Weekly Firgun Newsletter – August 7 2026
While August tends to be quieter as most people are still on their summer holidays, this week Israeli startups announced $314 million in disclosed funding plus
Visa’s $2.4 billion acquisition of BioCatch
Eze Vidra
Eze Vidra is the founder of VC Cafe and the co-founder and managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a pre-seed fund investing in ambitious founders at the intersection of AI, technology, entertainment, gaming, and commerce with a spotlight on Israel.
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.
Israeli Defence Tech on the Rise
Defence-tech investment is reaching record levels, and Israel is emerging as a major centre of innovation. A visit to Los Angeles—now a hub for companies such as SpaceX and Anduril—highlighted the potential to connect Israeli technology with American capital, customers and manufacturing.
Weekly FIRGUN Newsletter – July 31 2026
This week in Israeli tech, the cyber and AI-agent-security boom kept compounding: four separate Israeli startups building tools to secure AI agents and machine identities: Onyx, Mate, Hush Security and Way Security, all announced funding within days of each other.
The Next AI Opportunities Are the Problems AI Created
AI is making code, content, intelligence and product creation abundant. But every new abundance produces a new scarcity: understanding, trust, reliability, distribution and control. In other words, what AI made abundant, created scarcity in other areas, that's where the next big opportunities lie.
Weekly Firgun Newsletter – July 24 2026
Israeli tech showed its enduring strength in cybersecurity, with three startups emerging from stealth after raising a combined $340 million. But the same week brought another painful wave of layoffs, including monday.com cutting 20% of its workforce. AI-driven automation is part of the story, but so is the unusually strong shekel, which is increasing dollar-denominated costs and shortening runways for Israeli companies.
Vertical AI Market Map 2026: Israeli Startups and Funding Rounds
Israeli vertical AI just crossed a real threshold in H1 2026, from copilots that help people work to systems that run entire industry workflows. But the funding tells a more complicated story: $716M went to just 24 companies, half of it swallowed by three mega-rounds, and several "hot" categories are far more crowded than they look. Here's the full market map, by industry, with every funding round verified.
Requests for Startups: Fall 2026 Edition
Investors spent H1 2026 heavily on agents, cyber, enterprise AI and defence. This data-backed Fall 2026 wishlist looks beyond crowded categories to ten problems founders should solve next
Weekly Firgun Newsletter – July 17 2026
I spent just over 48 hours in Israel this week and left feeling optimistic. Away from the headlines, founders are building, investors are backing them, and Bank of America this week ranked Israel among the world's leading AI hubs. In this edition: why tokenmaxxing is the wrong metric, the biggest AI stories, funding rounds, exits and the wins worth celebrating across our "small" community.
Tokenmaxxing Was the Wrong Metric
Silicon Valley treated rising token consumption as proof of AI adoption. But tokens are an input cost, not a measure of value. As companies turn to cheaper Chinese models and Mira Murati launches Inkling, the market is shifting from tokenmaxxing to a better metric: the cost of producing a successful outcome.
The AI Shovel Paradox: Why Israel’s AI Future Lies in Software and Silicon, Not Server Farms
Israel won’t win the AI race by building the biggest data centres. New research from Bank of America shows why the country’s long-term advantage lies in talent, silicon and software, not physical infrastructure.