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It’s #Firgun time!
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’s edition is themed around a ‘new dawn.’ With the return of Ran Gvili (z’l) following a complex recovery operation, Israel marks a profound milestone: for the first time since 2014, no hostages remain in Gaza. This moment is a powerful affirmation of our social contract—a moral duty fulfilled and a solemn reminder that we never leave anyone behind. We are, and always will be, one people.
The Israeli tech ecosystem is entering its own ‘new dawn’ with a breathtaking start to 2026. In just the first few weeks of January, we’ve already seen 10 major acquisitions by tech giants including Apple, PayPal, CrowdStrike and several multi billion acquisitions/ IPOs being rumoured. This signals a massive return of global confidence in Israeli tech. The crown jewel of this streak is Apple’s acquisition of Q.ai, marking their second-largest purchase in history (Beats, at $3bn). This surge proves that the ‘Startup Nation’ isn’t just back; it’s scaling new heights post-war. However, one worrying signal is that 50% of Israeli startups choose to incorporate abroad (mainly USA).
In the wider tech world, Big Tech earnings season dominated headlines as Apple reported a blockbuster fiscal Q1 with record $143.8 billion revenue, up 16% year-over-year, fuelled by unprecedented iPhone demand across all regions; Microsoft faced a sharp stock drop (~$360B market?cap wipeout) after heavy AI capex scrutiny despite solid results, while Meta surged on reaffirmed massive $115-135 billion spending plans for AI infrastructure. Autonomous driving startup Waabi raised a massive $750 million to expand into robotaxis, and AI lab humans& secured an eye-popping $480 million “seed” round at a ~$4.5 billion valuation backed by NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos. In China, the country escalated its space ambitions with plans for gigawatt-class space-based AI data centers over the next five years to challenge U.S. dominance and integrate orbital computing power. Meanwhile, Amazon announced layoffs of 16,000 employees amid intensified AI competition and cost controls, OpenEvidence closed a $250 million Series D for medical AI, and reports highlighted ongoing mega-funding momentum in AI with rounds like Decagon‘s $250 million at a $4.5 billion valuation for AI concierge tech. Breakthroughs continued with Microsoft’s Maia 200 inference accelerator deployment and Chinese firm Moonshot AI releasing the open-source Kimi K2.5, a 1-trillion-parameter model outperforming rivals on key benchmarks. OpenAI is reportedly seeking a $100 billion round (with SoftBank committed for $30Bn) and Amazon rumoured to be investing $50 Bn, prepping for a fourth-quarter IPO as it races to beat Anthropic to the public markets. Tesla doubled down on “physical AI” by winding down Model S/X to free capacity for Optimus robots and Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX is in merger talks with xAI. Finally, Clawdbot became viral as personal AI Agent, but it’s a privacy nightmare.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Power works by division, influence by multiplication. Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have. Influence is a non-zero-sum game: the more you share, the more you have.” – Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Amiram Shachar and team Upwind Security on the new $250M series B and new Unicorn status to scale your cloud security platform!
- Well done Matan Gavish and team Factify on raising a $63 million seed round to replace static PDFs with intelligent records that allow AI to take charge of business documents!
- Kudos Israel Mazin and team Memcyco on securing $37M series A to protect companies from brand impersonation, phishing, and account takeover (ATO) fraud!
- Mazal tov Aviv Revach and team Adaptive6 on coming out of stealth with a $26M series A (and previously undisclosed $18M seed round) to help companies significantly cut the cloud costs!
- Big congrats Maor Levran and team Slice | Global Equity on announcing a $25M series A for an AI native compliance first infrastructure to manage global equity!
- Good news Doron Gerstel and team Pixellot – AI-Automated Sports Video and Analytics on your $15M round for your AI-powered automated video production and streaming tools for youth and amateur sports!
- Felicitations Itay Oren and team Visitt on your $22M series B to transform how commercial real estate properties operate!
- Way to go Netanel Azoulay and team Mesh Security on your $12M series A to scale your Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture (CSMA) platform!
- Kol hakavod Roy Bick and team Vimi on coming out of stealth with a $12M seed round for your AI tutoring platform for K-12 students!
- Big thumbs up Aviv Shamny and team Limy AI on your $10M seed round to help companies measure and improve how their brands appear in AI-driven search and agent responses!
- Congrats Matan Bar-Efrat and team Rein Security on coming out of stealth with a $8M seed round to disrupt app security (AppSec)!
- Mabruk Yoash Palmor and team Materialspace on raising a $7M seed round for interior construction planning and procurement!
- Good stuff Shlomie Liberow and team aisy on securing a $2.3M seed round for your AI-native threat prioritisation cyber startup!
EXITS
- Huge congrats Aviad Maizels and team Q.ai on the acquisition by Apple for a reported $1.5 billon to $2 billion (the tech giant’s second largest acquisition to date), for your stealth technology that reads tiny facial movements to let people “talk” to AI without speaking using wearable devices!
- Kudos Ido Bukspan and team Pliops on the acquisition by Astera Labs for a reported $70M. Not all exits are happy, but nevertheless a result.
- Well done Tzvika Shneider and team Pynt on the acquisition by Radware for an undisclosed sum estimated at tens of millions!
APPOINTMENTS
- Congrats Dorin Baniel on being promoted to Partner at NightDragon to invest in growth stage Israeli cyber, quantum and AI startups!
- Kudos Saul Levin on being promoted to Partner at Entrée Capital after starting with the firm as an intern!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
REMAGINE VENTURES/ VC CAFE
- The 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe – In what became an annual tradition since 2019, I’ll collect all the Israeli startup landscapes published in 2026 in this link
- Why “Funding-Contingent co-Founders” are a Non-Starter – Pre-seed investors are looking for conviction from the founders, so when a co-founder joining depends on funding (or a certain salary), it’s a red flag for investors.
- A Fundraising Conversation I Have Almost Every Week – ‘We’re pre-MVP, zero revenue and we want to raise $5M” – a pre-seed investor perspective, especially if you’re not in cyber :-)
ISRAEL
- The state of Israeli fintech 2026 report – a detailed vertical deep dive report by Viola Ventures
- Tesla has given Lemonade, a digital insurance company, access to vehicle data that was previously unavailable. This allowed Lemonade to launch a new “Autonomous Car” insurance product that cuts premiums by approximately 50% for miles driven in Full Self-Driving (FSD). Lemonde’s pay-per-mile insurance tech stack uses real driving data to inform a dynamic risk model. This means they expect further cost reductions for consumers as Tesla releases more FSD updates that improve driver safety.
- Israeli startup Decart released new powerful video model, Lucy2 – for generative AI video in real time
GLOBAL
- The state of AI bi-annual snapshot by ICONIQ
- New consumer trends report for 2026 – by The New Consumer
- The Q4 2025 Venture pulse by KPMG
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israeli Mental health tech investment soars 150% to $352 million as market consolidates. Check out the latest landscape and report by Startup Nation Central, ICAR Foundation and 8400 The Health Network (it was added to the 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe)
The 2026 Israeli Space Tech Landscape by Startup Nation Central – Source (it was added to the 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe)
The 2026 Israeli fintech startup landscape (the 2nd largest vertical recipient of funding in Israel, after cyber) by Viola Ventures (it was added to the 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe)
The Physical AI landscape – World models enable robots to predict and plan autonomously — a capability beyond what large-language models (LLMs) can achieve. Investment in world models surged from $1.4B in 2024 to a record $6.9B in 2025, with companies in the space averaging a Mosaic score of 722 (the top 3% of all markets). But success requires quality training data from controlled environments and close partnerships with hardware manufacturers to ensure seamless performance in complex real-world tasks. (source) – it was added to my Reddit, Inc. community r/startuplandscapes)
The most reputable brands in America in 2025 (the Axios Harris poll 100)
Bay Area startups in 2025: $154 billion raised. The next 10 ecosystems: $118 billion. (By Peter Walker)
Coding related use cases were not the places that startups self-reported they were seeing the biggest productivity gains. by ICONIQ
Defence Tech is growing rapidly – this landscape by Bessemer Venture Partners captures what they call the 5 frontiers for 2026 (source)
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) AI Index evaluates leading large language models (LLMs) on their ability to detect and counter antisemitic and extremist tropes and narratives. Claude performed best and Grok was most likely to product antisemitic content (source)
That’s all for this week. Celebrating a ‘new dawn’.
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
