The original version of this newsletter was published on Linkedin.
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
It’s the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, at the same time last year (in the Jewish calendar) is when the October 7 attacks took place, taking the lives of 1,200 Israelis (may their memory be a blessing). Unfortunately, over a year later, Israel is now defending itself from threats across 7 fronts and there are still 101 Israelis held hostage in G**a. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME
It’s been a slower news week in Israeli startups due to the holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Most kids are off school, but nevertheless, several founding rounds were announced over the first half of the week as well as two new funds.
In the wider tech world, Anthropic upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and introduced a new model, Claude 3.5 Haiku (which is performing better than GPT4-01). The company also introduced “computer use“, where developers can direct Claude to use computers the way people do—by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking, and typing text. OpenAI plans to release its next big AI model by December (codename: Orion). Also, two OpenAI researchers published a paper describing a new continuous-time consistency model (sCM) that increases the speed at which multimedia including images, video, and audio can be generated by AI by 50 times compared to traditional diffusion models. TMSC started making chips in Arizona, with yields higher than Taiwan. General Catalyst raised a new $8 billion venture fund, the largest amount by a US VC firm in more than two years. Google released SynthID Text, which lets developers watermark and detect text generated by AI models. The company also launched MusicFX DJ and also updated Music AI Sandbox, a suite of experimental music tools which can streamline creation. ElevenLabs introduced Voice Design, the ability to generate a unique voice from a text prompt alone. The actual list is much longer:
- Runway launched Act-One
- Ideogram released new Canvas photo editing
- OpenAI launched Voice mode in EU
- Perplexity released Reasoning Mode
- Genmo released New open source AI video Mochi 1
But that’s all I have time to cover this week!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
Bill Gates
NEW VENTURE ROUNDS
- Congratulations Tomer Shussman and team OneStep on raising a $36M series B to advance your AI-driven care platform, powered by smartphone motion intelligence!
- Well done Roey Dor and team Obligo on securing a $35M series C to support renters and landlords with a security deposit alternative utilising bank-issued Letters of Credit!
- Kudos Or Shoshani and team Stream.Security on securing a $30M series B for your cloud detection and response platform!
- Awesome news Omer Slavin and team BiltOn on your $15M series A for your construction operations and risk management platform that already serves 70% of the local market!
- Way to go Raz Zohar and team Mave on your $2 pre-seed for your AI Assistant for the Real Estate Industry!
NEW FUNDS
- Congratulations Gili Raanan and team Cyberstarts on the new (and fourth) $60M fund to invest in seed stage Israeli cybersecurity startups!
- Well done Eyal Malinger and Oren Peleg and team Resurge Growth Partners on the first closing of an investment vehicle focused on helping companies caught between the venture capital and private equity worlds.
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
From VC Cafe:
- Q3 2024 emerging tech sector analysis: diving into generative AI, spatial computing, gaming, crypto and TMT
- What comes after LLMs for VC Investing – as foundational models are starting to plateau, where will AI investments go next
- ICMYI: The booming Voice AI landscape: A VC Perspective
Israel:
- Israel’s influential space in the creator economy – ISRAEL21c — Good News From Israel including quotes by me and featuring several of our Remagine Ventures portfolio companies
- A week after everyone else, LinkedIn published the list of top Israeli companies in 2024, based on job growth, candidate interest, etc
- Former CEO of Sodastream offers Gazans $100,000 for every live hostage released
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The most sought after Israeli startups according to Linkedin
Close to $100 billion has been invested in AI companies, with the majority of that money invested in US companies. In total, generative AI companies received $35 billion in 2024.AI companies have reached a combined value of $9 trillion. (source)
The modern marketing data stack 2025 – How leading marketers are thriving in a world redefined by AI, privacy and data gravity (source)
Based on their revenue streams, Anthropic emerges as an infrastructure player, while OpenAI operates more like a consumer-facing company.
Going to be interesting to see where each company is a few years from now.
Creators now represent about 7% of the US workforce as there are 12 million full time influencers (source) The rebound in funding for creator startups was short lived. Funding for U.S. creator economy startups fell nearly 16% to $253.1 million in Q3 year over year. Global funding also dropped. (source). Related: Israel’s special place in the creator economy
This is an AI generated video of Fauda – the lego version… credit to Timmy Turtle
That’s all for this week. Thank you for tuning in.
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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