Key takeaways
- Bessemer raised $5.75B across new funds, while Ibex closed an $87M Israeli secondary fund, adding capital for company growth and liquidity for existing shareholders.
- Israel’s Adir and Sling defence-tech funds each target $150M, supported by state guarantees of up to NIS 100M per fund to attract private investors.
- Israeli startups raised approximately $3.6B across 91 rounds in Q3, bringing funding to roughly $11B year to date, according to preliminary IVC–LeumiTech figures.
It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of this newsletter was published on Linkedin to 8,400+ subscribers.
Firgun (pronounced “feer-goon”) is the Hebrew word for taking genuine pleasure in someone else’s success. Every week since March 2020, we’ve made time to celebrate the people building, creating and moving our startup community forward. If this was forwarded to you, you can find previous editions on VC Cafe.
With Sukkot beginning this evening, it’s a fitting week to think about the things we build and the people we invite in. Startups depend on much more than their founders: early employees, customers willing to take a chance, investors, mentors, employees and friends who make an introduction when it matters. Firgun is a small way of recognising that collective effort. Chag sameach to everyone celebrating, and wishing our community health, peace and more reasons for optimism.
Preliminary IVC–LeumiTech figures put Israeli tech funding at $3.6 billion across 91 rounds in Q3, up 53% year on year, and $11 billion year to date. Capital remains concentrated in a relatively small number of companies. As an early-stage investor, I see the challenge as turning that confidence in established winners into opportunities for the next generation.
In the wider tech world, it was a loaded week in AI. OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, extending its latest model family into more affordable tiers, while Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5, claiming performance comparable to Fable 5.1 on most work at around 40% lower running costs than Opus 5. Google made Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar generally available and outlined private, persistent memory for AI assistants. Anthropic also introduced its life-sciences research group and physical laboratory, reporting that Claude helped identify a previously uncharacterised enzyme system with CRISPR-like features. Its function is still being investigated, and human scientists perform the physical experiments. Meta used Connect 2026 to push personal AI into new devices: Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, the pocket-sized Muse Charm, and plans to bring Muse to its AI glasses, alongside new shopping and productivity connectors. It also announced 100-gram Meta VR Glasses priced at $1,299.99, due in spring 2027. In China, Alibaba Group unveiled its Zhenwu V900 AI chip and outlined plans for models with 5–10 trillion parameters, alongside a target of more than 20GW of cloud data-centre capacity by 2032. Meanwhile, @DeepSeek and Kimi (Moonshot AI) reportedly face a Chinese regulatory investigation into possible data transfers to Anthropic’s Claude, adding another trust and sovereignty question to the AI race. Bessemer Venture Partners announced $5.75 billion in new capital, with AI a major focus; Hubble Network raised a $200 million Series C at a $1.6 billion valuation for satellite connectivity using Bluetooth devices; and European AI cloud provider Verda announced $189 million in financing and unicorn status. Snorkel AI also raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation as demand for specialised AI training data grows. And Andreessen Horowitz introduced the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a school for young builders.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
Henry David Thoreau
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Huge congratulations to Dan Amiga, Michael Fey and the Island team on raising a $400 million Series F at a $6.4 billion valuation to expand enterprise security controls for employees and AI agents!
- Mazal tov to Yotam Segev, Tamar Bar-Ilan and the Cyera team on securing a $400 million Series G extension bringing its 2026 fundraising to $1.4 billion, to help enterprises protect sensitive data and govern access by AI agents!
- Kudos to Alex Zilberman and the Chamelio team on raising a $26 million Series A, led to automate contract review and workflows for in-house legal teams!
- Kol hakavod to Davidi Vortman and the UltraSight team on raising a $24 million Series B2 to expand AI-guided cardiac ultrasound workflows across US healthcare systems!
- Congrats Ronen Korman and team Prime Minute on coming out of stealth with a $15M pre-seed funding round to develop precision-guided aerial tech for natural disaster and wildfire response!
EXITS
- Way to go Nadav Orbach and team RealSense on the acquisition by Cognex Corporation for $600M to power computer vision for machines!
- Big congratulations to Omri Limor Saar Ankonina and the Aegis team on joining Upwind Security just nine months after founding the company for a deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
- Well done to Shon Lev-Ran ? , Shir Monether and the Wand Cloud (Acquired by groundcover) team on their acquisition by groundcover! The deal brings automated Kubernetes resource optimisation into groundcover’s monitoring platform. Terms were not disclosed but estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
- Firgun to Itay Nourian and team Insignito Solutions Ltd, Amit Rosenzweig and team Ottopia Defense and CaribouLabs team on getting acquired by Ondas Inc. with $56 million in initial consideration (for all three company) and up to $32 million in additional performance-linked payments! The businesses add drone detection, remote operation, communications and navigation capabilities.
NEW FUNDS
- Firgun to Adam Fisher, Amit Karp and the Bessemer Venture Partners Israel team on raising $5.75 billion, allocating $1.75 billion to seed and early-stage investing and $4 billion to growth, with AI a major focus!
- Mazal tov to Osnat Velingard and the Ibex Investors team on raising $87 million for their second Israel-focused secondary fund, providing liquidity to founders, employees and early investors in growth-stage Israeli companies!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
VC CAFE/ REMAGINE VENTURES/ ISRAEL VC
- AI neo-labs have raised $11.6 billion. What have they shipped? My latest VC Cafe post looks at the capital requirements of frontier AI research and compares public evidence of progress across ten labs. The $11.6 billion counts selected disclosed rounds, rather than cumulative funding. The question for investors is what milestones justify the next round when normal product-market fit signals may still be years away.
- Jev and the missing decision layer for AI Much of what software needs from AI is a choice, a score or a decision. I explore TypeSafe AI’s approach and what it could mean for classification, routing and the economics of agentic applications.
- AI – how worried should we really be? I was quoted by the Jewish News on the warnings about AI’s potential risks and wether development of frontier models will slow down (spoiler alert: it won’t).
ISRAEL
- Israeli tech funding grows, but the recovery remains concentrated. The preliminary IVC–LeumiTech review puts cybersecurity at about 38% of year-to-date funding and enterprise software at nearly 30%. A useful reminder to look beyond the headline total when assessing how accessible capital is to founders.
- Nvidia launches Israel AI lab to develop drugs and drive medical breakthroughs – New team under CTO Michael Kagan will recruit dozens of researchers and work with Sheba, Mount Sinai and global partners on genomics, drug discovery and advanced materials
- A new route for private capital into defense technology. The Adir and Sling programme uses government guarantees to encourage investment in strategically important technologies, including areas that have struggled to attract conventional venture funding.
GLOBAL
- Jumbo Series A rounds are on the rise – by Crunchbase
- The SaaSpocalypse was more like a RenaiSaaS – by Stripe
- VC Quantitative Perspectives: Is Venture’s Odyssey Epic or Myth? by PitchBook
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israeli tech companies raised $3.6 billion in 91 disclosed funding rounds in Q3/2026, according to preliminary data from IVC Data and Insights and LeumiTech‘s Tech Review. The quarterly total was 7% below the H1/2026 quarterly average but 53% higher than in Q3/2025. Cyber continued to lead, with $4.3 billion raised since the beginning of the year, accounting for 38% of total capital. Enterprise software accounted for close to 30% of total funding since the beginning of the year, its highest share since 2020.
Agents might consume 99% of AI tokens as soon as next year… by OpenRouter
Ok, this took me a second to digest: SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI S are valued together at roughly $5.2 trillion – more than the combined value on their first day of trading of all 3,365 (!) tech companies that went public in the US between 1980 and 2025.
This is an interesting graph on AI adoption US vs. EU… data according to Vercel (source)
AI model market map by Radical Ventures (source)
Neo labs have raised over $11.6 billion in funding, but what have they shipped? from my latest post on VC Cafe (source)
Now that the roadblocks have been removed for the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, they are about to become the largest media company in the world, but not necessarily in attention (by Owl & Co)
The structure of an email that helps founders raise capital from VCs. For inspiration…
That’s all for this week. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community! Keep on creating!
Wishing you a peaceful weekend and a joyful Sukkot. Make time to recognise someone else’s progress, share a useful introduction or help a founder take their next step.
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 – September 24 2026 - September 25, 2026
- AI neo-labs have raised $11.6 billion. What have they shipped? - September 23, 2026
- Jev and the missing decision layer for AI - September 22, 2026
