It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of Firgun was published on LinkedIn. Subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.
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.
Welcome to the 201st edition of #FIRGUN on LinkedIn! I’d like to welcome our new partners, HubSpot For Startups! Get their 90% off offer for Israeli startups below. Israeli startups raised over $1 billion this past week, largely due to a strategic mega round by AppsFlyer, which saw Google, Meta, Unity, and Moloco, mostly through secondary transactions to provide liquidity to early investors.
In the wider tech world, the AI boom moved deeper into chips, memory, energy and policy, with Micron Technology’s blowout quarter highlighting the memory crunch powering the entire stack and lifting AI chip stocks alongside Qualcomm and SK hynix. Meta invested $900M in India’s CRED and tapped founder Kunal Shah to run WhatsApp. Kalshi is reportedly in talks to raise at a $40B valuation. Groq raised $650M to scale its AI inference cloud, and Hadrian was reportedly in talks to raise up to $1B at a valuation of around $7.5B. General Intuition raised $320M at a $2.3B valuation to leverage video game data to train robots, in the latest ‘world model’ development. OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled “Jalapeño,” OpenAI’s first in-house AI inference chip, built in just nine months, while OpenAI was also reported to be leaning toward a 2027 IPO window. Qualcomm unveiled its Dragonfly C1000 data-center CPU roadmap with Meta and Microsoft Azure as early customers. The chip giant agreed to acquire Modular for nearly $4B, and was reportedly in talks to design custom chips for ByteDance . Anthropic accused Alibaba Group-linked operators of running the largest known distillation attack against Claude, citing 28.8M exchanges through roughly 25,000 fake accounts, and separately disclosed that its Mythos model had found vulnerabilities in classified US government systems. Google DeepMind invested $75M in A24 to bring AI into Hollywood filmmaking, while Meta relaunched Facebook Creator Studio as a standalone AI companion app. Apple and Microsoft turned the AI components crunch into consumer pricing headlines, with Apple raising MacBook and iPad prices and Microsoft hiking Xbox prices.The White House advanced quantum-computing and post-quantum-security executive orders and reportedly asked OpenAI to delay a new-model rollout over cyber concerns. Microsoft‘s 20-year power deal with Chevron underscored that AI investing is increasingly about energy, memory and supply chains as much as models. Oracle disclosed it has cut its workforce by 21,000, or 13%, over the past year. A fatal Tesla crash in Katy, Texas, where the driver said Full Self-Driving was engaged, triggered a federal NHTSA investigation and reignited the debate over autonomous and driver-assist safety. RIP Om Malik, a true OG of tech blogging and emeritus partner at True Ventures.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact – not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.” – Shimon Peres
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Oren Kaniel and team AppsFlyer on securing $1.3 billion in new funding (part secondaries and part series E) from strategic backers at $2.7 billion valuation to accelerate AI-powered measurement and attribution tools!
- Kudos Dan Biderman and team Engram on coming out of stealth with an impressive $98M seed round at $600M valuation to enable models to learn and update in real time through online continual learning without forgetting previously acquired information and without requiring costly and time-consuming retraining from scratch!
- Good on you Oded Eran and team Connie Health on raising a $40M series B to leverage AI agents to enable Medicare navigation and enrollment!
- Way to go David Priev and team Limitless Labs on securing a $20M series A to advance physical AI for mechanical infrastructure!
- Well done Omri Yacubovich and team Lama AI on your $12M series A and previously undisclosed $8M in seed funding to help regional banks originate more loans with AI!
EXITS
- Well done Michael Shomer Schwartz and team Obol on the acquisition by Priority Software of your cash flow forecasting startup for a deal estimated in tens of millions of NIS!
- Congrats Sigal Lavid and team Vision.bi on the acquisition of your data and analytics company for an undisclosed sum by Deloitte!
NEW FUNDS
- Well done Lior Prosor and team Deep33 on fully closing an oversubscribed $200M fund I to invest in early stage Israeli deep tech startups!
- Way to go Rotem (Yehuda) Kakon and team Stratos Ventures on announcing a $50M first-closing for a new defence tech fund focused on early stage Israeli startups!
- Congrats Eitan Reisel and team vgames on launching a new $10M fund to invest in indie game developers globally!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ ISRAEL VC/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- Geopolitics Fuels Israel’s $12bn Defence Tech Surge – inside Israel’s defence boom, which is now exporting combat-tested tech to the world
- The Venture Capital Paradox: Why This Market Is So Hard to Read – AI has made company creation faster than ever. But for VCs, allocating capital has become more complicated, more concentrated and more consequential.
- Cheap Prototype, Expensive Maintenance – how AI Is Rewriting the Build vs. Buy Playbook and what it has to do with Jevon’s Paradox…
ISRAEL
- Israel aims to become an AI superpower; price tag could reach tens of billions of dollars – Israel’s push to become an AI superpower includes a 100,000-GPU plan and sovereign infrastructure, amid warnings over cost and execution
- Intel CEO praises Israel’s tech sector: “Very disruptive and innovative.” Lip-Bu Tan says the country’s resilience and entrepreneurial culture continue to shape Intel’s future despite regional turmoil.
- Government Approval of the National AI Program: Israel Will Lead the Next Generation of Innovation and Technology – what are the priorities for the new AI Directorate in Israel
GLOBAL
- The state of the AI economy – in depth report on wether the revenues justify the expense, by Azeem Azhar
- Masayoshi Son’s new Softbank slide deck – and the goose laying golden eggs
- Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley – Years of frothy valuations have created a nightmare – by The Economist
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Followers of Israel VC have been enjoying almost daily infographics on the Israeli tech ecosystem. Here are this week’s picks!
Who is backing Israeli fintech in 2025-2026? (source) – see the full directory at israelvc.com
Corporates are writing checks into Israeli startups too, not just VCs. We mapped every CVC and strategic corporate investor backing Israeli tech in 2026 so far (source)
The Agentic commerce landscape by Activant Capital (source)
50 startups transforming industries with physical AI by Bessemer Venture Partners (source)
How AI is rebuilding America’s primary care system by Insight Partners (source)
The Insurance AI landscape by ICONIQ – which companies will matter in 10 years (source)
The rise of the neo-lab – an AI model developer market map by Radical Ventures (source)
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 – June 26 2026 - June 26, 2026
- Cheap Prototype, Expensive Maintenance - June 25, 2026
- The Venture Capital Paradox: Why This Market Is So Hard to Read - June 24, 2026
