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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
The biggest moment of the past week was no doubt Trump’s shooting. Regardless of your political stance, it’s scary to think how close someone got to hitting a presidential candidate in the largest democracy in the world, and consider the series of events that led to that moment. Pictures of female Israeli hostages emerged this week, and it’s hard not to think about their nightmare existence for the past 9 months and that of their families. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME Now.
The tech ecosystem is crucial for Israel’s economy. It is responsible for 40% of GDP growth and 53% of exports over the past 5 years. According to a new report by Startup Nation Central, the Israeli tech ecosystem defied the odds in H1 2024. It recorded a 31% increase in funding compared to the same period last year, with funding reaching $5.1 billion across 322 rounds and exits up 70% compared to H2 2023. Foreign investors doubled down on Israel, participating in 93% of the rounds. A big sign of that confidence is Google‘s rumoured acquisition of Wiz for a record $23 billion. Israel’s biggest exit and Google’s largest acquisition ever. Yet another example on how Israeli tech delivers #NOMATTERWHAT.
In the wider tech world, today millions of Windows based computers got the blue error screen, affecting banks, airlines, hospitals etc, due to a faulty update from CrowdStrike. OpenAI is talking to chip designers and announced it will work on a ‘search product’, NVIDIA and Mistral AI released Nemo, a new powerful open-source model, Amazon made a record $14.2 billion in revenue for ‘Prime Day’ is rolling out ‘Rufus’ generative AI assistant to all U.S. customers and Microsoft new AI system ‘SpreadsheetLLM’ unlocks insights from spreadsheets. Silicon valley is splitting into camps, with some publicly supporting Trump, including Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen.
Finally, there’s a lot we can learn from Gareth Southgate, England’s national team coach who stepped down this week after losing to Spain in the Euro 2024 finals. He led a turnaround for over a decade, he brought unity and set the ethos that the team is more important than the individuals – something our political leaders can still internalise. Thank you Gareth!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We can’t solve problems by using the kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein
NEW INVESTMENT ROUNDS
- Congratulations David H. and team CytoReason on raising $80M series F to further develop your computational disease models for drug discovery!
- Well done Oded Nagel and team CTERA on securing $80M series E for your hybrid cloud data management platform!
- Kudos Yuval Golan and team Waltz on your $12.5M series A to help foreign investors purchase property in the US with more ease!
- Good job Daniel Levitats and team Nanopass Technologies Ltd. on raising $6M in funding for your intradermal delivery solutions!
- Way to go Moshe Barel and team AccuLine on raising a $4.2M seed round to detect coronary disease using ML!
EXITS
- Big congrats Eyal Baror and team Innovalve Bio Medical Ltd. on the $300M exit to Edwards Lifesciences for your innovative heart valve technology developed by Sheba Medical Center.
- Well done Eran Sher and team SeaLights on the $150M acquisition by Tricentis for your software quality intelligence platform!
- Kudos Shaked Izrael and team LoudNClear on your acquisition by Forwrd.ai for an undisclosed sum!
APPOINTMENTS
- Kudos Lior Akavia on joining Viola Ventures as venture partner!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- The H1 2024 report by Startup Nation Central
- Israeli tech defies the odds in 2024 by me on VC Cafe
- Meta revamps hate speech policy and understands that when people say ‘Zionists’ they mean ‘Jews’
Global:
- State of enterprise tech 2024 report by Insight Partners
- State of the union tech keynote by Coatue
- Consumer trends report H1 2024 by The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Investors are set to make a lot of money from the record acquisition of Wiz but no one deserves more kudos than Gili Raanan and Cyberstarts who seeded the company and his stake is worth $900M
Israel’s H1 2024 tech report snapshot
Defence tech is on the rise worldwide and Israel can be a significant player – check out the first landscape (source) it was added to my 2024 Landscape collection on VC Cafe
An updated H1 2024 Israeli maritime tech landscape by theDOCK lists over 100 startups. it was added to my 2024 Landscape collection on VC Cafe
Investments in AI startups more than doubled in Q2 2024
Even before the rumoured Wiz acquisition for $23 billion, there were over 14 $100+ cyber acquisitions over the past year globally. Astonishingly, 13 of them were Israeli startups (I believe the numbers have since gone up). Almost all sub $5M ARR according to Bessemer Venture Partners.
Imagine if you had a superhuman assistant in your job and for your personal tasks… (source)
How close did the bullet get? (crazy visualisation)
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1813327557582020947
That’s all for this week, thanks 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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