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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
It’s been 657 days since October 7th 2023. Why do I bother counting the days? because there are still 50 Israeli ho**ages held in G**a. It’s time to end this war and #BRINGTHEMHOME so the healing can begin.
We’re in a hyper-consensus market right now. While more money flowed to Israeli startups it’s been spread over a lower number of companies. This concentration is not just local to Israel. 50% of the capital invested in venture capital funds in the first half of 2025 has gone to 12 firms, and over a third of the venture money invested in startups in this period went to just five companies (!). I dove deeper on what this means for Israel and for smaller funds like Remagine Ventures in “The Great VC Compression“.
In the wider tech world, OpenAI said GPT-5 will launch in August. I can’t wait to see what it can do, but at the same time, how many startups do you think it will kill? ChatGPT agent is now available to all paying users. Also, here’s a curious stat: ChatGPT users now generate 2.5 billion prompts daily. Anthropic‘s revenue jumped from $1B to $4B ARR in 6 months (OpenAI is at $10 billion). There’s no doubt the models are getting smarter: OpenAI and Google won gold at the 2025 Math Olympiad. Meanwhile, 83 new unicorns were minted in the first half of 2025. Netflix admitted using Runway to cut sci-fi costs. We’ll see a lot more of that. YouTube has become most-watched TV platform in U.S. Pika launched a vertical video app that’s all AI generated. Alibaba Group unveiled Qwen-3 Coder, the most powerful open-source coding agent. Kimi K2, a new open-source Chinese foundational model launched this week, reaching the performance of Claude on LLM Arena. Everyone wants their own vibe coding tool: Microsoft launched Github Sparks in preview – build apps just by describing them. And Amazon launched Kiro. The tool uses spec-driven development and AI agents to automatically generate requirements, documentation, and tests. Amazon acquired Bee AI, a wearable that listens to all you say. SpaceX‘s Starlink was down, leaving millions without access to Internet for a few hours. Walmart is overhauling its approach to AI agents.
CALL FOR SPONSORS
For the first time ever, the #FIRGUN Newsletter is looking for sponsors! It’s going to be subtle and an opportunity to help members of this community reach each other. Apply here.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”
— Seneca
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Elad Walach and team Aidoc on securing a $150M series F to help medical teams make real-time clinical decisions with AI!
- Well done Ben Borodach and team april on raising a $38M series B to simplify US tax filing!
- Way to go Alon Partuk and team Octup on bagging a $12M seed round to transform the 3PL industry!
- Kudos Itai Hayut and team Scopio Labs on your $10M Series D extension to advance your automated blood morphology technology!
- Impressive stuff Hagai Shapira and team Daylight Security on coming out of stealth with a $7M seed round for your hybrid MDR model that can speed up detection and response!
- Kol hakavod Edit Goldberg and team Escala Medical on securing a $4.5M series A for you safer pelvic prolapse treatment!
- Congratulations Shay Hilel and team Lembas on raising a $3.6M pre-seed round to create food products that target the GLP-1 hormone!
EXITS
- Congrats Koren Molcho and team Riskey on the acquisition by Vanta for an undisclosed sum to improve secruity reviews!
APPOINTMENTS
- Mazel to Hila Goldman-Aslan on joining RUNI Ventures as the newly appointed managing partner!
- Big congrats Ron Zori on being appointed Venture Partner at Lerer Hippeau to help the firm tap into the Israeli consumer market!
NEW FUNDS
- Way to go Gideon Argov, Ran Simha and team New Era Capital Partners on the launch of your new $120M fund 3, investing in revenue-generating, post-war Israeli startups!
- Mazal tov Rafael Gold and Gadi Isaev on the launch of VentureIsrael, a new $25M fund to invest in early stage deep tech Israeli startups
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE / REMAGINE VENTURES
- The great VC compression: what it means for Israeli startups and small funds – The current concentration of capital in late-stage and mega-deals creates real challenges but also real opportunities for smaller, specialised funds like Remagine Ventures.
- The evolution of the Israeli generative AI landscape – the Israeli genAI ecosystem made huge strides from the first version of the Israeli generative AI landscape we published in January 2023 featuring 40 startups. See the evolution.
- The Remagine Ventures monthly Pulse – we published the July 2025 edition this week including some interesting updates from our portfolio! Subscribe for free to get the next edition in your inbox.
ISRAEL
- Google, Stanford And The IDF: Professional Backgrounds Of Unicorn Founders – Want to build a unicorn? Forget about Harvard, MIT or Mckinsey, enroll to the IDF
- Datadog in talks to acquire Upwind for $1 billion – more mega mergers expected to be announced, especially in Cyber
- Israel achieves historic best at International Mathematical Olympiad, securing 6th place globally
GLOBAL
- The new consumer manifesto It sucks to raise money for consumer startups, but it’s about to change. Judging by the number of new posts, events and even funds, consumer is about to make a comeback. I’m proud to be included in the list of top investors in consumer! Check out the Airtable by Hugo Amsellem.
- Winning in the US: the founders guide to building a global company from Europe by Index Ventures – an ebook with best practices, also applicable for Israeli startups!
- From UX to AX – Agentic UX becoming the new frontier. We need to design websites not just for people, but for agents
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
In case you missed it, last week we unveiled the latest Israeli generative AI startup landscape map, featuring 342 startups that raised at least $1M each, where GenAI is the main product/value proposition (source)
Want to be a unicorn founder in the US? Join the IDF to increase your odds! (research by Ilya Strebulaev)
83 unicorns have been minted so far in 2025. ?? 52 of them are in the US (I’m pretty sure we’re missing a few ??startups) data by Dealroom.co
The top AI agents by revenue by CB Insights
The Race to secure enterprise AI by Insight Partners (source)
What are the innovations in Consumer Longevity? landscape by Will Ventures (source)
How close are we to AI lawyers? The market for legal services is $1 trillion a year and the core GenAI use cases of research, summarisation and drafting take up two thirds of lawyers working days. Landscape by Dawn Capital (source)
I’m pretty sure we’ll see AI Lawyers soon, but what about AI bankers? Scale Venture Partners has the landscape for that (source)
The AR/VR startup landscape by APEX Ventures. By 2030, the global market is projected to reach $200B+ (source)
Who’s winning in GenAI traffic? ChatGPT with 78.3% , but Google is slowly gaining. By Similarweb
1B+ hours of YouTube are now watched daily on TV sets — more than on phones or any other device (source)
Zapier (a company valued at $5B) now scores employees on AI literacy. Here’s their framework to ensure new hires are 100% AI literate (source)
50% the capital invested in venture capital funds has gone to 12 firms in the first half of 2025. Last year, 74% of LP dollars went to 30 firms.
about a third of teenagers say they’d rather have a serious conversation with an AI companion than with a real person. Check out the full report on teens use of AI and see my post on the rise of AI companions on VC Cafe
Detailed list of all 44 people in Meta’s Superintelligence team. Each of these people are likely getting paid $10-$100M/yr. (source)
That’s all for this week. Thank you for tuning in. 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
