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Within the spirit of celebrating milestones (large and small), I’m completely satisfied to share that this week the #FIRGUN publication crossed the 6,000 subscribers mark! Thanks in your steady help.
The phrase “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an off-the-cuff trendy Hebrew time period and idea in Israeli tradition (initially Yiddish), which describes real, unselfish delight or pleasure within the accomplishment of the opposite individual. It’s the other of “schadenfreude”. Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pleasure, or admiration for another person’s accomplishments, luck, or well-being. Extra about Firgun and why it issues on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
The second we’ve all been praying for the previous 468 days is inside grasp. The ceasefire deal was signed and the Israelis taken ho***ge will begin returning house in drips, beginning on Sunday. It’s been an emotional week, with a lot of ups and downs, and whereas it’s intestine wrenching to barter with te****ists saving the residing and ending the nightmare for the households of all 98 Israelis held in G**a must be a precedence. We should #BRINGTHEMHOME NOW.
The assorted 2024 studies of Israeli tech and enterprise have been printed this week. The sentiment is optimistic: investments have been up over 31% formally, though the actual variety of investments made is believed to be nearer to $12.2 billion (over 40% greater than 2023). Exits have been up 70% in 2024. All this in the course of a conflict and with much less connectivity to the worldwide market. An amazing signal of resilience for the Israeli startup ecosystem, and an optimistic begin to 2025.
Within the wider tech world, it’s additionally been momentous. The US is shifting to impose robust new restrictions on the export of superior laptop chips and different AI expertise to dozens of nations, together with Israel. The UK introduced the AI alternatives motion plan to o turbocharge AI adoption within the UK. Meta is letting go 5% of its workforce and reducing its DEI initiatives (together with Tampons within the males’s room), primarily based on efficiency, and can begin automating the work of mid-level coders with AI. Meta’s new AI mannequin, SEAMLESS, can translate speech from greater than 100 languages. Grok launched a standalone cellular app within the US. OpenAI launched ChatGPT with Scheduled Duties which lets customers automate and schedule actions utilizing chatgpt. TikTok is going through a ban within the US beginning on Jan nineteenth and rumours circulated that Elon Musk could be a possible purchaser… In the meantime, lots of the 170 million US customers are flocking to a different Chinese language app – Rednote. Microsoft launched Copilot Imaginative and prescient, it will possibly see what you do on the internet and talks with you about it. It additionally launched model 4 of its Phi mannequin Bland launched the flexibility to real-time voice clone (It takes one minute and your voice is completely deleted after the decision). Google‘s VEO2 textual content to video mannequin is shockingly reaslistic, particularly movies of individuals like these pretend influencers. Aligned Knowledge Facilities raised $12 billion (!) to fund its growth. The enterprise market is therapeutic: Perception Companions introduced its new $12.5 billion in new funds. Intel Company plans to spin off Intel Capital, its company enterprise arm, right into a standalone fund by mid-2025. NVIDIA launched SANA, a brand new textual content to picture AI mannequin that generates gorgeous outputs in 4K, in seconds. It additionally introduced it is going to be investing $500M in a brand new information centre in Israel to develop the corporate’s operations within the nation. Mistral AI launched open-weight Codestral 25.01 coding mannequin to counter DeepSeek, Claude. Combined outcome for SpaceX: on one hand, Starship exploded. Alternatively, they caught the booster once more with the enormous robotic arms in what seems to be like science fiction.
There’s a lot extra to cowl – let’s dive in.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Israel is an unimaginable supply of innovation and continues to be a profitable tech hub by way of a really difficult time. Israeli founders and entrepreneurs exhibit two “frequent denominators”—resourcefulness and a willingness to iterate—which might be key to fixing buyer wants and discovering product-market match.
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congrats Roy Okay. and crew Orchid Safety for popping out of stealth with a $36M seed spherical to to robotically establish the safety necessities for every of their clients’ inside functions!
- Kudos Leeor Solnik and crew qbiq on saying your $16M sequence A to automate architectural planning!
- Nicely completed Henrik Shimony and crew Reeco on securing a $15M sequence A to revolutionise procurement within the hospitality area with AI!
- Method to go Daniel Kalish and crew Nilus in your $10M funding spherical in your AI-powered treasury administration platform!
- Kol hakavod David Bleicher and crew Jotit in your $8M seed extension (bringing the overall spherical to $10M) to remodel how college students, academics, and oldsters keep organised with handwriting-focused instruments!
- Mazel tov Eran Dagan and crew Botika on securing an $8M seed spherical to make professional vogue visuals easy and accessible!
- Large thumbs up Aharon Twizer and crew ControlMonkey on elevating a $7M seed spherical to allow DevOps groups to handle, govern, and scale their cloud infrastructure utilizing Terraform!
- Mabruk Naveh Ben Dror and crew Spikerz Safety on saying a $7M seed spherical to guard social media accounts from hacking!
- Good job Daniel Kashmir and crew Momentick – Emissions Intelligence on securing a $5M seed spherical to offer insurance coverage corporations with exact emissions information on a world scale!
- Nicely completed Natan Voitenkov and crew Genway AI on elevating an undisclosed seed spherical to supercharge analysis with AI!
EXITS
- Large congrats Yoni Assia and crew eToro for submitting to IPO with a goal valuation of $5 billion! hope it goes effectively and that it’s the primary of many Israeli IPOs in 2025!
- Congratulations Elad Fouks and crew Alterya on the acquisition by Chainalysis for $150M to detect malicious digital identities and dangerous actors throughout completely different networks and digital cost rails!
- Nicely completed Roee Hemed and crew Covver on the acquisition by Snappy for an undisclosed sum! Snappy is trying to roll up different swag and gifting corporations for the company world.
- Mabruk Moshe Yanai and crew Infinidat on the acquisition by Lenovo, the corporate’s first in Israel, to develop its international storage portfolio and to ascertain a improvement centre in Israel!
- Mazel tov Ari Margalit and crew TECTU on the acquisition by World AI for an estimated $13M!
APPOINTMENTS
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- Investing in resilience: the Israeli startup ecosystem in 2024 – new by me on VC Cafe analysing the newest market studies
- Israeli tech evaluation 2024 – report by IVC Knowledge and Insights
- Annual report 2024 – the yr of the size up powerhouse – by Startup Nation Central
- Bonus: Israel defies expectations with surge in tech funding regardless of the conflict – by The Wall Road Journal
- Bonus II: Unreported rounds push Israeli tech funding previous $12 billion in 2024 – by Calcalist ???????
GLOBAL
- State of Startups 2024 by Carta
- AI Agent directories – AI Factories, AI-native go-to-market tech stack, Microsoft’s Ambient AI, Anthropic’s information to AI Brokers & OpenAI’s Robotics – by Ivan Landabaso
- Open Cloud report 2024 – by Battery Ventures
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
2024 was a greater yr than 2023 for the Israeli startup ecosystem throughout each metric, regardless of the difficult circumstances
The flexibility for enterprise funds to fundraise has been decrease (in keeping with the worldwide pattern) as LPs search for liquidity (from Classic Funding Companions – State of the Enterprise Market 2024)
Mapping Israeli Open Supply startups (by Greenfield Companions) supply
Making Europe nice once more? American vs European Startup Dynamism (supply)
Whereas Israeli startup funding was up 30%-40%, European startup funding -5% YoY to $51B in 2024 -44% from the market peak of $117B in 2021.
Nonetheless, issues are slowly enhancing for European startups (by Dealroom.co)
Israeli startups raised formally $10.6 billion in 2024, however the actual determine is estimated at $12.2 billion as a consequence of unannounced rounds. To place this in context, listed here are the unofficial 2024 funding numbers for numerous European nations. (supply)
The 12 areas ripe for AI Brokers disruption (from the 2024 AI developments report)
The AI Native Go to Market Stack (by Battery Ventures) – supply
46% of distant staff unlikely to remain if distant work ends
Agentic AI. Revolution or hype?
Nintendo introduced the upcoming Nintendo Change 2. Watch the trailer.
Within the wake of the Israel-H***s ceasefire deal, this caricature is 10 years outdated however sadly nonetheless related
That’s all for this week.
Thanks once more to the 6,000 subscribers who tune in to learn #Firgun. Please share this version with somebody who would possibly profit.
I am a former common accomplice at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google’s first bodily hub for startups.
I am additionally the founding father of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing collectively the startup ecosystem on biking challenges in help of Room to Learn. Since inception in 2012 we have constructed 11 colleges and 50 libraries within the growing world.
