The original version of this newsletter was published on LinkedIn.
If you’re new here, 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” (which stands for being happy for someone else’s misfortune). Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for members of our community’s accomplishments, good fortune and wins. More about Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
It’s hard to believe that it’s Passover again this weekend, and the theme of going from bondage to freedom is going to be pertinent in Jewish people’s mind’s around the Seder table. There are still 59 hostages held in bondage, in the tunnels of G**a for 551 days. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME ?? I want to wish all the readers of Firgun who are celebrating Passover peace and joy with their families and may all our hostages be returned soon to their own loved ones.
Q1 2025 reports are out. According to IVC Data and Insights Israeli startups raised $2.22 billion in 102 known rounds (interestingly Startup Nation Finder quoted $3.2B in private funding across 185 rounds). Five mega deals (over $100M) comprised 40% of total funding. M&A in Q1 2025 reached $1.8 billion in 27 deals, 10% of all annual exits made in 2024 (again here, SNC quotes a higher number – $3.9B across 37 M&A deals — marking the highest number of deals since the beginning of 2023). Neither figure includes the $32 billion acquisition of Wiz which is expected to conclude in Q2.
In the wider tech world, it’s been a busy week. The markets made an astonishing one day jump following President Trump’s postponing the tariff’s for 90 days, but raises China’s tariff to 125%. Google made a bunch on announcements in Cloud Next 2025, including Ironwood, a new chip (next gen TPU), Agent2Agent protocol and much more. Meta launched the new open-source LLaMa 4.0 with a huge token window, but Deep Cogito‘s new open-source models top performance charts NVIDIA‘s Nemotron Ultra outperforms DeepSeek at half the size, Amazon Nova Reel now creates 2-minute AI videos. Speaking of AI, Andreessen Horowitz is reportedly raising a $20B AI-focused fund — its largest ever — to double down on US-based growth-stage startups. Runway‘s Gen-4 Turbo generates videos in 30 seconds. ElevenLabs launched MCP Server with AI voice integration.
QUOTE(s) OF THE WEEK
“If there’s one thing Jewish people agree on… please tell me what it is” – Seth Mayers
and also
“Hope is not optimism. It is the belief that though we can’t see the future, we can still build it.” — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Denny LeCompte and team Portnox on securing a $37.5M series B for your Zero trust access control solution!
- Way to go Shahar Azulay and team groundcover on raising a $35M series B for your data observability enterprise platform!
- Well done Yair Kuznitsov and team Anecdotes on announcing a $30M series B extension to build the world’s first Compliance OS!
- Kudos Gal Yosef and team Bliss Aesthetics on completing a $17.5M seed round to bring AI for cosmetic surgery clinics!
- Mazel tov Ariel Deshe and team TrialKit on raising a $4.3M seed round to provide defence attorneys with discovery tools to effectively represent their clients!
EXITS
- Congratulations Shy Datika and team INX on the acquisition by Republic for a reported $60M. INX provides regulated trading platforms for digital securities and cryptocurrencies.
APPOINTMENTS
- Congrats Guy Pross on joining Lumir Ventures as partner, focusing on Israeli growth startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- Israeli tech Q1 2025 report by IVC Data and Insights
- The latest review of the Israeli defence and homeland security tech featuring 312 companies (by Startup nation central – see map in section below)
- The new Stanford University 2025 AI index report is out, and look Israel is leading in AI talent by geo area
GLOBAL
- The future of AI tooling is interoperable – on MCP and Agent2Agent by me on VC Cafe
- North American startup investment volume spiked in Q1 2025, but deal count is down – by Crunchbase
- Collaboration not disruption is key to start-up success in Asia, say academics, by the Financial Times featuring “Startup Capitalism“, the latest book by my better half Robyn Klingler-Vidra
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
AI talent concentration by geo area according to Stanford AI index report 2025 – (source)
Also global private investment in AI ranks Israel #5 (US, China, UK, Canada, Israel) – 2025 AI global index report
Israelis startup fundraising stats for Q1 2025 (according to IVC Data and Insights and LeumiTech)
New Israeli Defence and HLS (homelands security) startup landscape by Startup Nation Central was added to my 2025 Israeli landscape collection (part 1 and part 2 below – feature 312 companies source)
The median valuation for Seed-stage AI startups in Q1 2025 stood at $14 million, with median investment levels at $5.1 million. Those figures represent a notable step down from 2024’s peak periods, according to data by altshare (source) also worth seeing the summary here.
A deep dive into AI tooling and MCP by Andreessen Horowitz (source) also included in my latest blog post on the topic published yesterday
Another interesting landscape by A16Z and their latest thesis on AI Avatars (we at Remagine Ventures invested in Hour One featured in Enterprise… in 2019) (source)
Data 3.0 in the Lakehouse era – interesting landscape on the modern data stack by Bessemer Venture Partners (source)
It’s getting harder for startups to ‘graduate’ to series A – reminder to conserve cash and never keep your eyes of burn and margins. Only 17% of seed-stage companies from 2022 have secured a Series A after two years. That’s one of the lowest graduation rates in recent history.
North American venture funding +119% YoY to $82B in Q1 50% of the total funding came from the OpenAI ($40B) deal. (source)
But fewer companies are getting funding… North American venture deal volume -48% YoY in Q1 to 1,688 deals
That’s all for this week, thank you for reading. There’s a lot 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.
- Weekly Firgun Newsletter – February 27, 2026 - February 27, 2026
- The Rise of the Personal AI Agent - February 26, 2026
- Pre-Seed Is Stronger than ever, but less startups are getting funded - February 25, 2026
