Key takeaways
- Israeli startups announced at least $314 million in disclosed funding this week, plus an undisclosed strategic investment, led by Zenity’s $125 million Series C and Oligo Security’s $60 million round.
- Visa’s $2.4 billion acquisition of BioCatch delivered one of the largest Israeli tech exits on record, while Deel bought deepfake-detection startup Clarity for an estimated $40–50 million.
- AI-agent security remained the defining theme, as funding accelerated just as researchers disclosed fresh examples of frontier models escaping test sandboxes and agentic browsers being manipulated through hidden instructions.
It’s #Firgun time!
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Firgun ( 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. If this was forwarded to you and you’d like to subscribe, previous editions are on VC Cafe.
August tends to be quieter as schools are still out and most people are still on their summer holidays. This week however, brought more than $314 million in disclosed startup funding across cyber, travel, healthtech and enterprise AI, as well as one of the country’s biggest-ever technology exits: Visa’s $2.4 billion purchase of BioCatch.
In the wider tech world, Google announced its biggest AI leadership reshuffle in years: Demis Hassabis moved from day-to-day leadership of DeepMind to become Alphabet’s chief scientist and DeepMind chair, while CTO koray kavukcuoglu took greater operating responsibility for Gemini development. Two major departures add to the change: Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat reportedly left Google to launch Discover Loop, a public-benefit AI startup focused on automating scientific and engineering discovery. OpenAI said its unreleased Astra model solved ten open problems across mathematics, quantum complexity and theoretical computer science, signalling another leap in AI-assisted scientific discovery. AI safety moved from theory to incident response after Meta disclosed that one of its models escaped a test sandbox, the third reported incident tied to the same configuration flaw. Meta also debuted first AI coding agent (Muse Code) to take on Anthropic and OpenAI. The White House told leading AI companies it would not include open-weight models in a proposed voluntary cyber-capability testing regime, opening a fresh policy fight over whether frontier safeguards should apply equally to closed and downloadable systems. Alibaba Group unveiled its 2.4-trillion-parameter Qwen3.8-Max model, claimed performance competitive with leading Western systems and promised to release open weights for it and a smaller 27B model. At the same time, China’s Ministry of Commerce plans to restrict foreigners from accessing the country’s frontier AI models. Reporting season: SpaceX reported quarterly revenue up 92% to $7.8 billion, while Palantir Technologies’ revenue jumped 93% to $1.94 billion. Sequoia Capital led Valar Atomics $1 billion Series B led to mass-produce nuclear reactors for AI data centers.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Peter Drucker
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NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Huge congrats to Ben Kliger, Michael Bargury and the Zenity team on raising a $115 million Series C (+$10M in secondary sales) to secure AI agents across the enterprise, monitoring what autonomous systems can access and do while they are running!
- Well done to Nadav Czerninski and the OLIGO Security team on raising $60 million to expand runtime protection for applications, cloud workloads and AI systems as attackers begin exploiting vulnerabilities at machine speed!
- Way to go Elad Schaffer and team Faye on your $50 million Series C to grow your digital travel-insurance and assistance platform globally and use AI to automate claims!
- Congrats Orr Inbar and team QuantHealth on securing a $45 million Series B to scale AI simulations that help drug developers test, optimise and de-risk clinical-trial decisions before enrolling patients.
- Mazel tov Efrat Rapoport, Barak Goldstein, and the JUNE AI team on raising a $20 million pre-seed to build AI agents that automate the complex implementation work required to deploy enterprise software!
- Kudos Avihou Barkay and team UNIT AI on securing a $12M funding round to accelerate the adoption of physical AI across retail and logistics!
- Kol hakavod Tal Baron ? and the Arrakis Security team on coming out of stealth with an $8 million seed round to monitor and govern what autonomous AI agents do after gaining access to enterprise systems!
- Great stuff to Nimrod Lehavi, Ofer Bar-Or and Inevitable AI Group (IAIG) on a $6 million pre-seed to build an AI-native venture studio designed to launch dozens of software companies!
- Nice one Aviv Nahum and the Above Security team on a strategic investment of several million dollars from CrowdStrike, deepening the companies’ integration around AI-native insider-threat protection!
- Mabruk Dean Bracha and team Marquee on raising a $4 million seed for your football-club decision-intelligence platform!
EXITS
- Massive congrats to Gadi Mazor and the BioCatch team on Visa‘s agreement to acquire the behavioural-biometrics and financial-crime-prevention company for $2.4 billion in cash, one of the largest Israeli tech transactions to date.
- Big congrats to Michael Matias and team Clarity AI on the company’s acquisition by Deel for an estimated $40–50 million, bringing deepfake detection and continuous identity verification into Deel’s global workforce platform
- Way to go Igor Bereslavski and team Supersonic from Unity team on the completion of its $40 million cash sale by Unity to Tripledot Studios, on establishing its first operation in Israel and expanding its mobile-game publishing platform!
- Kudos Dror Weiss and team Tabnine on the acquisition by Tricentis
- A new chapter for Or Perry and team StreamElements following its acquisition by Razer in a rescue deal. Terms were not disclosed;
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
REMAGINE VENTURES/ VC CAFE/ ISRAEL VC
- 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.
- A couple dozen funds were added to Israel VC this week! Founders – build the target investor list for your raise. Investors – claim your profile to get more visibility in search results!
- I recorded a podcast episode of Snooze with Dan Bouzaglo – the full episode will be out later today but I’ll post a highlight reel shortly…
ISRAEL
- National AI Directorate announces ‘Project Nexus’ to develop, build quantum computer in Israel – Israel’s national AI strategy backs a locally produced quantum computer and physical AI tools to secure tech sovereignty and future global leadership – via The Jerusalem Post
- Israeli startups raised $1.4 billion in July, taking disclosed funding in the first seven months of 2026 to $9 billion – by Globes
- Ireland’s new state jet said to struggle to land in fog, after Israeli system rejected – Falcon 6X allegedly lacks Elbit’s low-visibility equipment after procurement officials decided signing with the Israeli defense firm was ‘a step too far’ by The Times of Israel
GLOBAL
- State of AI 2026 biannual report by ICONIQ
- Google reorganised its AI leadership, with Demis Hassabis becoming Alphabet chief scientist and chair of DeepMind and Koray Kavukcuoglu taking expanded responsibility for Gemini by Axios
- Nearly a third of workers admit to sabotaging their company’s AI strategy – 29% of employees admitted to actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy, a figure that jumps to 44% among Gen Z workers. Smaller pay checks may explain why by Fortune
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Smaller transactions have dominated Israeli tech exits. Between 2016 and 2025, acquisitions below $20 million consistently represented roughly 60% to 70% of all exits.
New benchmarks for VC startup fundraising with real data from over 1,000 rounds data by Carta (Data is US-centric, so Israeli startups, take it with a grain of salt)
Sequoia mapped 20 years of hype and what actually got built (source)
Everybody is talking about Forward deployed Engineers (FDEs). AI is changing the promise of what software can deliver. The gap between what enterprise customers expect and what a traditional software product can deliver has never been wider. FDEs are just one strategy for closing that gap and delivering outcomes that software rarely could on its own. (source)
Which service markets are ripe for AI disruption?
Good tips on how to sell anything.
That’s all for this week. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community – keep on creating!
And if you’ve got a win to share (yours or someone else’s), reply and let me know so I can include it next week.
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 – August 7 2026 - August 7, 2026
- Israeli Defence Tech on the Rise - July 31, 2026
- Weekly FIRGUN Newsletter – July 31 2026 - July 31, 2026
