Key takeaways
- Thousands of Israelis abroad are travelling home to vote, demonstrating their commitment to democratic participation.
- Mave, Modelyo, High Lander and Two Delta secured fresh funding across cybersecurity, autonomous aviation and AI infrastructure.
- Elementary Data and HexAI announced acquisitions, while Vintage raised $920 million across two funds.
- Anthropic’s IPO preparations and multibillion-dollar AI rounds are testing investor appetite alongside rising infrastructure costs.
- Meta’s privacy penalty and the PHP and Railway security incidents underscore the importance of trust and security.
It’s #FIRGUN time!
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Firgun (pronounced “feer-goon”) means taking genuine, unselfish joy in someone else’s success. Every week since March 2020, this newsletter has celebrated the founders, teams and investors moving our community forward. If someone forwarded this to you, you can find previous editions on VC Cafe.
Israel goes to the polls on Tuesday, October 27, and thousands of Israelis living abroad (me included) are travelling home just to vote. Organisers are working to mobilise tens of thousands, with people taking time off work, arranging childcare and spending their own money to make their voices heard. Whatever your politics, that commitment deserves recognition. Democracy depends on people showing up. My hope is that the next government rebuilds trust, protects democratic institutions and gives people the confidence to build their companies, careers and families in Israel as I mentioned to the Jewish News this week.
In the wider tech world, all eyes were on Anthropic as reporting on its draft IPO prospectus revealed $16.3 billion in first-half revenue and an $80.7 billion net loss, largely driven by non-cash financing charges, alongside more than $500 billion in cloud and infrastructure commitments over the next decade. A potential November listing could become a defining test of investor appetite for AI, although its timing and valuation remain unsettled. Anthropic also launched Claude Duet, a proactive personal agent for professionals and small businesses that can prepare briefings, organise meetings and carry on working while users are away. OpenAI, meanwhile, is reportedly nearing a raise of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, with Coatue and UAE investors leading, while announcing that its models and Codex workflows are coming to Google Cloud. It also expanded ChatGPT Ads to 26 additional countries, saying more than 100,000 advertisers have used the platform. In China, DeepSeek is wrapping up a roughly $15 billion funding round, double its original target. The mega-rounds continued elsewhere: Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion at a $6.2 billion valuation, Flapping Airplanes announced a $1 billion Series A at a reported $6 billion valuation, and Legora secured $550 million at an $8.8 billion valuation. The infrastructure race remains relentless: NVIDIA introduced Minerva to help operators monitor AI factories, while Meta put its annual capital expenditure outlook at $135–145 billion. Yet AI spending concerns are delaying other IPOs, making the gap between technological ambition and financial returns harder to ignore. Tesla and SpaceX formed special committees to explore a potential merger, although no deal has been agreed, and Meta was ordered to pay a $25 billion privacy penalty, which it plans to appeal. Finally, critical PHP vulnerabilities prompted urgent patching warnings, while Railway disclosed a possible exposure of customer secrets and urged users to rotate credentials.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Amnon Shashua and team doubleAI on coming out of stealth with $220M in funding to pare the cost of compute by a reported 67%!
- Huge congratulations to Raziel Oren, Guy Eshel and team Mave on announcing $34 million in total funding, including a $28 million Series A and previously undisclosed seed round, to buildAI agents that investigate security alerts across companies’ existing tools and help security teams respond more effectively!
- Mazal tov to Benny Meir and team Modelyo on coming out of stealth with $17 million in seed funding to develop confidential cloud technology to help organisations use AI and cloud infrastructure while retaining control over sensitive data, including while it is being processed!
- Kol hakavod to Alon Abelson and team High Lander on securing an additional $16 million, bringing total funding to $30 million to build a drone fleet and low-altitude air traffic software!
- Way to go Dvir Zeltzer, Eli David, Ph.D. and team Two Delta on reported seed funding of tens of millions of dollars to develop technology that accelerates AI inference and improves computing efficiency!
EXITS
- Huge congratulations to Maayan Salom, Or Avidov and team Elementary on your acquisition by Boomi, in a deal reported at approximately $40–45 million in cash and stock to help companies monitor the quality and reliability of the data behind business workflows and AI agents!
- Mazal tov to Elon Gliksberg and team HexAI on your acquisition by Hex-Rays, in a deal reported at $30–35 million! Founded just last year, the six-person startup built an operating system for AI agents conducting security research without raising outside capital.
- Kudos Yoni Cohen and Eylon Zefania on the acquisition of Vizby AI by Swap for an undisclosed sum and in less than a year for your GEO platform for commerce!
NEW FUNDS
- Congratulations to Abe Finkelstein, Asaf Horesh and team Vintage Investment Partners on raising $920 million across a $580 million fund of funds and a $340 million secondary fund!
- Is it too early to congratulate Esther Barak Landes and Adi Ostry Matalon on the launch of ALMA Ventures, a new $40M early stage fund focused on mental health and longevity in partnership with Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer?
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE / REMAGINE VENTURES
- Venture Capital in the Age of Consensus – My take on capital concentration, extraordinary pre-product valuations and why smaller funds still have an important role in backing overlooked opportunities.
- Who Pays for the AI Boom? – AI can deliver enormous value while investors struggle to earn a return. A look at the assumptions behind the spending.
- The Rise of the Inference Economy – The companies turning models into usable services, and why their economics differ from simply renting out GPUs.
- I launched Israel VC Jobs board to help people find jobs at venture-backed Israeli startups. It already links to 2083 open jobs. Check it out here and find out more about the why IsraelVC Jobs here.
ISRAEL
- The Q3 2026 tech review report by IVC Data and Insights
- Investors turn to Israel’s battle-tested defense-tech start-ups as funding hits record $40.8b – Investments are pouring into military and dual-use technologies at unprecedented levels due to rising military spending and demand for autonomous systems and deployable battlefield technologies.
- IDF establishes Space Division as Israel eyes warfare beyond Earth – The new unit will bring together military projects involving orbital sensors and space-warfare technologies. The move formalises the IDF’s growing focus on space, while leaving open how quickly its longer-term ambitions for military operations beyond Earth can be realised.
- Nvidia unveils Israel-developed AI agent protection architecture – CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a new security architecture at the GTC conference in Berlin, which has an Israeli development core.
GLOBAL
- The View from Here – Larry David’s modest proposals for the Democratic Socialists of America. Witty and light view on the ‘bagel people’ :-)
- On risk – a candid view by Jake Gibson on how warped venture is today, where VCs and founders are optimising for what the next round VCs are looking for. Micah Rosenbloom warns that the same trend didn’t end well in the dot com bubble.
- Also on the state of ventures (and in the spirit of this will not end well) Bloomberg reports that investors are paying different prices for the same startup, often at the same round. AI fomo is driving investors to do silly things to get into ‘hot’ deals.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The Q3 2026 IVC report highlights (source) – back to market growth, but concentration continues
The inference ecosystem landscape – My updated map of the companies helping turn AI models into useful, deployable services.
What does good growth look like in 2026 – the Pacesetter index by ICONIQ (source)
Greenfield Disruptors 60 by Greenfield Partners (see the full ranking)
Where do AI deployment firms focus by Elaia (source)
The periodic table of business functions by Idealab.ai – a collection of 1.2 million free ideas by Bill Gross (source)
Made me chuckle ;-)
That’s all for this week. Behind every announcement are people who spent months or years building, recruiting, selling and working through setbacks. Give them a little firgun. A thoughtful message, an introduction or a public word of encouragement can go a long way.
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 23 2026 - October 23, 2026
- Venture Capital in the age of Consensus - October 21, 2026
- Who pays for the AI boom? - October 20, 2026
