A Rosh Hashanah edition of #FIRGUN celebrating Israeli startup funding and exits, alongside new AI models, mega-rounds and major acquisitions around the world. We also mark 25 years since September 11, holding remembrance alongside hope for a sweeter, more peaceful year.
AI assistants are competing to manage our inboxes, coordinate our teams and complete work on our behalf. From Instinct and Town to OpenClaw and Israel’s NanoClaw, the race raises a critical question: who can turn dependable delegation into a defensible business?
Stripe’s roughly $8 billion agreement to acquire OpenRouter connects model routing with billing and payments. Its shareholder letter reveals a broader ambition to serve an economy of AI agents, with implications for startup margins, pricing, distribution and platform dependence.
Israeli startups announced more than $1.4 billion in funding this week, led by Wonderful, Upwind, HiBob and Lyte. The latest #FIRGUN also covers major exits, a new $250 million Israeli fund and the biggest developments across global technology and AI.
Wonderful’s $5 billion valuation is not simply a bet on AI agents. It is a bet that the company can turn its deployment advantage into the independent operational layer that makes enterprise AI governed, measurable and reliable.
Israel is exceptionally good at producing founders and technology, but America remains the dominant platform for turning startups into global companies. With 70% of Israeli-founded unicorns built in the US, the data points towards a dual-centre model: Israeli R&D combined with American headquarters, customers, capital and commercial leadership.
Not every AI task needs the largest or most expensive model. Model routing promises to match each request with the right model based on accuracy, cost, speed and privacy, but it also introduces a new control point with its own security risks, commercial conflicts and potential for lock-in.
Alice raised $140 million as AI security emerged as this week’s central theme, while Israeli companies pursued acquisitions across payments, agritech and cybersecurity. Globally, Nvidia’s reported $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal highlighted the accelerating consolidation of the AI stack.
For Israeli startups, entering the US is not simply about opening an office. It requires a focused commercial beachhead, sustained founder involvement, the right first US hire and a repeatable land-and-expand motion. This practical playbook covers the decisions that matter most, from New York versus Silicon Valley to hiring, culture, customer acquisition and investor expectations.
After years of limited venture activity, Israeli EdTech may be entering a new chapter. The founders of Moovit and Outbrain are joining a growing group of entrepreneurs using AI to reimagine tutoring, personalised learning, reading and what students can create.
Israeli tech funding remained quiet, but exits heated up with more than $670 million in announced acquisitions. Globally, capital continued to pour into AI infrastructure, chips, video and physical AI as concerns around governance and agent security intensified.
AI may live in the cloud, but the cloud is running out of places to live. As power, water, land and regulation constrain traditional data centres, compute is moving into containers, converted warehouses, power stations, ships and even orbit.
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