Key takeaways
- Israel’s startups raised $2.77B in September, but five companies captured 69% of the capital.
- Reco’s $55M round and Rig Security’s $12M seed highlight investor demand for securing AI agents.
- Nebius’s reported $100M–$150M acquisition of Inferize underscores the strategic value of faster, more efficient AI inference.
- OpenAI’s DevDay launches signal a shift from standalone AI models toward agents that execute complete workflows.
It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of this newsletter was emailed to 8,400 people on Linkedin.
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, the strongest example of firgun came from outside tech. On Wednesday, September 30, Flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverted to Saudi Arabia after an attack in the cockpit that Israeli officials described as an attempted hijacking and terror attack. According to reporting, the injured Indian captain, Smit Machchhar, fought back and opened the cockpit door, allowing Israeli passengers to help overpower the attacker. Yaniv Hayoun helped intervene at the controls, Dr. Shota Musaev treated the wounded captain, and additional pilots aboard took over and landed safely in Tabuk. A huge kol hakavod to the captain, crew and passengers whose courage helped avert a catastrophe, and wishing the injured captain a full recovery. As we approach the third anniversary of October 7, there is much to remember, and much to be grateful for in the people who step forward to protect others.
Israeli startups raised $13.2 billion in the first 9 months of 2026. Given the current pace of investments, the total amount for the year is likely to surpass the $15.6 billion invested in 2025. The headline is encouraging, but the concentration matters: mega rounds in a small number of startups does not automatically translate into an easier fundraising environment for everyone else.
In the wider tech world, It was a heavy week at the frontier. Google unveiled Gemini 4 Argon on Sept 30, topping a third-party model index and claiming it can autonomously find and patch vulnerabilities, though access is limited for now to cyber partners through its Fairwind program, while OpenAI used DevDay to launch always-on “Dots” agents with their own cloud computers, a cheaper GPT-6.1 Sol and a $500/month Pro tier, even as it reportedly shelved GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns, drew fire over agents that scraped 55 government and corporate sites, and was reported to be seeking at least $30B at a $1.4T valuation as its IPO slips to 2027. Anthropic had a big week on the capital side: a confidential draft IPO prospectus reported by Reuters points to a $2T+ valuation target and up to $100B raised, alongside news that Broadcom will lend up to $42B to finance its TPU compute. @Microsoft rolled out its Copilot “super app” with Home, Code and Autopilot, built mainly on Anthropic and OpenAI models, and Meta set up a new Enterprise AI Platform unit under former MongoDB CEO CJ Desai. NVIDIA and partners also pushed an Open Agent Safety Platform to stop rogue agents, with Anthropic publicly on board. In China, DeepSeek open-sourced an MIT-licensed agent framework plus tooling for Huawei Ascend chips, ByteDance was reported to control about a fifth of China’s operating data-centre capacity, and the Moonshot distillation story (16,000 requests aimed at OpenAI’s reasoning traces) kept the US-China model race in the headlines. On the money side, AMD agreed to buy Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2B in stock (she becomes AMD chief scientist), Instinct raised $1B at a $10B valuation, General Intuition n raised $220M at $6.2B, EliseAI raised $350M at $4B, Armadin (Kevin Mandia’s autonomous red-team startup) raised $255.5M at $2.5B+, ElevenLabs hit $22B in a $300M employee tender, and Kalshi is reportedly closing in on $1B at a $40B valuation.
Happy Simchat Torah to everyone celebrating. 3 years ago was perhaps the darkest day in Israel’s history, and I truly hope we can only learn, heal and improve from the painful memories of October seven.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Power works by division, influence by multiplication. Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have. Influence is a non-zero-sum game: the more you share, the more you have.”
Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Huge congratulations to Ofer Klein and the Reco team on announcing $55 million in additional funding to help enterprises manage the risks of putting agents to work!
- Mazal tov to Nir Yaron and team HyperGuest t on raising $25 million to connect hotels with travel companies, technology providers and AI agents, processing over $1 billion in transactions!
- Kudos to Mickey Haslavsky and team enso team on a $15 million Series A to help businesses automate growth with AI agents!
- Kol hakavod to Guy Kozliner and team Rig Security on emerging from stealth with a $12 million seed round to distinguish agents’ actions from those of the humans whose identities they use, and enforce security policies at runtime!
EXITS
- Way to go Guy Bortnikov, Lior Gorbonos and the Inferize team on their acquisition by Nebius for an estimated $115 million, only 10 months after founding and while still in stealth!
- Firgun to Eyal Lifshitz and the Bluevine team on agreeing to join Valley Bank in a transaction valued at approximately $340 million to offer their digital banking platform serving approximately 175,000 active small-business customers!
APPOINTMENTS
- A special firgun to Noa Argamani on joining Vine Ventures. After surviving 246 days in Hamas captivity, she is beginning a new chapter supporting Israeli entrepreneurs and helping them connect with opportunities in the US. Wishing her every success.
- Kudos Motti Hadas for joining OpenAI as the GTM lead for Israel!
NEW FUNDS
- Well done Lital Leshem, Lee Moser and the Protego Ventures team on the final close of your $125 million first fund focused on Israeli defence-tech !
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES/ ISRAEL VC
- What it takes to raise a pre-seed, seed and Series A in 2026. My latest post brings together round benchmarks and the evidence investors look for at each stage. The practical question: what will this round allow you to prove before you need to raise again?
- Your customers don’t care which AI model you use. Better models can improve everyone’s product at once. I explore how distribution, workflow expertise and customer relationships can turn that shared technical progress into an advantage for your company.
- There are 1,781 Israeli founders in stealth – what do they have in common? My latest Israel VC infographic
ISRAEL
- Unprecedented: Extraordinary heroism and near-miraculous circumstances avert an airplane catastrophe – There appears to be no prior instance of passengers thwarting a pilot’s attempt to crash a commercial airliner
- $13.2 billion in nine months: Inside Israel’s AI-fueled funding surge – Three quarters of funding data suggest 2026 will comfortably exceed 2025’s total of $15.6 billion.
- Why it’s easier to build but harder to raise, and why learning speed now matters more to early-stage investors. Investor commentary, not data.
GLOBAL
- 100 charts on the state of markets by Andreessen Horowitz
- Check out this video of AI agents doing full video calls – by Tavus
- all the ways AI can destroy humanity – don’t read this before bed
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Who are the previous employers of US unicorn founders? Ilya Strebulaev found that the IDF is one of the things 62 of them had in common in “the making of a unicorn founder“
Startups solving for when AI goes rogue – it turns out that there are several Israeli startups operating in this category: Zenity, Irregular, Noma Security… (chart by CB Insights)
What it takes to raise pre-seed, seed and series A in 2026 from my VC Cafe post on fundraising benchmarks (source)
Israeli founders in stealth infographic created by me for Israel VC (source)
AI Native services market map by Kadan Capital (source)
AI is changing how expertise gets built. As routine tasks are increasingly supported by AI, judgment, creativity, and resilience become more important, making coaching and real-world experience critical parts of how organizations develop talent. Source: McKinsey & Company
The AI40 recognizes the top private companies shaping the future of applied AI, from foundational infrastructure to full-stack intelligent applications – by Madrona
Another reason it will be hard to slow down AI development: AI must earn $6Trillion a year by 2031 to pay for its buildout
Now there’s been a happy ending, we can enjoy some comic relief about the FlyDubai hijacking. Here are some of my favourite memes:
Statistically he’s right…
Translation: “Netflix should get a subscription to Israel”
I’m happy to hear that the organisers took care of this swiftly. The event was de-listed and organiser removed. There’s no place for antisemitism in tech #SFTECHWEEK (source)
That’s all for this week, thank you for reading. 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 – October 2 2026 - October 4, 2026
- What it takes to raise a pre-seed, seed and Series A in 2026 - October 1, 2026
- Your customers don’t care which AI model you use - September 28, 2026
