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.
This week in Israel, the public debate was dominated by deep skepticism around the newly signed U.S.-Iran 14-point memorandum of understanding, which critics argue defers the hard questions on nuclear enrichment, ballistic missiles and Iran’s regional proxies, while exposing visible friction between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. Yet against the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, security pressures and market volatility, Israel’s tech engine continued to show resilience: high-tech reportedly accounted for roughly half of the country’s economic growth over the past year, Tel Aviv held its position as the world’s fourth-largest startup ecosystem, and Dream’s $260M round at a $3B valuation underscored how tightly AI, cybersecurity and national security are now intertwined.
In the wider tech world, the defining story was Anthropic being forced to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 outside the U.S. after a sudden U.S. national-security export-control directive, turning AI sovereignty from policy talk into platform risk; SpaceX is reportedly buying Anysphere / Cursor for $60 billion… OpenAI hired former Google / Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer to lead architecture research ahead of its IPO; Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 emerged as a new open-weights model to watch; Midjourney surprised the market with its first hardware product, an ultrasound-based full-body scanner which will roll out as a network of Spas; Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched new AI agent tools while Microsoft’s Azure reportedly continued benefiting from ByteDance’s $1B+ annual AI spend; Databricks said annualised revenue hit $6.9B, up more than 80%, while AI-agent usage pressures margins; Odyssey raised $310M for Hollywood-grade world models with Amazon and AWS among the backers; CuspAI reportedly raised $400M for AI materials discover. General Intuition was reportedly raising $300M from Jeff Bezos and others; Accenture pushed deeper into cyber with a $4.18B OT-security package including Dragos, runZero and NetRise;; Fox Corporation reportedly agreed to acquire Roku for $22B; Snap Inc. unveiled new Specs AR glasses and the stock took a 20% hit; Waymo recalled nearly 4,000 robotaxis after construction-zone incidents; Google rolled out Android 17 and Gemini-powered Pixel updates; France announced €655M in AI investments and a Mistral-powered public-services chatbot; Finally, PayPal Ventures is reportedly shutting down after $850M in investments.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The purpose of knowledge is not knowledge itself, but what it leads us to do.” — The Lubavitcher Rebbe
NEW FUNDING DEALS
- Congratulations Shalev Hulio and team Dream on your $260M series C at a $3 billion valuation to addresses national cyber systems, governments and national infrastructure companies – nuclear reactors, gas, oil, water and electricity threats.
- Well done Zohar Alon and team NewCore on coming out of stealth with a $50M series A (as well as a previously undisclosed $16M seed round) to create the identity management system for the new era!
- Way to go Itai Hirsch and team Turnout on your $35M series A for your AI-powered consumer advocacy service!
- Kudos David Priev and team Limitless Labs on your $20M series A to scale your Agentic Physical AI for precision manufacturing!
- Mabruk Shahaf G. and team Mars Security on coming out of stealth with $8.5M seed funding raised to date for your autonomous threat hunting and detection engineering platform!
- Good stuff Barak Sternberg and team Tenet Security on your $6M seed round for your runtime protection for autonomous systems accessing sensitive data and workflows!
- Big congrats Ben Fuxbruner and team Kimba on coming out of stealth with a $5.4M seed round to elevating health and sleep through AI and scent technology!
EXITS
- Well done Rom Carmel ? and team Apono on the acquisition by 1Password for a reported $250M-$300M for your AI-powered, cloud-native Privileged Access Management (PAM) platform that eliminates standing privileges by enforcing Just-in-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough access.
- Congrats Itzik Alvas and team Entro Security on the acquisition by SailPoint for a reported $200M to secure non-human identities, API keys, secrets, and credentials across cloud and on-premises environments!
- Well done Michael Grosman and team NextVision on selling $200M worth of shares for your stabilised camera for drones!
- Way to go Eran Sarouk and team GMT – Advanced Financial Services on the acquisition by Western Union for an estimated $70M to scale your international and local money transferring services!
NEW FUNDS
- Congrats Aviel Ichaï and team monday.com on announcing Monday Ventures a new $200M corporate fund to invest in Israeli AI startups!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES/ ISRAEL VC
- The Power of Small Tickets: When “Getting In” Matters More Than the Model – Ownership matters in venture. But in a market where capital is concentrating into fewer companies, access may matter even more.
- Israeli Startup M&A in H1 2026: Strategic Buyers Are Back – From Apple, Nvidia and Cisco to Mobileye, Fireblocks and Cyera, the first half of 2026 shows that Israeli tech remains high on the global M&A agenda.
- The Modern GTM Stack for AI-Native Startups – Why the winning 2026 motion is a signal system, not a bigger sales machine.
ISRAEL
- Tel Aviv ranked world’s No. 4 startup hub with ecosystem value of $250B – Startup Genome’s annual global report says Tel Aviv’s ecosystem value surged 162% from its previous ranking, driven by AI, big data, analytics, cyber and life sciences, placing the city behind only Silicon Valley, New York and London
- The most promising Israeli startups for 2026 according to Globes – Majestic Labs ai takes the top spot followed by Quantum Art and Port.io.
- Sovereign AI – Israel has a New AI directorate
GLOBAL
- Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact – new report by Pew Research Center
- Future of the Web 2026: AI Brand Visibility Research – based on research from 2,000 decision-makers and consumers.
- Y Combinator’s Winter 2026 batch is its most technically complex cohort yet — here’s what it signals about physical AI
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israel’s energy tech landscape and report was added to my 2026 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe. (source)
The International VCs backing Israeli tech so far in 2026 – by Israel VC (source)
Who are the VC investors backing israeli healthtech, medtech, biotech and medical devices in 2026? Another infographic by Israel VC (source)
Interesting website – the capex investment in AI vs. revenue (source) – so far it hasn’t paid off…
What’s next in wellness? the 2026 scouting report by FITT Group (source)
Pharma should have produced dozens of iconic software companies by now. Instead it’s produced one: Veeva ($3B+ rev). The AI in pharma market map by Sapphire Ventures (source)
Along the same lines MMC Ventures published the AI x Bio market map – where AI is being used for drug discovery (source)
I’ve shared this map by Battery Ventures before, but thought it might be worth re-sharing as the GTM for AI-native startups is changing rapidly. The AI-native GTM stack (source)
More Americans are using chatbots, and some are adopting AI summaries and smart speakers. But views about AI and how fast it’s advancing tilt negative – even for younger adults
The Winter 2026 Y Combinator batch is the most technically complex yet by CB Insights (source – see links section)
That’s all for this week. Thank you for tuning in. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community! Keep on Creating!
Shabbat shalom,
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 – June 19 2026 - June 19, 2026
- The Modern GTM Stack for AI-Native Startups - June 18, 2026
- Israeli Startup M&A in H1 2026: Strategic Buyers Are Back - June 17, 2026
