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
Happy 77th Independence anniversary to Israel —Yom Ha’atzmaut ??. It’s a moment of celebration and pride for a nation built on resilience, innovation, and unity. But the joy comes just a day after Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, a solemn time to honour fallen soldiers and victims of terror. This powerful transition from grief to celebration is marred by the 59 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. We must #BringThemHome ??
Israeli startups raised $531M in April 2025 across 20 announced rounds. April was also the month of Israel’s biggest exit of all time, Wiz, which made multi billion exits look small in comparison. As Israel celebrates it’s 77th anniversary, it’s clear that Israeli startups are resilient and here to stay. But nevertheless, it’s a challenging period by all means, domestically (security, political, economic, talent flows) and globally (tariffs, VC slowdown).
In the wider tech world, Apple vs. Epic Games legal battle took a meaningful turn this week as Apple was forced to drop its fees on out of the app store transactions, great news for app developers worldwide. Amazon launched Nova Premier, the company’s most advanced AI model yet — designed to both handle complex tasks and also act as a “teacher” to fine-tune smaller models to match its capabilities. Anthropic released Integrations, allowing Claude to connect with remote MCPs to integrate additional tools — alongside new research capabilities like web support. Microsoft just launched three new reasoning-focused, open-weights models in its Phi family — which outperform larger rivals at complex reasoning tasks while being small enough to run on phones and laptops. According to CEO Satya Nadella, 30% of the code at MSFT is AI generated! OpenAI adds shopping and is rumoured to announce big partnership with Shopify. Forecasts Revenue Topping $125 Billion in 2029 as Agents, New Products Gain. Google places ads inside chatbot conversations with AI startups. The company also updated its music AI sandbox. Duolingo CEO said that the company will be ‘AI first’ and that it plans to replace contractors with AI. The company already launched 148 courses powered by AI. Meta launches new standalone Meta AI social network before chatgpt becomes one. IBM is investing $150bn in US manufacturing over the next five years.
Here’s the latest in Chinese AI:
- China’s Xi pushes for AI self-sufficiency
- Alibaba Group launches Qwen 3 reasoning models – claims that they match or outperform OpenAI and Google in some cases
- Huawei challenges Nvidia with new AI chip
- Xiaomi Technology unveils open-source AI reasoning model MiMo, joining other Chinese tech leaders hoping to make a splash in the burgeoning AI field endorsed by Beijing
- DeepSeek‘s Prover-V2 debuts, designed to solve math-related problems.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“For Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom”
President JFK (speech in August 1960)
(source)
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Ilan Peleg and team Lightrun on the $70M series B to bring AI-powered real-time remediation to enterprise software!
- Way to go Or Eshed and team LayerX Security on your $11M series A extension as browser security becomes the new front line in enterprise defence!
- Mazel tov Matan Gavish and team Factify on coming out of stealth with $10.3M in seed funding to enhance the security and usability of digital documents (and maybe replace PDFs!)
- Kudos Steve Sibulkin and team BioLumic on your $8.3M series B extension to accelerate a new category of non-GMO seed traits!
EXITS
- Kudos Gili Yankovitch and team Nyx Security on the acquisition by Upwind Security to expand into application runtime security! The acquisition sum was not disclosed.
- Well done Yoav Kessler and team Labrador Health on the acquisition by Healthy.io for an undisclosed sum!
- Congratulations Yonatan Raz-Fridman and team Supersocial (acquired by Super League – NASDAQ: SLE) on the acquisition by Super League for an undisclosed sum
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- The 50 most promising Israeli startups – the annual ranking by Calcalist ???????
- How fintech is reshaping ecommerce – interesting study by Viola Ventures
- The final report on the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias by Harvard University – spoiler: there’s a lot of institutionalised antisemitism
GLOBAL
- The top 100 AI startups according to CB Insights
- How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025 – update to the 2024 study by Harvard Business Review
- AI is changing how Silicon Valley builds startups – a spotlight on Gamma – I go in depth on this in my ‘Nano Unicorns’ piece on VC Cafe (below)
VC CAFE
- Nano Unicorns in the Making – how AI native startups are scaling revenues with tiny teams – by me on VC Cafe
- Founders need to adjust to longer cycles between rounds – if you’re thinking that your seed round will last for 2 years, you might get into trouble – also by me on VC Cafe based on data from Carta
- ICYMI: The future of AI tooling is interoperable – on Agent to Agent communication and MCP
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israel’s population surpassed 10 million for the first time in 2025. Here are a few other interesting facts from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics ????? ??????? ?????????? (source)
How fintech is shaping ecommerce, report by Viola Ventures
Old but gold.
Global venture is in a recalibration – Q1’25 venture fundraising numbers are out by the National Venture Capital Association. Just 87 funds closed, raising $10B total.
The biggest challenge remains liquidity. The lack of liquidity in venture means fewer funds are raising money (and therefore, it will start to impact startup funding).
GDP contracts in Q1 for 1st time since 2022 as imports surge
-0.3% in GDP in Q1 due to monumental pre-tariffs import surge, well below the average growth of ~3% in the prior 2 years.
+1.8% in consumer spending, the weakest since mid-2023.
The AI 100 by CB Insights (featuring several Israeli startups) Decart BRIA AI Orca AI
The top use cases for GenAI in 2025, and how habits have been changing in the course of a year
Startup valuation pulse check across rounds based on data from Carta analysing 1084 rounds in the past 6 months
????
* $15.2M median valuation
* 78% are under $25M
?????? ?
* $48.9M median
* About a third of rounds in this stage are valued from $50M-$99M
?????? ?
* $115M median
* Wide distribution per usual (Series B is typically all over the place). 8% under $25M, 6% over $500M
?????? ?
* $254M median
* More than half cross the $250M mark, but the lower end is fragmented
?????? ?
* $545M median
* 50% of rounds cross half a billion in valuation
Open source toolkit for building AI agents (source)
Practical tips for students in the Age of AI by Stanford University
That’s all for this week. 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
