It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of #Firgun was posted on LinkedIn to 7,840+ subscribers.
If you’re new here, welcome! So glad you’ve joined us.
Firgun (Hebrew: ??????, pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an Israeli term describing genuine, unselfish joy in someone else’s success… It’s basically the opposite of “schadenfreude”. Every week since March 2020, we celebrate the wins of our startup community. Read more about why Firgun matters.
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This week, Israel celebrated its 78th Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut), a moment of national pride and reflection, with the traditional torch-lighting ceremony at Mount Herzl, barbecues, flyovers, and festivities across the country. Looking at the Calcalist 2026 most promising startups list, it’s clear that there’s a quiet shift going on: from software to hard tech, but also Israeli startups are finding they need to move abroad (aka US) earlier than before and to diversify their development centres from only Israel to cope with the impact of war, weakening dollar, etc.
In the wider tech world, SpaceX secured a $60 billion option to acquire Cursor (Anysphere), the AI-native code editor, or pay a $10 billion partnership fee to co-develop models on xAI’s Colossus supercomputer. OpenAI launched GPT-5.5, purpose-built for agentic coding, computer use, and scientific research, priced at $5/$30 per million tokens, intensifying competition at the frontier model layer. OpenAI also released a new image tool capable of generating complex charts and diagrams directly from prompts. China’s DeepSeek AI fired back with V4 Pro (1.6T parameters) and V4 Flash, both at a fraction of Western pricing, raising fresh questions about whether open-source models will commoditise AI faster than anyone expected. Meanwhile, Meta announced it will cut 10% of its workforce, roughly 8,000 employees. Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts affecting 7% of U.S. staff, signalling that even the AI-era giants are restructuring around leaner, more automated operations. Tim Cook stepped back as CEO of Apple as hardware chief John Ternus was appointed the new CEO to lead Apple’s next era. Google has launched new custom chips designed specifically to speed up AI processing and challenge Nvidia’s dominance. 4 month-old UK startup Irregular raised $500M in funding for its AI security lab focused on LLM protection and model control.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” — Howard Schultz
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Renen Hallak and team VAST Data on completing a $1 billion Series F round at $30 billion valuation to scale its AI Operating System data platform!
- Kudos Arick Goomanovsky and team Band.ai on coming out of stealth with a $17M seed round to build the communication and interaction layer for the Internet of Agents!
- Way to go Shimon Tolts and team Copperhelm on coming out of stealth with a $7M seed round to monitor cloud environments, detects threats, and performs autonomous remediation with AI agents!
EXITS
- Congratulations Aharon Horwitz and team Fullpath on the acquisition by Cox Automotive Inc. for a reported hundreds of millions for your AI-driven customer data and marketing automation platform for the automotive industry!
- Well done Yossi Reitblat and team Ryft on the acquisition by Cyera for a reported $100M-$130M for your data management platform for AI agents!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
REMAGINE VENTURES/ VC CAFE
- The Anthropic question has replaced the Google question – Anthropic went from $9 billion to $30 billion in revenue and has an insatiable appetite for not just infrastructure, but also the product layer.
- VC is being rewired by AI – anyone can code now, and so AI didn’t just change how startups are built, but also how VCs find, assess and engage them. Will you be pitching to a VC AI Agent soon for funding?
- Are we in a bubble or an AI super cycle? Q1 broke all records in venture capital, reaching $300 billion globally (with the majority of that capital going to hyper scalers OpenAI and Anthropic and 80% of the money going to AI startups).
- Israel’s most promising startups 2026 – as selected by Calcalist ??????? – we’re clearly moving from SaaS/software to hard tech…
ISRAEL
- Israel’s Defence Tech leaders list by Viola Group
- The 50 most promising startups for 2026 by CTech by Calcalist
- Iron dome developer Rafael advances IPO plans at $20 billion valuation
GLOBAL
- Big ideas 2026 deck by ARK Investment Management LLC
- The 2026 Global Mega Trends by Activant Capital
- Early stage investing in the AI Age – filled with interesting stats by Carta
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The Israel Defence Tech ecosystem landscape by Alex Shmulovich at Viola Ventures was added to my 2026 Israeli startup venture collection on VC Cafe. Learn more here.
the 10 largest Tech Ecosystem Hubs. ?? Tel Aviv, relatively small city, but $525B EV and 6.9x growth shows incredible capital efficiency. (source: Dealroom.co)
The Agent ecosystem is evolving very fast – Sapphire Ventures captured the current state in this landscape (source)
A framework on AI Value Creation and Pricing from Bessemer Venture Partners. Axis 1: What kind of value do you create? Axis 2: How provable is that value? The diagonal arrow is the key insight: pricing power increases as you move from soft ? hard ROI.
Voice AI applications and infrastructure by Dawn Capital (source)
Today’s state of Seed: more money, higher valuations, but less rounds happening (see links section). Also, seed teams are 39% smaller in 2025 than they were in 2021 and about 25% of seed startups raising this year will get to Series A in 2 years or less. Maybe 35% after 4 years.
Lastly, something I shared on X…
That’s all for this week, thank you for tuning in. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community! Keep on creating!
Eze Vidra
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.
- Weekly Firgun Newsletter – April 24 2026 - April 24, 2026
- Israel’s most promising startups in 2026 - April 22, 2026
- Bubble, or Super-Cycle? What the AI Boom Means for Founders Right Now - April 20, 2026