It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of Firgun was published on LinkedIn. Subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.
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
Dancing erupted in the “hostage square” near the Tel Aviv museum yesterday when it became clear that ALL Israeli hostages will be coming home on Monday. For the first time in 734 days, their families can breathe with a tiny sigh of relief. Credit to President Trump and the mediators who made this happen. While the price feels unbearable, bringing the hostages home and removing H**as from power is the first step needed for this nation to heal and start re-building. This was Israel’s longest war and Oct 7 was Israel’s largest massacre of Jews since the holocaust. May their memories be a blessing. Hopefully this is the last time that I need to say #BRINGTHEMHOME.
The Israeli stock market closed yesterday at an all time high and the Shekel continued to strengthen against the dollar. Interestingly, the El Al stock dropped 7.5% as the expectation is that foreign airlines will resume regular services, bringing prices down for consumers. I truly hope that we are looking at a new Middle East, full of opportunity. Israeli startups raised over $11.9 billion in 2025 so far. Now is the time to get in on that future growth and I’m proud to play a part with Remagine Ventures!
In the wider tech world, OpenAI held their DevDays conference this week and introduced Apps in ChatGPT and a new app SDK as well Agent Builder, a direct competitor to n8n (which announced a $180M series C and new unicorn status this week). Sora, the new mobile app for AI generated short form AI videos, continued to climb to #1 in the US app store, hitting 1M downloads in 5 days. MrBeast said that AI could threaten creators livelihoods. US startup Reflection AI raised $2 billion series A (at $8 billion valuation, a 15x jump in 7 months) to become the US open-source intelligence lab, rivalling China’s Deepseek. China put curbs on rare earth exports, in a move that will create challenges for Chip manufacturing. Google announced the launch of Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model for UI-interacting agents. Google DeepMind unveiled Codemender, to patch vulnerabilities in real time. Apple shelved Vision Air, now focusing on two smart?glasses lines.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Don’t uproot what has been planted
Naomi Shemer, “Al Kol Ele”, For All These Things
So our bounty may increase
Let our dearest wish be granted:
Bring us peace, oh bring us peace.
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
Given the Sukkot holiday this week, there have been fewer announcements than normal, but nevertheless:
- Congratulations Romi Gubes and team Sensi.AI on securing a $45M series C to bring AI into the heart of senior care!
- Way to go Rafael Broshi and team Notch on raising a $7M seed round to slash the cost of enterprise support with AI Agents!
- Well done Dan Even and team Asterix Foods on securing $4.2M in funding to deliver bioactive proteins at a fraction of precision fermentation’s cost
EXITS
- Congrats Doron Naim and team DevOcean on the $30M acquisition by Pentera!
- Not all exits are happy, but kudos Elad Sity and team NeuroBlade for the acqui-hire of your engineering team by Amazon Web Services (AWS) / Annapurna Labs for an undisclosed sum.
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES
- The AI bubble is real, but so is the opportunity – more investment than ever is flowing into AI companies, but a lot of the funding (and revenue) is concentrated in few companies.
- Join the r/startuplandscapes community on Reddit, Inc.! New maps added this week including LLMOps, Physical AI agents, startup AI spending
ISRAEL
- Israeli startups raised over $900M in September alone by Globes
- Israeli tech sees record $71 billion in exits in the first nine months of 2025
GLOBAL
- State of AI report 2025 by Air Street Capital – 44% of U.S. businesses now pay for AI tools, up from just 5% in 2023, according to Ramp statistics
- Why America Builds AI Girlfriends and China Makes AI Boyfriends
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The cover of this week’s The Economist
A historic deal reached, and President Trump did what no other US president succeeded in doing before. If you ask me, he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
Global VC funding +38% YoY to $97B in Q3 (source)
But the funding is more concentrated than ever: 33% of Q3 venture funding went to 18 companies with $500M+ rounds, well above pre-Q4 2024 norms. and ~46% of total Q3 funding went to AI, with 29% going to Anthropic alone. (source)
OpenAI has signed $1T in compute deals with AMD, NVIDIA, and others this year to power AI models (source)
The robotics startup landscape by Insight Partners: vertical Robotics-as-a-Service (vRaaS), physical AI agents (source)
OpenAI continues to dominate amongst GenAI models (Gemini also growing fast though from a low base)
That’s all for this week, thanks for tuning in. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community. Keep on creating!
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.
