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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
It’s September, the summer is behind us and kids are (finally) back in school. Like many others, I was heartbroken this past week following the recovery of six Israeli hostage bodies who were executed by H*ma* following 11 months in G**a tunnels. They were allegedly closed to being saved. We must #BRINGTHEMALLHOME
August was a slow month in venture investment as globally startups raised $18 billion in August worldwide, a 37% decline MoM and 24% decline year over year. This was also felt in Israeli startups, who reportedly raised only $201M in 7 deals, bringing the total to $938 million in 61 deals in Q3 2024 so far. It’s worth mentioning that the actual number is likely much higher, as rounds get reported long after they actually happened and September already started off with a bang.
OpenAI co-founder and former CTO, Ilya Sutskever and his new SSI Inc. made a big splash this week when they announced their $1 billion “seed” round (at $5 billion valuation) to deliver safe superintelligence. The company plans to have only 2 offices for now – Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, so many AI engineers are polishing their CVs in Israel.
The wider tech world had plenty of news this week: NVIDIA lost $279 billion in value in a single day following the DOJ escalation of an antitrust investigation, Elon Musk’s xAI has brought an AI training cluster named Colossus online, claiming it is the most powerful AI training system in the world (built using 100,000 Nvidia GPUs), OpenAI-backed 1X revealed NEO Beta, a Groundbreaking Humanoid Robot for the Home.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Ofir Ehrlich and team EON (still in stealth) for raising $80M at a rumoured $800M valuation 9 months from inception! Can’t wait to learn more.
- Way to go Nir Laznik and team Sedric.ai on your $18.5M series A to help compliance officers with a holistic view of their customer touch points across multiple channels!
- Kudos Gal Sagie and team Hypernative on your $16M series A for your web3 security solution!
- Awesome milestone Doron Kagan, Maya Gurevich and team Gameplay Galaxy on your $11M seed extension (bringing the total to $24M) to accelerate web3 adoption with competitive free to play games!
- Big congrats Micha Y. Breakstone ???? and team Somite Therapeutics on your $10M seed round to leverage AI and big data to develop cell replacement therapies!
- Mazel tov Amit Monheit and team Odeeo on your $5M funding round to expand your global audio advertising for games to the US market!
- Well done Eldar Khayretdinov and team Fanton Fantasy Football on securing $1M in seed funding to scale your blockchain Fantasy Football Platform!
EXITS
- Huge congrats Sam Gutmann, Ariel Berkman and team Own Company on the acquisition by Salesforce for $1.9 billion (!) in cash. Previously known as OwnBackup, Own company develops data protection and data management solutions.
- Kol hakavod Itamar Arel and team Tenyx on the acquisition by Salesforce for an undisclosed sum to boost Salesforce AI agents with Tenyx voice technology!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- Silicon Valley’s Hot Talent Pipeline Is an Israeli Army Unit
- 21 most promising Israeli startups 2024 according to N12
- Israeli quantum computing tech
Global:
- You’ve heard of ‘founder mode’, I bring you ‘Emerging Manager Mode’ by me on VC Cafe
- State of the market H2 2024 – by Silicon Valley Bank
- The most important people in AI in 2024 – by TIME
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
From January to the end of August, Israeli tech companies raised $5.9 billion compared to $6.7 billion in Q1-Q2-Q3/2023.
Israel’s most promising startups in 2024, according to Israeli news website N12 News Israel
Are we past the worst in down rounds? Data by Carta shows that the down round percentage for Series A through Series D fell from Q1 to Q2 of this year. Early stages such as Seed and Series A actually peaked in down round terms early last year and have been drifting down since then.
AI and all the rest. 35% of U.S. startup investment has gone to AI-related companies, per Crunchbase data. That appears to be the highest percentage on record, besting even 2023 (source)
Here come the apps. There’s a lot of talk about low enterprise adoption in AI, but it’s growing and will continue to grow… AI enterprise application snapshot by Lightspeed
Some AI apps are raking the cash. Revenue estimates of AI products
A new wave of humanoid robot is coming to homes soon. This is OpenAI-backed Neo BETA by 1x. Almost looks like they used a human in a jumper to film this video…
The meme’s about PG’s “Founder Mode” made me laugh. I also recommend Amir Shevat‘s take on why ‘founder mode’ is flawed…
Finally, A powerful message from Chris Cuomo (worth a watch in full).
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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