It’s #Firgun time. The original version of this newsletter was posted on Linkedin here.
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
392 days after October 7. Hard to grasp. October was the deadliest month for Israelis since the beginning of the war. A ceasefire offer, providing safe passage for H***s in return for the hostages was turned down by the terror organisation. In Lebanon, Hi*****ah continues to shoot rockets aimed at civilians in Israel and Iran has once more threatened a ‘devastating response’ before the US elections. There are still 101 Israeli hostages held in G**a. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME.
Yesterday was Halloween (also my birthday) and Israeli startups have certainly received a lot of ‘candy’. As if in a parallel universe to the war, over the past week alone Israeli startups raised over $500M in investments. As you can see from the SNC report below, private funding in Q1-Q3 2024 grew by 30% compared the equivalent period last year (pre-war), and M&A deals surged to $11.9 billion—up 39% from Q1-Q3 2023. This underscores the Israeli ecosystem’s ability to attract investor confidence, even amidst market instability and conflict. Are there huge challenges? absolutely. Will the Israeli startup ecosystem overcome them? I have no doubt. Israeli startups deliver #NOMATTERWHAT
In the wider tech and AI ecosystem it’s been another momentous week. OpenAI is now going head to head with Google with ChatGPT search (combines web search and generated results). xAI now has the world’s largest AI supercomputer, in partnership with NVIDIA, the company also launched Grok2, it’s newest model which outperforms GPT-4o in some use cases like Math. Sana, a new AI model introduced by NVIDIA , runs high-quality 4K image generation on consumer-grade hardware. Apple rolled out Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. Meta released MobileLLM. GitHub copilot is expanding beyond OpenAI and also supporting AI models from Google and Anthropic. It launched Spark, an AI tool that helps anyone build web apps. Russia fine on Google is largest than the world’s total GDP (!). The company has released a new product called Google Learn About. ElevenLabs has created an app that generates a unique voice based on your X profile. Self driving car company Waymo, a Google spin-off, raised $5.6 billion in funding and Pacific Fusion raised a $900M series A for fusion energy.
In world news, we’re 3 days away from the most consequential elections in the history of the world. Flash floods in Valencia, Spain have claimed the lives of 95 people and created apocalyptic scenes. Iran threatened it will deal Israel a ‘devastating blow’ even before the US elections.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see.” – Iroh from “Avatar: The Last Airbender”
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
Quite a lot to go through after the Jewish High holidays – buckle up!
- Big congrats Yevgeny Dibrov and team Armis on your $200M series D (at a valuation of $4.3 billion), to protect the entire attack surface of companies!
- Mabruk Matan Bar and team Melio on your $150M series E (at $2 billion valuation) to integrate cash flow management, accounts receivable and accounts payable solutions!
- Congratulations Elad Raz and team NextSilicon for coming out of stealth with a $100M series C round (and over $300M raised to date) to create the next generation of AI semiconductors, starting with Maverick 2!
- Impressive stuff Ori Tamuz and team DoorLoop on raising $100M series B to accelerate its journey to be the central platform for property management!
- Fantastic news Ben Kliger and team Zenity on securing a $38M series B to secure enterprise copilots!
- Well done Amir Danino and team INNOVENTRIC on raising a $28.5M series B to improve patient outcomes for tricuspid regurgitation (TR) by using minimally invasive therapies!
- Big congrats Niv Braun and team Noma Security on coming out of stealth with a $25M series A (bringing the total of $32M raised to date which was previously undisclosed) to identify vulnerable data pipelines and code in data science environments, as well as threats like prompt injection attacks!
- Way to go Dean Leitersdorf and team Decart on coming out of stealth with a $21M seed round for a new inference model that enables companies to dramatically reduce the cost of generative AI – wow ?
- Kudos Eran Barak and team MIND on coming out of stealth with an $11M seed round to put data loss prevention (DLP) and insider risk management (IRM) programs on autopilot!
- Well done Avner Geva and team Vensica Medical on raising an $11M funding round for your ultrasound drug delivery technology!
- Kol hakavod Benjamin Segal and team Matia for coming out of stealth with a $10.5M seed round to build a unified dataOps platform!
- Congratulations Ron Nachum and team Sapien on your $8.7M seed round to build autonomous financial analysts for enterprise finance teams!
- Big thumbs up Raz Rafaeli and team Secret Double Octopus on securing an undisclosed strategic series C for your workforce passwordless authentication platform!
- Mazel tov Isaac B. and team MOTORMIA on securing an $8M seed round for its AI powered modding buddy for car enthusiasts!
- Awesome news Leonid Feinberg and team Verax AI on your $7.6M seed round to deliver visibility and control over LLMs!
- Good stuff Moshe Vaknin and team LiZo.ai on securing an undisclosed pre-seed round to revolutionise real estate investing!
- Nice going Lee Sharir-Dolev and team Relyon.ai on securing an undisclosed pre-seed round to enhance emergency call handling with AI, providing real-time insights!
EXITS
- Congratulations Omri Sagzan and team Ctrl (acquired by Sana AI) on the acquisition by Sana of your modern UI automation for CRM workflows for an undisclosed sum!
- Way to go Gabi Peles and team Puls, developer of a hybrid home-warranty and on-demand service platform tailored to the modern homeowner, on your acquisition by Super (hellosuper.com) for an undisclosed sum.
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- A year on, war has not undone Israeli VC—but leaves indelible mark – by Leah Hodgson on PitchBook
- Q3 2024 Israeli tech report by Startup Nation Central (ICYMI, the IVC Data and Insights Q3 2024 is here).
- The top 60 cybersecurity companies (featuring an impressive number of Israeli startups) – by Fortune and the best inventions of 2024 (featuring a number of Israeli startups) by TIME
Global/ tech and venture:
- From the blog: Non-Consensus Investing: Unlocking Venture Capital’s Hidden Gems (by me)
- The state of AI in Q3 2024 – a report by CB Insights
- Growing Up: Navigating Generative AI’s Early Years – AI Adoption Report by The Wharton School
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Snapshot of the Israeli tech ecosystem in Q3 2024 (source in links section above)
While the median amounts dropped in all deal types during 2022–2024, the seed median climbed. According to the report, the recovery is apparent not only in early rounds. The capital raised in Q3/2024 reached $2.4 billion, 40% more than the $1.74b raised in Q3/2023. (source in links section)
Israel ranks amongst the top markets based on stock option policy according to Index Ventures. Find the detailed ranking and the drivers behind it here
What is generative AI currently being used for in the enterprise? a new survey by Wharton shows that weekly Generative AI usage for decision makers nearly doubled in one year: from 37% in 2023 to 72% in 2024. (source in links section)
Phyton is the top programming language in 2024, according to GitHub report
AI is coming for the multi trillion services industry (source)
In venture capital, the biggest gems are in the non-consensus investments. Here’s the quadrant on how to assess risk in VC decision making (source)
The unstructured data landscape by Felicis (source)
That’s all for this week. Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes. I just hope that our hostages are back soon and that we may live in peace.
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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