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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
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv last week to call for the release of the hostages and end of the war. It’s a horrible gridlock where Ha**s is happy to see the civilian population suffer, but at the same time, create a leadership vacuum where there’s no alternative. Israel must do everything in its power to #BRINGTHEMHOME.
In the wider tech world, Google launched a bunch of hardware products this week in a live broadcast with Jimmy Fallon, but the format seemed to miss the mark. Google said the Median Gemini prompt consumes 6 drops of water, or 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of running a standard microwave for about one second. Ooops: Turns out that over 300,000 Grok conversations by xAI were being indexed by search engines. Anthropic is in talks to raise $10 billion in new funding. DeepSeek details V3.1 and says it surpasses R1 on key benchmarks. Alibaba Group-backed Z.ai, formerly Zhipu, launches a general-purpose AI agent app, which lets users use natural language to book hotels, order takeaway, and more. Meta froze hiring for its AI division and makes 4th restructuring in 6 months. NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration and IBM release Surya, an open-source model to predict solar storms. FieldAI raised $405M to make robots brains.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
– Andy Bernard, The Office
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Matan Fattal and team IVIX on your $60M Series B to fight financial crime with AI!
- Kudos Yoran Sirkis and team Seemplicity on raising a $50M Series B for your AI-powered Remediation Operations (RemOps) platform that reduces 95% of the ‘noise’ in cyber risk exposure!
- Well done Ofer Familier and team Dig on announcing a $14M series A for your Social Video Intelligence platform after nearly shutting down the company!
- Good stuff Jonathan Karmi and team HyperAd.io on raising $1M pre-seed to scale video ad creation with AI!
EXITS
- Well done Alon Yariv and team Atero on the acquisition by Crusoe for $150M only a year from founding while the company is still in stealth! Atero developed GPU management technology for AI workloads.
- Congrats Matteo de Renzi and team Gett on the acquisition for $180M by a consortium of 4 companies.
- Kudos Amir Shiovich and team Capitalise.ai on the acquisition by Kraken for an undisclosed sum!
- Way to go Guy Guzner and team Savvy on the acquisition by SailPoint for an undisclosed sum to auto-onboard apps to your IGA!
- Congratulations Aharon Horwitz and team FUSE Autotech on the acquisition by Fullpath for an undisclosed sum. While it’s not a ‘happy’ exit, it’s nevertheless an outcome.
NEW FUNDS
- Kudos Collin Gutman and team SaaS Ventures on announcing a new $50M early stage venture capital fund dedicated to Israeli cybersecurity startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- How AI Agents are reshaping eCommerce – in the not so distant future, there’s going to be more orders made by AI agents than humans on eCommerce sites
- Why 95% of AI pilots fail in the enterprise – with takeaways from the new MIT study that impacted the price of AI stocks
- Check out the new startup landscapes maps posted in my new Reddit community r/startuplandscapes this week!
ISRAEL
- Why Israeli founders have a key AI Advantage by NFX as an investor in many Israeli AI startups with Remagine Ventures, I strongly concur!
- Startup Nation Economic Insights: Israeli High-Tech Resilience and Growth – report by Startup Nation Central
- Nir Zuk, the legendary founder of Palo Alto Networks stepped down as CTO and chairman.
GLOBAL
- The GenAI divide: State of AI in business in 2025 – report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that 95% of AI pilots for the enterprise fail to show economic returns, despite billions of dollars in investments.
- One of many articles this week asking if the AI boom is about to be replaced with an AI crush
- State of VC 2025 – report with benchmarks by Carta (mainly US data)
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israel’s high-tech sector fuels the economy, contributing to: 19% of GDP, 56% of exports, Over 25% of national tax revenues (source)
Next month, I’m excited to represent Remagine Ventures in Mind The Tech London by Calcalist ???????. Get your ticket here (or if we’re connected, drop me a line!)
Seed rounds benchmarks by industry (part of a report by Carta – see link in the ‘global’ links section). AI valuations are getting out of whack…
The Cybersecurity Market map landscape by Sapphire Ventures Cybersecurity is keeping pace with AI as a top CIO priority, with 87% boosting budgets in 2025. Breach costs, AI-driven threats, and geopolitical tensions fuel demand, while strong VC funding and mega-deals like Google’s $32B Wiz acquisition show the sector’s strength. (source)
AI Native customer support startup landscape by Norwest (source)
The defence tech market landscape by Battery Ventures (source) The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) wields a massive budget: $863 billion in FY2024, with $64 billion allocated to IT, surpassing industries like retail ($51B) and transportation ($29B), and approaching insurance ($77B) and banking ($78B) (source)
Mapping the Logistics AI Market – startup landscape by Equal Ventures (source)
False information online seen as top global threat across 25 nations. Adults in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Hungary, and Italy view false information online as the biggest threat, according to new report by Pew Research Center (source)
Meta restructures AI group into 4 units to “accelerate” pursuit of superintelligence, their 4th Reorg in 6 months (source)
97% of Product Hunt launches are dead within 8 months. Someone tracked 500 SaaS launches from early 2024. The results are brutal. Here’s what actually happened:
- 487/500 (97.4%) make less than $1,000 MRR
- 456/500 (91.2%) have <100 active users
- 423/500 (84.6%) haven’t updated since launch month
- Only 13 are profitable enough to pay the founder’s salary. (source)
That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community. Keep on creating.
He is a former General Partner at Google Ventures (GV) in Europe, former head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe, and founding head of Campus London, Google's first startup hub. Eze writes on Israeli tech, venture capital, artificial intelligence, and founder strategy.
He is also the founder of Techbikers, a nonprofit that brings together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read.
- Tiny Episodes, Big Business: The Israeli Startups Betting on Micro-Dramas - May 12, 2026
- Weekly Firgun Newsletter – May 8 2026 - May 8, 2026
- Israel’s 2026 National AI Strategy - May 7, 2026
