The original version of this newsletter was published on Linkedin. Sign up to get the next edition in your inbox.
If you’re new 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” (which stands for being happy for someone else’s misfortune). Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for members of our community’s accomplishments, good fortune and wins. More about Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
For the millions of Israelis rushing to the shelters in the middle of the night, this week was a clear reminder that the ceasefire is over. There are still 59 Israelis held host**ge in G**a (over 21 are alive) and we must #BRINGTHEMHOME ??
The acquisition of Wiz by Google for $32 billion in cash this week made waves across the whole tech ecosystem in Israel and beyond. It was Israel’s largest exit to date. It was Google’s largest acquisition to date (in fact it’s larger than all their largest acquisitions COMBINED). It stands as the largest VC-backed exit via acquisition in history, per Dealroom.co data. It created 1,700 new millionaires. Gili Raanan transformed a $6.4M investment into $1.3 billion (225x, according to estimates). The list goes on. The fact that Wiz walked away from a previous offer of $23 billion, and the timing of this acquisition (given everything else going on in Israel) makes this achievement even more remarkable and a testament to the quality and attractiveness of Israeli entrepreneurs, primarily in cybersecurity. It was not the only multi billion dollar exit this week…. see below about Next Insurance.
Big news this week in the wider tech world. NVIDIA announced DGX Station “personal AI supercomputer” with new Blackwell Ultra GPU and also introduced the Groot N1, the first open-weight foundational model for humanoid robotics. In addition Nvidia has launched Llama Nemotron Nano, Super, and Ultra “open” reasoning models. OpenAI launched 3 new audio models – 2 new speech-to-text models and a new text-to-speech model. Mistral AI released Small 3.1 as new open-weight AI model to take on GPT-4o Mini, and Google’s Gemma 3. Google dropped Mind Maps for NotebookLM. Instantly turn your notes into visual diagrams. Anthropic‘s Claude introduced web search. Baidu, Inc. released Ernie X1 reasoning AI model to counter DeepSeek R1. Stability AI has introduced Stable Virtual Camera, turning 2D images into 3D video. SpatialLM just dropped on Hugging Face – a Large Language Model for Spatial Understanding. CoreWeave is planning to raise $2.7 billion in its upcoming IPO. Meta‘s Llama models hit 1 billion downloads. Spotify paid musicians and creators of its platform $10bn in 2024 according to its annual report. The two NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts are finally back on Earth 9 months after getting stuck in space on the ISS…
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
NEW FUNDING DEALS
- Big congrats Shay Sandler and team Vega Security on raising $65M in two successive funding rounds for a more effective approach to cyberattack detection!
- Congratulations Shachar Bialick and team Curve on securing a $48M series D to simplify the way people spend, send, see and save money!
- Amazing news Alon Dror, Hamutal Meridor and team Kela Technologies on coming out of stealth with $39 million in funding ($11M seed and $28M series A) for your Defence tech startup dedicated to protecting Israel and our Western allies!
- Kudos Bentzi Rabi and team Utila on your $18M series A for your secure and chain-agnostic crypto wallet infrastructure!
- Good stuff Yair Levy and team brain.space on securing an $11M series A for your portable EEG headset!
- Way to go Tal Chalozin and team 257 on coming out of stealth with a $9.2 million seed round to build a digital twin of every American home with a vision to transform how homes are powered!
- Well done Nitay Milner and team Orion Security on your $6M seed round for an AI-based data protection platform!
- Mazal tov David Priev and team LimitlessCNC on securing a $4.1M seed round to bring AI to precision manufacturing!
EXITS
- HUGE RESPECT Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Roy R., Yinon C. and team Wiz on the acquisition by Google for $32 billion in cash. You accomplished quite a feat!
- BIG CONGRATS Guy Goldstein and team Next Insurance on the $2.6 billion acquisition by Munich Re!
- Congratulations Noa Ruschin-Rimini, PhD and team Grid4C on the acquisition by Bridgely for an undisclosed sum!
- Kudos Smadar David and team Vanti on the acquisition of your knowledge modeling technology by Tray.ai for an undisclosed sum!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- From Unit 8200 to Wiz’s $32B exit: The blueprint for Israeli cyber success – what makes Israeli entrepreneurs so effective?
- Israel’s cyber sector defies turmoil, raising $3.79 billion in 2024, a 56% surge – by Calcalist ???????
- Israel in the New Middle East: Economic Resurgence and Tech Renaissance – report by Jefferies
GLOBAL
- Don’t sleep on Consumer Tech: AI is changing everything – how B2C companies are going from ‘consumer is hard’ to ‘consumer is hot’ with data from: Bessemer Venture Partners NFX Primary Venture Partners Andreessen Horowitz and more. By me on VC Cafe.
- The 2025 European Deep Tech report – by Dealroom.co
- The economic value of Open Source Software is $8.8 trillion – study by Harvard University
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Wiz stands as the largest VC-backed exit via acquisition in history (source) The deal is expected to close next year, barring any regulatory hurdles.
Google’s acquisition of Wiz easily combined all of its previous acquisitions—DoubleClick, YouTube, Motorola, Nest, Looker, and others—totalling approximately $31+ billion.
The biggest winners from the Wiz acquisition… (based on publicly available data)
Young Israelis under 30 ranked 2nd happiest in the recent World happiness report created by the UN (source)
The AI race is on between China and the US, but a quick look at Robotics clearly shows that China has an edge (for now)
McKinsey & Company surveyed enterprise AI adoption: marketing and customer service are the most popular categories for generative AI in the enterprise so far (source)
MCP is an open protocol that allows systems to provide context to AI models in a manner that’s generalizable across integrations. Below is the startup landscape for MCP and the future of AI tooling according to Andreessen Horowitz (source)
The concentration of venture capital: 31% of All VC Money Last Year Went Into Just 20 Deals according to report by Redpoint (source)
Eli Sharabi spoke to the UN Security Council this week – watch his powerful testimony.
A Trump inspired drone show in Florida went viral… but it’s unknown who’s behind it.
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.
- Weekly Firgun Newsletter – March 20 2025 - March 21, 2025
- Don’t Sleep on Consumer Tech: AI is Changing Everything - March 16, 2025
- Weekly Firgun Newsletter – March 14 2025 - March 14, 2025
