It’s #Firgun time.
The word “Firgun” (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
Yahya Sinwar, a key figure behind the deadliest terror attack on Israel, is dead. His death could mark a significant shift in the ongoing war. Sinwar orchestrated the massacre of over 1,200 Israelis on October 7th and while his death brings some closure, the 101 hostages remain a priority. We must continue to do everything we can to #BRINGTHEMHOME.
During the first 9 months of 2024 Israeli startups raised $7.4 billion in 330 deals. The number of new Israeli unicorns is growing again after decreasing since 2021. In Q1–Q3/2024, six new Israeli unicorns were created, compared to only 4 in the whole of 2023. M&A in the first 9 months of 2024 reached $12.9 billion(!). It’s crazy to think that all of this happened during a war, may it soon finish.
This week in tech, Elon Musk’s SpaceX accomplished a historic feat, catching a 19-story tall rocket booster (aka Super Heavy booster), in mid-air with Mechazilla chopsticks (see video below). It is a big milestone of the way to Mars. NVIDIA launched a new open source 70B model that beats GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet and a new visual model that is 15x faster than flux. Adobe launched its Firefly AI video model, Google launched new features for its increasingly popular NotebookLM. Perplexity now lets users search their internal files alongside web content.
Happy Sukkot to everyone who is celebrating. According to Judaism, it is a commandment to rejoice in this holiday, so let’s try!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” –
John F. Kennedy
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Zohar Einy and team Port IO on your $35M series B to transform the developer experience with a portal that brings the entire team together.
- Way to go Itamar Kunik and team Monogoto on your $27M series A to offer software-defined connectivity services that simplify the connection process for organisations and developers!
- Good stuff Dan Bratshpis and team INSHUR on raising $19M in a new round of funding to make sure insurance coverage is fair and accessible for on-demand economy drivers!
- Well done Yehuda Vidal and team Lidwave on your $10M seed round for your 4D coherent Lidar-on-chip technology that treats light as a wave, rather than using traditional photon counting!
- Kudos Omri Dekalo and team Ubeya on your $10M series A for your flexible workforce management marketplace for events!
- Mazal tov Sharon Barr and team Early on your $5M seed round for your Test AI agent, automatically generating working tests to help developers detect and fix bugs early in the development cycle!
- Kol hakavod Tal Borenstein and team Keep on securing a $2.7M seed round for your open-source alert management & AIOps Platform!
EXITS
- Big congrats to Zohar Vittenberg and team Trail Security, developer of Data Loss Prevention tech, which was acquired by Israeli unicorn Cyera for $162M BEFORE coming out of stealth!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- Israeli tech review Q3 2024 – report by IVC Data and Insights
- ? The digital memorial project of October 7th – an impressive documentation, bringing the testimonies of Israelis that experienced that day. By KAN – Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation
- Israel economic retrospective – report by Jefferies
Global:
- ?? The booming Voice AI landscape – a VC perspective – by me on VC Cafe
- These 10 Charts Show Startup Funding Downturn Continues Despite AI’s Ascent – by Crunchbase
- State of AI report 2024 – by Air Street Capital
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
U.S. acquisitions dominated Israeli M&A deal-making in Q1-Q3/2024, with a total deal sum of $8.5 billion (across 41 deals). 16 mega-M&As (larger than $100m) were made by U.S. acquirers, compared to 10 deals in the entire 2023. Read the full report by LeumiTech and IVC.
Israel ranks 9th in the 2024 Global AI index by Tortoise Media (source)
Accel’s 2024 Euroscape – a list of the their top 100 AI and Cloud companies emerging from Europe and Israel. Great to see so many Israeli startups represented (source)
An excerpt from the State of Crypto report 2024 – by Andreessen Horowitz
Several companies are trying to help users capture their brain with AI. A16Z put a short list. (source) – Notably missing: Israeli startup Kai.ai
A nice infographic of AI sales tools by Capgemini.
A historic moment in space exploration. The 400ft rocket blasted off at sunrise, completing its fight, and separated its first stage booster, which was caught back on the pad to applause from the team. Read more here
Someone created the ultimate cheating machine by connecting ChatGPT to a Texas Instruments calculator
The image below is satirical. But it’s sad that I need to tell you that.
That’s all for this week, thank you for reading.
There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community! Keep on creating!
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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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- Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter – October 18 2024 - October 18, 2024
- The Booming Voice AI Landscape: A VC Perspective - October 16, 2024
