Over the past three and a half years, I’ve shared the #Firgun newsletter every Friday. The format went through a number of iterations. It started as a Linkedin post (which kept running out of space), moved into Mailchimp (which disappointed for its cost and lack of discovery) and is now a LinkedIn newsletter. This is the first time I’m publishing it on to VC Cafe. You can subscribe here to get the next edition straight to your inbox.
It’s #Firgun time.
The word “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ 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”. Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for someone else’s accomplishments, good fortune, or well-being. More about Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
It may feel futile to write week after week that we have to bring the Israeli hostages home. Maybe it is, but I personally feel that it’s important to not forget the fact that there are still live Israeli there, held against their will, many taken from their homes over 9 months ago. That’s why I also chose the quote of the week. #BRINGTHEMHOME.
Despite the war in Israel over the past 9 months, both the rate of capital raising and exits of Israeli cyber startups in the first half of 2024 were the highest since 2021. $2.9 billion raised between Jan. and mid-June + 12 exits. Apart from Cyber, the Israeli tech ecosystem has plenty of other reasons to be optimistic. We listed a few in the latest Remagine Ventures newsletter that went out this week (sign up here).
In the broader tech sector, you have to see SpaceX Falcon Heavy land back on earth to understand how far space tech advanced, Etched is trying to take on NVIDIA with the first chip designed for transformers (20x faster than H100s), Anthropic Claude Sonnet 3.5 becomes the clear LLM leader (for now), the Recording Industry Association of America® (RIAA) and 3 record labels are suing Suno and Udio for copyright infringement, Figma announced a bunch of new AI features, and Character.AI now lets you talk to AI bots like Einstein or AI Elon musk over the phone.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“When you start getting tired of saying it, that’s when other people are just starting to hear it”
Jeff Weiner
Quote attributed to Jeff Weiner, former CEO and now Chairman of LinkedIn (source)
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Big congrats Lior Susan and team Bright Machines on the impressive $126M series C to build the AI backbone for manufacturing!
- Well done Roy Cohen and team Fetcherr on your $90M series B to leverage AI for your dynamic airfare pricing engine!
- Impressive news Tal Zaks and team Exsilio Therapeutics and congrats on your $82m in Series A funding for genomic editing medicines!
- Awesome milestone Romi Gubes and team Sensi.AI on your $31M series B for your elderly health monitoring platform. May the memory of Yuval Halivni (z”l) be a blessing.
- Way to go Inna Tokarev Sela and team illumex on your $13M series A for your AI data readiness platform!!
- Kudos Keren Leshem and team OCON Therapeutics on securing a $10M seed round for your revolutionary drug delivery technology for women!
- Great stuff Roee Barak and team Upword on securing a $3M pre-seed round for your AI powered research co-pilot!
EXITS
- Huge congrats Alon Lev and team Qwak on the $230 Million acquisition by JFrog! Sounds like a great result all around.
NEW FUNDS
- Congratulations Jonathan Medved and OurCrowd on the establishment of a new $80 Million Israel-Korea Fund for DeepTech Investments together with the Korean government and NH Bank
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- Reasons to be optimistic about Israeli tech – from the latest Remagine Ventures newsletter
- Israel ranks third for leading GenAI companies worldwide
- Congrats to the five Israeli startups who have been selected for the prestigious NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration accelerator program. This includes Omnidrill, Inhayle, 4NOValert, Tedence Space and OASIX.
Global:
- From VC Cafe : consumer startups still got Mojo!
- Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024 by World Economic Forum
- AI’s $200B question has turned into AI’s $600B question by David Cahn
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
We remember the important words and legacy of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as we combat the ever-growing virus of antisemitism.
Enterprises are less concerned about the use of generative AI but penetration is still low (study by Bain & Company) source
The next big challenge for the AI industry to solve will be energy – we’re consuming a lot of it
GenAI investment will not let up. Q2 2024 is already a record quarter for venture capital investment in Generative AI startups, with the quarter not yet closed. GenAI companies have raised $14.3B since April, more than all Energy startups have raised in 2024. Data by Dealroom.co (source)
VC funding for AI visual media surges nearly 90% (source)
Voice AI market map by Bessemer Venture Partners (source)
The Jensen Huang mind map for NVIDIA product innovation (by ? Jason Shen ) source
Where do Millionaires go? Dubai, Singapore and Miami are increasingly popular destinations
Where are all the exits? the M&A boom is yet to materialise according to data by Carta
Finally, this is out of context, but also applies to many situations
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading.
There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community. Keep on creating!
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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