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In case 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 the concept of Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
The Iran war, dubbed by President Trump as “The 12 Day War” is over. It feels like a shadow has been lifted, and the illusion of Iran has been shattered. In a way, every rocket fired at Israel, every bullet, even the organised protests, were all orchestrated by Iran. So far, the ceasefire seems to be holding and by all means, the Middle East became a safer neighbourhood, assuming that the Iranian nuclear weapon capabilities were destroyed, which is still a question mark. What Israel accomplished in these 12 days (and in the end, with the help of the US) is unprecedented. Now there are talks about ending the G**a war, bringing the hostages home and expanding the Abraham Accords (maybe Lebanon, Syria and Saudi can become Israel’s allies?). Here’s to hoping for more peaceful times. If we want Israel to go back to ‘normal’ we must bring the 50 remaining hostages home.
After two weeks which saw Israel being targeted by over 400 ballistic missiles (while 86% of ballistic missiles and 99% of Drones were intercepted, some got through Israel’s defences and created huge devastation in property – and lives) schools are back on and Israelis can mostly return to daily life. As soon as the war was over, the acquisition of Melio for $3 billion by Xero was announced, and judging by the commitment of both Israeli and foreign investors to continue backing Israeli entrepreneurs, we are about to see a boom time. Just in the past month we made 2 new investments and have committed to a third one. Israeli startups deliver #NOMATTERWHAT.
In the wider tech world, it’s been another momentous week. Anthropic won a US copyright ruling on AI training, as a judge ruled that using copyrighted material for training was ok, and Meta won another copyright lawsuit on using books for training. Meta also reportedly poached several OpenAI senior researchers (basically the top of their Swiss office) who took on their $100M sign in bonus offers. Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO of OpenAI raised a $2 billion ‘seed’ round for her new startup Thinking Machines Lab at a $10 billion valuation to make custom AI models for enterprise customers (no product as of yet…). This and other deals lead to The Economist to claim that AI valuations are verging on the unhinged. ElevenLabs launched AI voice assistant app on mobile. OpenAI’s Jony Ive AI device won’t be a wearable and won’t be available for at least a year – it also needs to clear a lawsuit. Amidst the ever-fast moving pace of AI, Pope Leo XIV highlighted AI’s threat to humanity. TESLA‘s Robotaxis are roaming in Austin, but apparently they’re getting fines for speeding, driving into wrong lane. Google launched real?time voice search AI mode and also Imagen 4, the company’s most advance image creation engine. US users can also try Google’s new app Doppl, to virtually try-on clothes.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. –
Winston Churchill
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Joseph Nathan, MD, MSc and team ForSight Robotics on your $125M series B to advance AI-powered eye surgery system!
- Kudos Eran Barak and team MIND on your $30M Series A to tackle data loss prevention!
- Congratulations Yuval Golan and team Waltz on your $25M round to back foreign investment in US real estate!
- Way to go Royi Markowitz and team Quinn on raising an $11M Seed round to bring financial planning to the masses!
- Mazel tov Gidi Cohen and team Bonfy.AI on securing a $9.5M seed round to protect enterprises from IP leakage, privacy violations, and reputational damage!
EXITS
- Huge congrats Matan Bar and team Melio on the acquisition by New Zealand’s Xero for a reported $3 billion (including earn out) of your B2B payments platform!
APPOINTMENTS
- Big congrats Idan Tendler on joining Vine Ventures, L.P. as venture partner!
NEW FUNDS
- Kudos Eric Benhamou, Sarah Benhamou and team BGV on the launch of BGV Opportunity fund II to invest in Israeli and European AI native startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- The AI Browser Wars – For the first time in over two decades, there’s a perfect storm for new entrants to disrupt the browser market.
- Israeli fintech is back with momentum – the $3 billion acquisition of Melio, and the $2.5 billion acquisition of Next Insurance are just two examples of the 2nd largest sector in Israel, which attracted 12% of the total capital raised in 2024.
- ICMYI: the 2025 Israeli startup landscape collection – I’m a big fan of startup landscapes and here are the ones that were published in 2025 so far.
ISRAEL
- Steve Witkoff is optimistic about hostage deal and Abraham Accords expansion
- US began secretly designing bombs specifically to target Iran’s Fordow 15 years ago
- This one made me chuckle, just see it for yourself – Zionist Utopia
GLOBAL
- The state of AI in 2025 by ICONIQ – Backed by data from 300 executives and in-depth interviews across the ICONIQ community
- The 2025 East Meets West keynote deck by Coatue filled with data on public and private markets
- The 2025 AI Engineering report by Amplify Partners/ Barr Yaron – surveyed hundreds of engineers building in AI about everything from which models they’re using to whether they’re using a dedicated vector database.
- The State of Consumer AI in 2025 by Menlo Ventures – consumer AI report, surveying 5000+ US adults on how they use AI in their daily lives.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Here’s an interesting stat: Israel ranks #1 in the world in deep-tech VC investments per capita (from the latest Dealroom.co report on the Swiss tech ecosystem – source)
An AI builder tech start, from the ICONIQ state of AI report (link above)
How AI is transforming user research – by Greylock Partners (source)
Coatue’s fantastic 40 – the leading tech companies
Voice Is Going Vertical: How Verticalised Voice AI Is Becoming the Next Killer App – by Madrona (source)
The market map of every top app in consumer AI – ChatGPT and Gemini are by far the most used. Created by Menlo Ventures (see link in the links section above)
99% of seed rounds have similar terms, according to Carta (mainly based on US data) – if an investor deviates too much from the standard, you know you have a problem…
Billionaires are leaving UK, China and India en masse. Where are these billionaires flocking? to more friendly tax jurisdictions.
In the past 28 days, ChatGPT nearly surpassed the downloads of all major social media platforms – combined!
Apple internally discussed acquiring Perplexity. If it did, it would be Apple’s biggest acquisition to date.
That’s all for this week. We have 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.
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