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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
Next week will mark 5 years since the begining of #FIRGUN Newsletter. As I’m in the process of writing a blog post about this, just think about how much has changed: Pandemic / lockdowns, Clubhouse was the hot new app and Venture Capital was about to enter the craziest period… we went through the SVB collapse, the launch of ChatGPT, the GenAI boom and the challenging period following October 7th. It’s been an honour to document and share it with you all along the way.
This week Zohran Mamdani was elected to be the new mayor of New York, the city perhaps most synonymous with capitalism. I don’t think it’s a good development for the city and the real estate agents in Miami are reporting that the phones haven’t stopped ringing since…
The Israeli Government has launched a major tax reform to attract talent and support entrepreneurship (and m&a). For example, foreign talent earning less than $1M a year will be exempt from tax for 2 years (New York Phds, that’s you).
In the wider tech world, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman announced the MAI Superintelligence Team, a research division dedicated to building advanced systems that solve specific problems in areas like medicine and energy over open-ended AGI. Google rolls out DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve, an AI system attacking classical and unsolved math problems. Moonshot AI (backed by Alibaba) just released Kimi K2 Thinking, an open-source reasoning model that matches or exceeds models including GPT-5 and Claude 4.5 Sonnet across a series of benchmarks at much lower cost. Elon Musk is set to become the world’s first trillionaire, after Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion compensation package (based on milestones). OpenAI and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a $38 billion cloud deal, and Google expressed interest in topping up their investment in Anthropic at $350 billion valuation. Apple is said to pay Google over $1 billion a year to use 1.2T gemini models to power the new Siri. “Vibe Coding” was named ‘word of the year’ by Collins Dictionary. To meet soaring demand for data centres, Google is planning to put servers on the moon ?. Alfred Lin and Pat Grady will replace Roelof Botha as the next ‘senior stewards’ at Sequoia Capital. NVIDIA is going to invest up to $1 billion into startup poolside.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” — Scott Adams
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Yevgeny Dibrov and team Armis on securing a $435M series E (pre-IPO funding) round at $6.1 billion valuation to secure and manage internet-connected devices and protect them against cyber threats!
- Well done Hagai Shapira and team Daylight Security on raising a $33M series A (just 3 months after the seed) for your AI-driven security platform to modernise detection and response!
- Kol hakavod Ohad Elhelo and team AUI™ (Augmented Intelligence) on raising a $20M round to develop a hybrid symbolic–generative model can manage structured, task-based conversations where ChatGPT-style systems falter!
- Way to go Robert Giterman and team RAAAM™ Memory Technologies on your $17.5M series A to provide denser, lower-power on-chip memory!
- Kudos Amir Gilad and team DualBird on raising a $17M series A to accelerate enterprise data pipelines!
- Big thumbs up Eyal Gurion and team Popai Health on your $11M seed round to turn patient phone calls into actionable data leveraging voice AI!
- Mazal tov Kobi Ben-Naim and team Malanta on raising a $10M seed round to tackle cyberattacks before they start!
EXITS
- Big respect Amir Elichai and team Carbyne on the acquisition by Axon for a reported $625M to redefine how emergency services connect and respond!
- Excellent news Dany Eshchar and team Orbit Communication Systems on the acquisition by Kratos Defense and Security Solutions in a $356 million deal!
- Mazal tov Beeri Amiel and team XFunnel on the acquisition by HubSpot for an undisclosed sum just ten months from founding the company!
- Well done Adam Gold and team Kypso (acq. by Incredibuild) on the acquisition by Incredibuild for an undisclosed sum to make it easy for engineering teams to build products!
- Kudos Sharon Brizinov and team #Scan_My_SMS on the acquisition of your side project that helps spot phishing in real time by Cyvore!
NEW FUNDS
- Big congratulations Eyal Niv, Gad Huldai and team Pitango on raising $300 million across two new early-stage funds! Looking forward to finding our first deal together with Remagine Ventures!
- Well done Nadav Shimoni, M.D., Sam Cronin and team A-Squared Ventures on securing a new $40M fund to invest in early stage Israeli digital health startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE / REMAGINE VENTURES
- The 2025 semiconductor landscape was added to my 2025 landscape collection on VC Cafe
- The Israeli startups fighting the dark side of GenAI – phishing, scams, impersonation, fake news, cyber attacks… who you’re going to call?
- I’ve added several new landscapes on my Reddit, Inc. community r/startuplandscapes including physical security, intelligent robotics, etc…
ISRAEL
- Israeli tax reform aims to accelerate growth in the high tech sector – by EY
- Insight Partners’ Jeff Horing: “The first generation of Israeli founders ran for exits, the new one runs for gold.”
- Wix and PayPal formed an Agentic commerce partnership and CoreWeave inked a $1.17 billion AI deal with Israeli startup VAST Data.
GLOBAL
- Sam Altman on Trust, Persuasion, and the Future of Intelligence – Live at the Progress Conference – Altman projects $20B+ in annual revenue for 2025, climbing toward hundreds of billions by 2030.
- The Cyber60 list of most promising cybersecurity startups (including many Israeli companies) by Lightspeed
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that China is “nanoseconds behind America in AI” and that they are “going to win the AI race”.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israel in the global semiconductor race – report by Tech Innovation: Startup Nation Central (source) – also find it on the 2025 landscape collection on VC Cafe
Database of 480+ Israeli companies active in New York (I wonder how that number will trend with Mamdani in charge… ) – source
The New Media market map (credit: Ilan Fisher)
Intelligent robotics: the new era of physical AI by Bessemer Venture Partners – How robotics, edge computing, and AI are transforming physical automation — and the investment opportunities we see ahead (source)
Future of European Ecommerce by Dawn Capital (source)
This by The Babylon Bee is satire…
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.
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