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The phrase “Firgun” (pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an off-the-cuff trendy Hebrew time period and idea in Israeli tradition (in the beginning Yiddish), which describes authentic, unselfish pleasure or delight within the accomplishment of the opposite individual. It’s the other of “schadenfreude”. Firgun is all about really feeling and expressing happiness, delight, or admiration for anyone else’s accomplishments, just right fortune, or well-being. Extra about Firgun and why it issues on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
18 dwelling ho****es have been launched up to now 3 weeks (together with 5 Thai nationals) as a part of the primary section, together with Yarden Bibas, who nonetheless doesn’t know the destiny of his spouse and two little kids, together with Kfir who used to be simply 11 months outdated when he used to be taken from his house through armed te****ts. We should #BRINGTHEMHOME. Each and every closing one in all them.
Israeli startups raised just about $700M in January, in comparison to $473M in January 2024. Regardless of the robust begin to the yr, it’s been a turbulent length for the tech trade with a number of undertaking subsidized close downs (reminiscent of NanoLock Safety, GuardKnox , and so forth) and large layoffs bulletins from Intel Company, AppsFlyer, Placer.ai or even Moon Energetic. I characteristic those shakeouts to the tech cycle and the relative difficulties corporations face in securing expansion capital (particularly in the event that they have been already overpriced). At the turn facet, the ability this is changing into to be had will in finding its option to startups as staff or founders.
Within the wider tech global, it’s been a momentous week. Google unveiled it’s new reasoning type, Gemini 2.0 Flash with 1M token context window. The quest massive mentioned it’s making plans to spend $75 billion in AI infrastructure this yr. Hugging Face introduced its new app retailer, Areas, providing 400K open supply apps. It cloned an open-source model of OpenAI’s deep analysis in 24 hours from its debut. OpenAI introduced a brand new type, o3 mini, pushing the frontier of cost-effective reasoning. The corporate is in talks to better $40 billion, at $300 billion valuation (2x). Hyperlinks to China didn’t decelerate the unfold of DeepSeek AI who’s open supply R1 reasoning type is now to be had on Azure, GitHub, NVIDIA NIM & Windsurf. Meta introduced EDITS, an AI video enhancing app to compete with ByteDance‘s CapCut (in case it will get banned). Zuckerberg mentioned he plans to extend spending on AI generation to up to $65 billion this yr. Talking of Bytedance, the corporate introduced OmniHuman, which is in a position to create speaking movies from a unmarried symbol and it’s scarily just right. Mistral AI launched Small 3, an area, open supply type that might rival GPT4. In the meantime, Elon Musk began publishing how taxpayer cash used to be spent at the Doge X account – no longer everyone seems to be amused. Whilst lots of the AI fundraising occurs in america, Ecu AI startups raised $8 billion in 2024.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Now and again the questions are sophisticated and the solutions are easy.” – Dr. Seuss
NEW VENTURE DEALS
Congrats Alex Bouaziz and workforce Deel on elevating $300M in a secondaries transaction, valuing the platform for faraway staff at at $12B!
Neatly finished Jonathan Jaglom and workforce fl? Optics on securing a $35M collection A to interchange conventional lens coating with revealed tech!
Kudos Amit Flohr and workforce Bigabid on elevating a $25M collection A extension to spice up gaming adtech expansion!
Technique to cross Doron Fridman and workforce Lowental Hybrid in your $5M seed spherical to resolve the limited flight period of UAVs!
Mazel tov Itamar Perlov and workforce ecton.io in your undisclosed seed spherical to reinvent healthcare bills!
EXITS
NEW FUNDS
Congratulations Gil Dibner and workforce Angular Ventures at the debut of your $125M fund III to spend money on Israel and Europe early level B2B tech!
Kol hakavod Nathan Shabot and workforce LIP Ventures Boutique at the release of your new $90M early level fund to glue Israeli startups with LATAM alternatives!
APPOINTMENTS
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
The 2025 Israeli fintech file through Viola Ventures
The 2025 Israeli agritech and meals tech file – through Startup Country Central
The 2025 Israeli virtual well being and wellbeing file through Just right Corporate VC
Bonus: Why spend money on Israeli startups? as a result of they force outsized returns –
GLOBAL
The upward thrust of Chinese language AI stars – you will have heard about DeepSeek AI however there are 6 different ‘Dragons’ – through me on VC Cafe
The prolonged 2025 requests for startups record – with new updates from Y Combinator, ARK Funding Control LLC and others
Why corporations are leaving Delaware – through Elad Gil
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Attention-grabbing chart: most sensible international locations VC investment vs. inhabitants in 2024
To place in context, right here’s the worldwide undertaking capital funding quantity through annum (supply)
After a drop in December, January 2025 noticed a upward push in personal investment to $647M, with standout rounds together with Quantum Machines ($100M), Eleos Well being ($60M), Oligo Safety ($50M), and UVeye ($41M). This displays robust world self assurance in Israeli various innovation.
– FinTechs make up just about part of the highest 15 highest-valued personal tech corporations in Israel, together with Rapyd ($15 billion), Deel ($12 billion), and Tipalti ($8.3 billion)
– FinTech stays the second-largest class in Israel’s tech ecosystem, accounting for 12% of general capital raised in Israel in 2024
The Israeli fintech panorama used to be added to my 2025 Israeli startup panorama assortment on VC Cafe (supply)
The 2025 Israeli Agriculture and meals tech panorama options 115 startups working within the area. It used to be added to my 2025 Israeli startup panorama assortment on VC Cafe (supply)
The 2025 Israeli virtual well being and wellbeing panorama showcases AI-driven diagnostics, personalized medication by means of genomic sequencing and 3-d printing, in addition to faraway affected person tracking. It used to be added to my 2025 Israeli startup panorama assortment on VC Cafe (supply)
Israel boasts probably the most lively and colourful startup ecosystems on the planet (By means of Amazon Internet Products and services (AWS)) (supply)
Larger spend on AI infrastructure has pushed giant tech’s blended capex previous $50B in contemporary quarters.
Voice AI generation is experiencing important expansion, in particular because of advances in AI type construction all the way through 2024. Those voice AI methods can serve as as computerized brokers, providing steady fortify throughout quite a lot of industry purposes. They’re being deployed in a couple of sectors together with:
Customer support operations
Human assets (in particular for interviewing)
Gross sales departments (dealing with outbound calling)
Monetary services and products (reminiscent of debt assortment)
The expanding prominence of this generation is evidenced through a pattern at Y Combinator, the place startups interested by voice AI packages are taking over an increasingly more good portion in their startup cohorts, as famous in research through Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
How AI is reworking technique construction (and consulting) through McKinsey & Corporate (supply)
the Agentic AI body of workers is most likely about to get much more crowded (supply) – AI staff are coming
Getting from Seed to Collection A has grow to be an extended procedure and more difficult in keeping with new information through Carta (most commonly US pattern)
Google has 5 separate companies that make greater than $30 Billion a yr
China’s DeepSeek has put the highlight at the nation’s AI construction ecosystem. Extra concerning the emerging Dragons in my weblog put up on Emerging Stars In China’s AI ecosystem (supply)
In spite of everything, give it to the Pink Move for profitable “Bystander of the yr” award. Satirical video through Eretz Nehederet. Watch the crimson go experience proportion app industrial.
I stay hoping this isn’t true.
That’s interested by this week. We’ve so much to rejoice in our “small” group. Stay on growing!
Eze is managing spouse of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund making an investment in formidable founders on the intersection of tech, leisure, gaming and trade with a focus on Israel.
I am a former common spouse at google ventures, head of Google for Marketers 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 in combination the startup ecosystem on biking demanding situations in fortify of Room to Learn. Since inception in 2012 now we have constructed 11 colleges and 50 libraries within the creating global.
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