The original version of this newsletter was published on Linkedin.
For first time readers: 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
Yesterday Israel celebrated Lag Baomer. With the backdrop of Trump’s historic Middle East tour, 21 year old Edan Alexander was reunited with his family after 583 of being held hostage. There are still 58 hostages (with at least 20 considered alive) waiting to be freed. We must not forget them and #BRINGTHEMHOME
This week we’ve witnessed over a trillion dollars in proposed deals involving Saudi Arabia — including an initial $600 billion investment in the U.S., a $142 billion defence contract, and additional multi-billion-dollar agreements in AI, real estate, and energy. Qatar has placed a massive aircraft order (and gifted Trump a jet, much to the disdain of both sides of the isle), and further deals have emerged with the UAE. There have even been discussions about Syria possibly joining the Abraham Accords, potentially signalling a path to peace with Israel — one can remain hopeful.
In the wider tech world, the S&P 500 rallied this week and recovered most of the losses caused by the looming US tariffs. Google DeepMind announced AlphaEvolve for algorithm design and Google announced a new AI Futures Fund for startups. OpenAI launched Healthbench, a new eval for AI systems for health. Microsoft is laying off about 6K people globally, or 3% of its workforce. Airbnb re-launched their app to compete with hotels: adding a services section featuring personal chefs, trainers to your short term rental. Meta released OMol25 dataset, UMA AI model to speed-up scientific research. Sakana AI introduced Continuous Thought Machines, a new architecture to make models reason with less guidance. Anthropic launched a web search API for Claude. Speaking of search, Apple might replace Google as the standard search on Safari, exploring LLMs instead. And Coinbase has become the first crypto company to join the S&P 500 in the US.
Chinese AI continues to make strides:
ByteDance has introduced Agent TARS, an open-source AI tool designed for automating complex tasks by visually interpreting web content and interacting with system elements. Baidu, Inc. eyes European debut for driverless taxi. The company is also looking to patent AI system to decipher animal sounds. Tencent‘s Open-Source Tool Powers Multi-Subject Video Creation. DeepSeek‘s R1 triggers boom in reasoning-enabled language models. Alibaba Group‘s Qwen chat now features Deep Research. Absolute Zero, developed by Tsinghua University trains LLMs without external data
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Israeli entrepreneurs are the highest quality entrepreneurs in the world. Period. There is a rare combination of integrity, work ethic, wisdom, and diligence here. Our feeling as investors is one of deep confidence in local entrepreneurs – a feeling that is almost absent anywhere else.”
Jeff Horing, Insight Partners
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Ori Goshen, Yoav Shoham and team AI21 Labs on securing a $300M series D to make generative AI more dependable for companies by reducing hallucinations!
- Impressive milestone Nir Minerbi and team Classiq on your $110M Series C round to lead the software layer of the quantum era!
- Seriously well done Alon Dror, Hamutal Meridor and team Kela Technologies on securing an additional $60M in funding (bringing the total to $100M in 2025 alone) to help militaries integrate AI and commercial tech in the future battlefield!
- Way to go Raviv Pryluk and team PhaseV on raising a $50M series A transform clinical development through AI/ML!
- Kudos Micha Y. Breakstone and team Somite AI on your $47.5M series A to revolutionise Cell Therapy with AI foundation models!
- Kol hakavod Shlomi Madar Ph.D. and team SpotitEarly on raising a $20.3 million round for a breath test that can detect early cancer!
- Well done Yuval Brot and team Celery on your $9M seed round for your automated audit layer for payroll!
- Congrats Ayal Karmi and team nekuda on your $5M seed round to enable AI agents to make secure, autonomous online payments!
- Mazel tov Iris Shtein and team Mentaily on raising a $3M seed round to support mental health professionals in early detection with AI-powered diagnostic!
- Good stuff Gideon Drori and team Fincom on your undisclosed series B for your anti-money laundering (AML) Sanction Screening and Entity Resolution technology
EXITS
- Huge congrats Yoni Assia and team eToro on your successful IPO bringing the company $310 million in fresh capital!
- Congrats Amir Trabelsi and team GENOOX on the acquisition by QIAGEN for an estimated $80 million!
- Nice job Roy Nissim and team Jounce on the acquisition of your stealth startup by Red Hat for an estimated $20M!
- Kudos Meny Har and team Opus Security on the acquisition by Orca Security for an undisclosed sum!
APPOINTMENTS
- Big congrats Leyla Holterud for joining Vintage Investment Partners as partner and head of the firm’s new London office!
MISCELLANEOUS
- Congrats Arkady Volozh and team Nebius on being selected to lead the development of Israel’s first supercomputer! (see link below)
- Kudos Avi Shabtai and team Ramon.Space on securing a $70M contract to supply satellite communication systems to European satellite giant Eutelsat OneWeb.
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- How can startups effectively do Marketing while in Stealth Mode
- Are AI Wrappers investable? the cases FOR and AGAINST
- Requests for startups in 2025 – Part 3 – with ideas investors are looking to back at Y Combinator, South Park Commons and a16z speedrun
- Bonus: The state of gaming in Q2 2025 (with data from Konvoy, InvestGame, Sensor Tower)
ISRAEL
- Israel’s National Supercomputer is underway – Nebius Selected to Establish One of the World’s Most Advanced AI Model Training Infrastructures, With an Investment Exceeding Half a Billion Shekels
- Jeff Horing: Israel is better version of Silicon Valley
- Foreign born entrepreneurs are driving America’s unicorn boom – by Ilya Strebulaev
GLOBAL
- The Best Code You Never Wrote – How AI is transforming software development by Christoph Janz
- Uncomfortable unanswered questions I have as an AI investor – by Charles Hudson – there are a few others I’d add which I covered here
- A interesting thread by Mark Suster on the bias of Paul Graham
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Immigrants make up 44% of U.S. unicorn founders, led by India, Israel is #2
The ever growing number of categories for cybersecurity companies… (in the end they all get acquired by one of 5 buyers!)
Israeli defense tech companies raised $280 million in 2025 (Jan-May), compared to $361 million in 2024 by IVC Data and Insights
There is a series A crunch, and founders should be aware. According to Carta Seed to Series A graduation rate drops to 15.5% for 2023 startups
The European AI Agent landscape by Dawn Capital (source)
The call centre AI ecosystem market map by b2venture (source)
Longevity investment +122% to $8.5B in 2024 (source)
Who’s already getting impacted by redundancies triggered by the rapid advance of AI? White collar workers are impacted the most (source)
Yuval Raphael, the Nova survivor went through hell on October 7, and tomorrow she will be representing Israel in the Eurovision. Give her some love! You can vote here (from outside of Israel only www.esc.vote)
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
