It’s #Firgun time! The original version of this newsletter was published on Linkedin. Sign up to get the next edition directly in your inbox.
A warm welcome to new 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 the concept of Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
Today I’d like to wish a happy Independence Day to Israel’s #1 ally, the land of free and home of the brave! President Trump met with Edan Alexander, a US/Israeli citizen who survived 584 days in Ham** captivity, at the oval office this week. Edan told him the horrors he and his fellow hostages (of which 50 still remain in G**a) have been through. With a ceasefire/deal on the table and rumours of the Abraham Accords expanding to several other countries, it’s time to #BRINGTHEMHOME so we can start healing.
Preliminary reports for the first half of 2025 paint a spectacular resilience for the Israeli startup ecosystem. While the methods of measurement vary between reports(Startup Nation Central estimates unreported rounds, while IVC Data and Insights only includes reported rounds, etc) it’s clear that the Israeli tech ecosystem has had a tremendous rebound. In June alone, Israeli startups raised $1.5 billion, and in the first half of 2025 SNC estimates Israeli startups fundraising reached $9.3 billion, the best half-year in 3 years and a 54% jump from H2 2024. For context, the total raises for 2024 reached approximately $10.5 billion and lets not forget that all of this is happening in the middle of a war(s).
In the wider tech world, it’s been another momentous week. Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta‘s Superintelligence all star team of AI researchers (some reportedly lured with $100M+ pay packages) led by Alexander Wang. Google rolled out Veo3, it’s video generation model, globally for Pro/Ultra subscribers. The company is doubling down on AI, so much so that they’ve signed a contract to buy Fusion Energy in 2030 from Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Microsoft announced 9,000 more layoffs, bringing their total to 15,000 since MAY. Is the job apocalypse upon us? Amazon Is on the cusp of using more robots than humans in Its warehouses (btw, Mazal tov Jeff and Lauren). Marc Benioff said that AI now does up to 50% of all work at the company, in key functions like engineering, coding, and customer support. OpenAI has quietly designed a productivity suite to compete with Google worksapce and Microsoft office. For the first time, streaming surpassed broadcast and cable TV viewing in US, according to Nielsen. Good news about the IPO market: Figma filed their S-1 for an IPO, revealing $749 million in revenue in 2024, a 46% yoy growth and 91% gross margin. Good news about the M&A market? Grammarly acquired Superhuman. Good news about the venture funding market? Elon Musk’s xAI has just raised $10bn in debt and equity.
Have you heard about Soham Parekh? He’s been ‘multi tasking’ by showing up for work at four different companies on the same day for several Y Combinator startups… Silicon Valley founders issued a PSA, but the ‘overemployed’ phenomenon is much bigger than this one guy. Ilya Sutskever stepped up to the CEO role at Safe Superintelligence Inc. after Daniel Gross, PhD quietly moved to Meta. Ilya said he’s not interested in selling.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
— United States Declaration of Independence
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big respect Shlomo Kramer and team Cato Networks on your $239M Round G (and $120M secondary sale) at a $4.8 billion valuation for your category-defining SASE platform!
- Kudos Bar Winkler and team Wonderful on coming out of stealth with a $34M seed round to bring multilingual AI to global call centres!
- Way to go Asif Sinay and team QEDMA on your $23M series to address the high error rate in Quantum Computing!
- Congrats Dean Bitan and team Imagene on your $23M series B round to develop multi?modal foundation models for precision medicine!
- Mazal tov Eran Baron and team Deeto on raising a $12.5M series A to make it easier for companies to capture buyers feedback via AI voice!
- Congrats Ben Volkow and team QIZ Security on coming out of stealth with an undisclosed seed round to manage cryptographic risk in dynamic environments!
EXITS
- Congrats Erez Nahom and team Konnecto on the acquisition of your AI-powered affiliate marketing tech by Partnerize for an undisclosed cash transaction!
- Way to go Tomer Greenwald and team Otterize on the acquisition by Cyera for an undisclosed sum estimated at tens of millions to tackle the cloud identity security sprawl!
APPOINTMENTS
- Mazel tov Moran Zilbershtein on joining TAU Ventures as its newest General Partner!
- Congrats Hadas Sparfeld on being promoted to Partner at Group 11!
NEW FUNDS
- Kudos Yoav Knoll and team Kinetica on the newly announced $150M defence tech fund focused on early stage Israeli startups!
- Congrats Giora Eiland on joining Champel Capital new $100M Defence tech fund focused on Israeli defence and dual use startups!
- Well done Shay Michel and team Merlin Ventures on your new $75M cybersecurity fund focused on growth stage Israeli startups!
- Congratulations Gili Elkin ?? and team ICI Fund on securing $50M for your fund II focused on early stage Israeli startups! hope we get a chance to collaborate on a deal soon!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- Israeli Tech Rebounds Stronger Than Ever in H1 2025 – anyway you look at it, Israeli tech startups are punching above their weight. Even more impressive to consider that this comeback is taking place in the middle of a war.
- DTC in 2025: Not dead, just evolving – Last week Unilever spent $1.5 billion to acquired a direct to consumer soap company called Dr. Squatch but it wasn’t for the quality of their soap… I did a deep dive on DTC startups, how AI is impacting the sector and what are the latest trends.
- The AI elephant in the room – $2 billion ‘seed’ rounds? $100M signing bonus? Ludicrous pricing? We need to talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to AI investing… this post amassed nearly 1,000 views in less than 24 hours.
ISRAEL
- June in Israeli tech – over $1.6 billion raised in 18 deals – AI and cybersecurity continue to dominate
- Israeli Tech Sees Strongest Half Since 2021 Hype Cycle
- Tel Aviv ranks 4th in global startup ecosystem ranking by Startup Genome following Silicon Valley, New York and London
GLOBAL
- The VC market saw the value of exits rise to $114.9 billion globally in Q2—the largest total in nearly three years, according to PitchBook.
- Silicon Valley is still king – California startups land 68% of U.S. funding in 1H 2025, data by Crunchbase
- Bill Ackman’s ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ in NYC mayoral race goes to Eric Adams—‘ready to go to battle, guns blazing’ against Zohran Mamdani
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israeli tech companies raised $2.72 billion in 90 funding rounds, representing a 20% increase in capital raised compared to Q1/2025, and a 12% decline in the number of known funding rounds. (the quarterly analysis excludes the $2 billion raised by Safe Superintelligence Inc.). This is according to preliminary figures released by IVC Data and Insights and LeumiTech.
Tel Aviv ranks No. 4 in Global Startup Ecosystems (following SF, NY and London) – according to the 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking by Startup Genome
Israel’s 2025 Proptech landscape was published by TLV Partners this week and added to my 2025 startup landscape collection on VC Cafe .
India is projected to reach $165 billion in eCommerce revenue by 2025 with 1.41 billion residents. Israel, with its 9 million residents, is expected to reach $12 billion in eCommerce retail value by 2025. Israel will generate 7% of India’s projected 2025 eCommerce totals with .64% of India’s population. And to be fair, online retail is not its leading industry (source)
Microsoft Says Its New AI System Diagnosed Patients 4 Times More Accurately Than Human Doctors (source)
Watch out USA! China chipping away at U.S. dominance in global AI race (source)
The 50 leading seed companies in Europe by Creandum (source)
What AI tools are companies using? This 67 page AI report by ICONIQ on how 300 execs at software startups like Cursor, ElevenLabs, Sierra (revenue $10m-$1b+) use AI just dropped. (source)
The AI voice Agents market map by Startup Riders (source) – check out my previous post on the booming market for voice AI here
The security operations centre (SOC) automation landscape by Activant Capital (source)
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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