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.
In Israeli tech this week, following a decade-long decline, new company creation is finally trending upward, with roughly 800 startups founded in 2025, compared to 700 in 2024. That’s a good sign. Increasingly also, the capital is concentrating into high-impact ventures; notably, seed rounds exceeding $20M more than doubled in 2025. This theme of aggressive, quality-driven growth is personified by industry giant Check Point Software , which just announced the acquisition of three Israeli startups: Cyata, Cyclops Security , and Rotate, to bolster its AI and MSP capabilities.
In the wider tech world, Anthropic secured a $30 billion funding round at a roughly $380 billion valuation anchoring a fresh era of mega-AI capital flows, intensifying the race with OpenAI for AI dominance in 2026. OpenAI and Anthropic are also drawing unconventional dual support from top VCs even as their battles shape the broader generative AI landscape. NVIDIA’s deepening AI ecosystem deals, with ambitions to invest billions into OpenAI and broader partnerships, underscore the central role of compute and hardware in the sector’s next phase. Amazon $200 billion planned investment aimed at scaling its cloud and machine-learning footprint brought the stock down massively. Alphabet Inc. is close behind, committing up to $185 billion to AI as its Gemini App reaches a milestone 750 million monthly active users. Microsoft has disclosed that nearly half of its future cloud growth is now tied directly to its partnership with OpenAI, raising new questions about platform interdependence.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The Sun will rise and set regardless. What we choose to do with the light while it’s here is up to us. Journey wisely.”? Alexandra Elle
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big mazal tov Shay Sandler and team Vega on raising $120M series B just five months after your series A to focus on decentralized, in-place security data analysis!
- Congrats Imri Marcus and team Brandlight on securing a $30M series A to help brands grow their exposure in LLMs!
- Well done Ofer Klein and team Reco on raising a $30M series B to secure AI adoption of AI SaaS apps and agents!
- Way to go Benjamin Segal and team Matia on securing a $21M series A to build AI-friendly data infrastructure!
- Kol hakavod Eddie Dovzhik and team Lema AI on securing a $20M series A for your enterprise supply chain security!
- Kudos Shahar Man and team Backslash Security on raising your $19 million Series A as AI vibe coding reshapes cyber risk!
- Massive props Eldad Postan-Koren and team WINN.AI on securing an $18M series A to bring real-time AI guidance to sales teams!
- Congratulations Yaniv Shimoni and team Take2 AI on raising a $14M series A to deploy autonomous AI agents in healthcare hiring
- Impressive milestone Avner Bendheim and team Tenna Systems on announcing your $13.5M seed round to turn existing sensors into a real-time shield against jamming and spoofing!
- Congrats Tali Gross and team Dono on raising a $6.5M seed round to modernize U.S. property records with AI
EXITS
- Congratulations Rotem Weiss and team Tavily on the acquisition by Nebius for an estimated $400M!
- Kudos Omri Kohl and team Pyramid Analytics on the acquisition by ServiceNow estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars!
- Way to go Eran Zilberman and team Cyclops Security on the exit to Check Point Software for a reported $75M!
- Mabruk Shahar Tal and team Cyata on the acquisition by Check Point Software for a reported $75M!
- Well done Ido Bukspan and team Pliops on the acquisition by Astera Labs for $70M!
- Congrats Ro’ee Margalit and team Rotate on the acquisition by Check Point Software for an undisclosed sum!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- Software is dead. Long live software? The market lost $2 trillion in value for tech stocks triggered by fear of AI making SaaS (pricing and usage) obsolete. I read a lot of takes and came up with my own conclusions in this post.
- Reasons to be optimistic about Israeli tech post Oct 7 – check out my slide deck from a presentation I gave this week.
- The Remagine Ventures ‘mini Firgun’ – giving a shout out to our Israeli startups who made an impact!
ISRAEL
- Overview of the Israeli AI infra landscape by Yonatan Mandelbaum at TLV Partners
- The shekel’s appreciation shows no signs of stopping – the weakening of the dollar (in contrast) means that the proceeds for Wiz and CyberArk employees shrank by quite a lot…
- Deep-tech nation: Israel’s strategic imperative – by Dror Bin CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority “Israel already has approximately 1,500 deep-tech companies that collectively raised over $28 billion between 2019 and 2025. This makes us a global leader in deep-tech fundraising in the Western Hemisphere, second only to the U.S.”
GLOBAL
- The AI pricing and monetization playbook by Bessemer Venture Partners – An early primer on how founders and AI product leaders capture value in a world where every token has a cost, and every customer expects exponential outcomes.
- The 2026 State of AI bi-annual report by ICONIQ includes results of a survey of over 300 enterprise executives on where AI is adding real value and what tools they use
- State of the markets report H1 2026 by Silicon Valley Bank – there is no perfect revenue number to raise any round. Rounds will be completed for companies with very different revenues at time of raise.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The Israeli AI Infrastructure landscape published by TLV Partners was added to my 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe. (source) Shoutout to Remagine Ventures portfolio company TroupAI (stealth).
We’re just getting started. Israel is the world leader in Unicorns per GDP. While the US and China have the highest total number of unicorns, adjusting for Gross Domestic Product reveals a different picture. Israel takes the top spot with 11 unicorns per $100B GDP, followed closely by Singapore (10). Israel’s leadership is driven by the historic ‘Yozma’ initiative. By using public funds to de-risk foreign investment, the government catalyzed the creation of a private VC market. (source: Ilya Strebulaev)
According to IVC Data and Insights, an estimated 750 to 800 new companies were established in 2025, up from around 700 in 2024. This marks a turning point after more than a decade of long-term decline in the number of new startups launched each year. (source)
Reality: top seed valuations have not grown as fast as top seed exits.
2015 seed: pay $10M, exit at $20B in 2025.
2025 seed: pay $35M, exit at $80B in 2035
AI is moving FAST. Look at the progress from gemini 3 deepthink we’re starting to see the types of leaps we associated with huge pre trains on a 3 year timeline every month. (source)
The series A crunch is still here. According to data by Carta covering 12,249 seed rounds raised from Q1 2018 thru Q3 2025, only 30% of startups managed to raise a series A two years after closing a seed since Q3 2021 (read: for 70% of startups, a 2 year runway for seed is not enough to secure a series A). For example: within the Q4 2019 cohort of seed rounds, 32.6% had made it to Series A after 2 years. (source)
What are the tools that enterprise is willing to pay for in AI? this is based on survey results of 300 execustive (CEO/Head of AI/Eng/Product/CRO/CFO) at software companies actually shipping AI & asked which tools are really being used in production. (source in the links section and my highlights are here). 70% of companies are building vertical AI applications
European VC hits post-2021 high as funding +5% YoY to €66B on AI, defence deals +35% YoY in AI-related deals to €23.5B in 2025. (source)
How much ARR do you need to raise a seed round? The answer is $0.0 million…or $3.6 million ? The revenue figures for rounds are a big range – I guess the answer for founders is ‘it depends’ based on data by Silicon Valley Bank and Carta
That’s all for this week. Thanks for your attention. 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.
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