the AI opportunities action plan to o turbocharge AI adoption in the UK. Meta is letting go 5% of its workforce and cutting its DEI initiatives (including Tampons in the men’s room), based on performance, and will start automating the work of mid-level coders with AI. Meta’s new AI model, SEAMLESS, can translate speech from more than 100 languages. Grok launched a standalone mobile app in the US. OpenAI launched ChatGPT with Scheduled Tasks which lets users automate and schedule actions using chatgpt. TikTok is facing a ban in the US starting on Jan 19th and rumours circulated that Elon Musk might be a potential buyer… Meanwhile, many of the 170 million US users are flocking to another Chinese app – Rednote. Microsoft launched Copilot Vision, it can see what you do on the web and talks with you about it. It also launched version 4 of its Phi model Bland launched the ability to real-time voice clone (It takes one minute and your voice is permanently deleted after the call). Google‘s VEO2 text to video model is shockingly reaslistic, especially videos of people like these fake influencers. Aligned Data Centers raised $12 billion (!) to fund its expansion. The venture market is healing: Insight Partners announced its new $12.5 billion in new funds. Intel Corporation plans to spin off Intel Capital, its corporate venture arm, into a standalone fund by mid-2025. NVIDIA launched SANA, a new text to image AI model that generates stunning outputs in 4K, in seconds. It also announced it will be investing $500M in a new data centre in Israel to expand the company’s operations in the country. Mistral AI launched open-weight Codestral 25.01 coding model to counter DeepSeek, Claude. Mixed result for SpaceX: on one hand, Starship exploded. On the other hand, they caught the booster again with the giant robotic arms in what looks like science fiction.
There’s so much more to cover – let’s dive in.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Israel is an incredible source of innovation and continues to be a successful tech hub through a very challenging time. Israeli founders and entrepreneurs exhibit two “common denominators”—resourcefulness and a willingness to iterate—that are key to solving customer needs and finding product-market fit.
George Mathew, Insight Partners
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congrats Roy K. and team Orchid Security for coming out of stealth with a $36M seed round to to automatically identify the security requirements for each of their customers’ internal applications!
- Kudos Leeor Solnik and team qbiq on announcing your $16M series A to automate architectural planning!
- Well done Henrik Shimony and team Reeco on securing a $15M series A to revolutionise procurement in the hospitality space with AI!
- Way to go Daniel Kalish and team Nilus on your $10M funding round for your AI-powered treasury management platform!
- Kol hakavod David Bleicher and team Jotit on your $8M seed extension (bringing the total round to $10M) to transform how students, teachers, and parents stay organised with handwriting-focused tools!
- Mazel tov Eran Dagan and team Botika on securing an $8M seed round to make pro fashion visuals simple and accessible!
- Big thumbs up Aharon Twizer and team ControlMonkey on raising a $7M seed round to enable DevOps teams to manage, govern, and scale their cloud infrastructure using Terraform!
- Mabruk Naveh Ben Dror and team Spikerz Security on announcing a $7M seed round to protect social media accounts from hacking!
- Good job Daniel Kashmir and team Momentick – Emissions Intelligence on securing a $5M seed round to provide insurance companies with precise emissions data on a global scale!
- Well done Natan Voitenkov and team Genway AI on raising an undisclosed seed round to supercharge research with AI!
EXITS
- Big congrats Yoni Assia and team eToro for filing to IPO with a target valuation of $5 billion! hope it goes well and that it’s the first of many Israeli IPOs in 2025!
- Congratulations Elad Fouks and team Alterya on the acquisition by Chainalysis for $150M to detect malicious digital identities and bad actors across different networks and digital payment rails!
- Well done Roee Hemed and team Covver on the acquisition by Snappy for an undisclosed sum! Snappy is looking to roll up other swag and gifting companies for the corporate world.
- Mabruk Moshe Yanai and team Infinidat on the acquisition by Lenovo, the company’s first in Israel, to expand its global storage portfolio and to establish a development centre in Israel!
- Mazel tov Ari Margalit and team TECTU on the acquisition by Global AI for an estimated $13M!
APPOINTMENTS
- You’ve read my mind. Congrats Lior Suchard on joining Merlin Ventures as Venture Partner!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- Investing in resilience: the Israeli startup ecosystem in 2024 – new by me on VC Cafe analysing the latest market reports
- Israeli tech review 2024 – report by IVC Data and Insights
- Annual report 2024 – the year of the scale up powerhouse – by Startup Nation Central
- Bonus: Israel defies expectations with surge in tech funding despite the war – by The Wall Street Journal
- Bonus II: Unreported rounds push Israeli tech funding past $12 billion in 2024 – by Calcalist ???????
GLOBAL
- State of Startups 2024 by Carta
- AI Agent directories – AI Factories, AI-native go-to-market tech stack, Microsoft’s Ambient AI, Anthropic’s guide to AI Agents & OpenAI’s Robotics – by Ivan Landabaso
- Open Cloud report 2024 – by Battery Ventures
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
2024 was a better year than 2023 for the Israeli startup ecosystem across every metric, despite the challenging circumstances
The ability for venture funds to fundraise has been lower (in line with the global trend) as LPs look for liquidity (from Vintage Investment Partners – State of the Venture Market 2024)
Mapping Israeli Open Source startups (by Greenfield Partners) source
Making Europe great again? American vs European Startup Dynamism (source)
While Israeli startup funding was up 30%-40%, European startup funding -5% YoY to $51B in 2024 -44% from the market peak of $117B in 2021.
However, things are slowly improving for European startups (by Dealroom.co)
Israeli startups raised officially $10.6 billion in 2024, but the real figure is estimated at $12.2 billion due to unannounced rounds. To put this in context, here are the unofficial 2024 funding numbers for various European countries. (source)
The 12 areas ripe for AI Agents disruption (from the 2024 AI trends report)
The AI Native Go to Market Stack (by Battery Ventures) – source
46% of remote workers unlikely to stay if remote work ends
Agentic AI. Revolution or hype?
Nintendo announced the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2. Watch the trailer.
In the wake of the Israel-H***s ceasefire deal, this caricature is 10 years old but sadly still relevant
That’s all for this week.
Thanks again to the 6,000 subscribers who tune in to read #Firgun. Please share this edition with someone who might benefit.
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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