It’s #Firgun time!
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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. In November #FIRGUN officially celebrated 5 years. See my update on what I’ve learned from writing Firgun and what keeps me going. I’m happy to share another milestone this week: it’s been 21 years (!) since I started my blog, https://www.vccafe.com.
This week in Davos, world leaders met to discuss the future of the global economy and security. One of the topics was the plan for the rebuilding of Gaza and the ‘peace board’ which is likely to include Russia and Pakistan. As phase 2 of the agreement kicks off, H***s has 100 days to disarm. in the words of Golda Meir: “We will have peace with the arabs when they love their own children more than they hate ours”. May this be the beginning of long lasting peace and may we receive the last h***age back soon – #BRINGHIMHOME
The reports of Israeli tech in 2025 are out and from the numbers its clear to see that there’s been more capital invested and more exits, but they are spread across a smaller number of deals. The concentration is apparent not just in the number of companies, but also the sectors – funding went to cyber and AI startups primarily, followed by Quantum computing, but less so to other verticals. You’ll find links to the reports as well as my own analysis in the sections below.
In the wider tech world, a high-stakes week at Davos saw Elon Musk predict that robots will eventually outnumber humans in an era of sustainable abundance, while NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang declared the $7 trillion AI factory build-out the largest infrastructure project in human history. TikTok finally secured its US future by finalising a joint venture with Oracle and Silver Lake to avoid shutting down in the US market. Microsoft scrambled to issue emergency fixes for a botched Windows 11 update that broke system shutdowns. OpenAI officially ended its ad-free era, pitching a new sponsored-response model for ChatGPT to major brands, while Mira Murati’s new startup, Thinking Machines Lab faced immediate controversy with the departure of co-founders following allegations of indecent behaviour. The fintech sector was rocked by Capital One’s $5.15 billion acquisition of Brex (down from $12bn at the peak), a landmark move to integrate AI-native spend management into traditional banking. To cap it off, China signalled a massive escalation in the global tech race, researching a national M&A fund to consolidate its domestic semiconductor and quantum computing sectors against Western chokeholds. Blue Origin announced plans to release a satellite network called TeraWave with 5,408 satellites to compete against SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo service. YouTube announced creators will soon be able to make Shorts using their own AI clones, letting them produce videos featuring an AI-generated version of themselves rather than filming real footage of their likeness. Meta Platforms’ new Superintelligence Labs has delivered its first major AI models internally this month, according to CTO Andrew Bosworth, just six months after the team was formed.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On!’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ? Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Yaniv Vardi and team Claroty on the $150M series F at $3 billion valuation to protect critical infrastructure from cyber attacks!
- Way to go Eyal Elbahary and team DealHub.io on your $100M series D for your Enterprise-grade CPQ and Agentic Quote-to-Revenue!
- Well done Didi Gurfinkel and team Datarails on your $70M series C to help CFOs consolidating financial and operational data in Excel!
- Kudos Tal Shahar and team Atlas Invest on your $25M series A to expand your bridge-lending platform for commercial real estate projects!
- Congrats Dana Rochman and team Legato AI on your $7M seed round for the first vibe app creation for SaaS platforms!
- Great news Ido Arieli Noga and team Yuki on your $6M seed round to scale its plug-and-play platform for Snowflake cost management!
- Kol hakavod Daniel Haven and team CareBestie on securing a $4.4M seed round for continuous monitoring of home care patients!
EXITS
- Big congrats Roy Avidor and team Cymbio on the acquisition of your brand discovery platform by PayPal estimated at hundreds of millions!
- Mazel tov Noa Danon and team EverAfter AI on the acquisition by Base for an estimated $20M!
NEW FUNDS
- Big congratulations Lior Prosor, Michael Broukhim and team Deep33 on securing $100M for early stage Israeli AI infrastructure and deep tech startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
REMAGINE VENTURES / VC CAFE
- Raising a Pre-Seed in 2026: The New Bar for Israeli Founders it’s never been easier to build a prototype and get it in front of customers, but that means that investors expect more to deploy funding
- AI is causing a reckoning moment for SaaS companies many SaaS stocks are significantly down as AI enables customers to build their own tools. Is charging ‘per seat’ being replaced by AI Agents charging for outcomes? And what does this mean for founders?
- My takeaways from Pocket Gamer Connect 2026 – On the state of gaming and investments in the space
ISRAEL
- Startup Nation Central 2025 report – despite persistent geopolitical challenges, the israeli tech ecosystem demonstrated exceptional robustness, reinforcing its role as the primary engine of the Israeli economy and maintaining close synchronisation with global capital trends.
- Israel channels $450 million into venture capital to support tech industry – State-backed program focuses on institutions and deeptech investment. Israel Innovation Authority ???? ???????
- Exclusive: Israel poised to launch defence privatisations in months, says government official
GLOBAL
- THE BULL CASE FOR AI ON THE ECONOMY: State of markets 2025 – a data packed presentation by Andreessen Horowitz
- THE BEAR CASE OF AI ON THE ECONOMY AND VENTURE: State of the Venture Economy by Equal Ventures – a concerned view on the state of the overall economy and capital markets.
- The MIT Technology Review 2026 – 10 Breakthrough Technologies spotlighting advances from agentic AI and autonomous systems to quantum computing, spatial and embodied intelligence, and other frontier innovations that promise to redefine how we interact with machines
- 2025 U.S. VC deal value soared to $339.4 billion, not far from 2021 highs of $358.2 billion. And yet: 50% of that 2025 deal value was invested in just 0.05% of the completed deals.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
2025 Israeli tech in numbers (according to Startup Nation Central) – see links section for source
According to IVC Data and Insights TechReview 2025, smaller M&As increased sharply. Exits below $20M reached $363M in 120 deals, up from $128M in 79 deals in 2024. The $20M-$100M range accounted for $1.9B across 37 deals, more than double last year’s totals. Exits in the $100M-$500M range totaled $4.6b in 2025, a 35% decline from 2024.
The AI SDLC landscape by Greenfield Partners (source) – AI is taking over every aspect of code creation
Consumer app spending +21% YoY to $85B in 2025, driven by GenAI (source)
European venture funding +9% YoY to $58.1B in 2025 (source)
The UK led with ~$17B, or ~29% of Europe’s total venture funding in 2025 (source)
SaaS software stocks performance in 2026 YTD (source)
Related: AI stocks account for 78% of the S&P returns (from A16Z state of markets report)
RIP Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who passed away on January 13th.
That’s all for this week. Thank you 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.
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