We made our first generative AI investment at Remagine Ventures in August 2019. The company was HourOne (recently acquired by Wix), and their vision was bold: create AI avatars based on real humans that generate video from text—no cameras needed. Back then, it took 24 hours to generate a short clip, and the avatars were stiff, but it still felt like magic. For example, take a look at this ‘Turing Test’ that HourOne showcased at CES in January 2020.
At the time, there was no “application layer”—no foundational models to build on—so the HourOne team had to invent the whole stack themselves.
The term “Generative AI” only became widely known with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. But long before that, we wrote here on VC Cafe about the rise of synthetic media and creative automation (note that we were actively blogging about this in 2021). It’s been a privilege to witness, document, and invest in this transformation..
GenAI went from Novelty to Infrastructure
To track the progress of this space, it’s interesting to add the context of OpenAI’s evolution. As Sam Altman famously said, when they first launched ChatGPT, people said it will never work. When GPT-3.5 came out, people started taking it seriously. When GPT-4 was launched, people started building meaningful businesses on to the that infrastructure. As we’re heading towards GPT-5, you can already start seeing the deep impact this technology is having across every possible category. And they are not alone of course, other foundational models, including Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and new open source models have made significant strides.
Mapping the Israeli GenAI Ecosystem
I published the first list of pioneering Israeli startups working in the GenAI space in a Calcalist op-ed in Octbober 2022. It was meant to show the potential of the space for Israeli startups. It didn’t take long for founders to jump on the opportunity and in January 2023 I published the first version of the Israeli generative AI startup landscape, featuring 40 companies.
Here’s how fast things evolved:
- Jan 2023: 40 startups
- April 2023: 68 startups
- Sept 2023: 168 startups, $2.3B raised
- May 2024: 238 startups, $5.47B raised
- July 2025: 342 startups, across 29 categories, each having raised $1M+, with over $20 billion raised in total
Four months later, in April 2023, we published the second version of the landscape, including 68 startups.
In September 2023 you could already notice a significant jump (5 months after the launch of GPT-4). This version already included 168 startups, that have collectively raised $2.3 billion in funding.
In May 2024, two months after the GPT-4 launch, our map already included 238 startups that have collectively raised $5.47 billion. The ecosystem had nearly doubled in size in a matter of 8 months. We published our findings in Calcalist.
Fast forward to today. We published the latest version of the Israeli generative AI landscape last week in Calcalist (July 2025), featuring 342 startups that have raised at least $1 million each (across 29 categories) where generative AI is the main product or technology offered by the company. We’ve added 198 new companies from the previous version published just over a year ago (in May 2024). The categories that saw the biggest growth in terms of new companies are cybersecurity and healthcare, followed by LLM Ops and Marketing tech.
The market is shifting. What began with simple generative tools—image generators, chatbots, LLM wrappers has evolved into agentic AI systems: autonomous (or semi-autonomous) agents that execute multi-step tasks, make decisions, and drive workflows in enterprise environments.
Israel is emerging as a powerhouse in these areas thanks to:
- Elite technical talent (ranked top globally for AI talent density by Stanford AI Index)
- Military-trained engineers with domain expertise in cybersecurity, NLP, and computer vision
- A culture of entrepreneurship that embraces moonshots
We’ve also added a new section on M&A. In the past year alone, 31 Israeli generative AI startups have been acquired. Of those, only 17 disclosed terms, reaching over $6.1 billion in exits over the past year alone. Acquirers include Nvidia, Salesforce, Wix, Apple, Cisco, Akamai etc. Talent is extremely sought after in the generative AI research space, and Israel ranks the most densely concentrated AI talent per capita, according to the Stanford 2025 AI Index.
What it takes to win
There are still significant challenges to solved for generative AI technology to become even more widely adopted. And we believe that much of that AI adoption is starting with consumers first. For Israeli startups to win in this highly competitive space they must:
- Go beyond wrappers and build differentiated tech/IP
- Solve real pain points in specific verticals like healthcare, cybersecurity, dev tools, and finance
- Have distribution advantages, often through partnerships or bottoms-up GTM strategies
- Move toward agentic architectures, enabling products to take action, not just generate content
At Remagine Ventures we’ve made 13 investments in Israeli GenAI startups since 2019 and continue to look for founders with bold visions at the intersection of AI, consumers, and vertical SaaS.
We’re excited to continue investing in pre-seed startups operating in this important space. If you’re an Israeli startup founder solving real problems using generative AI, it’s never too early to talk to us at Remagine Ventures.
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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