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Within the spirit of celebrating milestones (giant and small), I’m satisfied to proportion that this week the #FIRGUN e-newsletter crossed the 6,000 subscribers mark! Thanks to your steady give a boost to.

The phrase “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an off-the-cuff trendy Hebrew time period and thought in Israeli tradition (firstly Yiddish), which describes authentic, unselfish pleasure or satisfaction within the accomplishment of the opposite particular person. It’s the other of “schadenfreude”. Firgun is all about really feeling and expressing happiness, satisfaction, or admiration for anyone else’s accomplishments, excellent fortune, or well-being. Extra about Firgun and why it issues on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
The instant we’ve all been praying for the previous 468 days is inside take hold of. The ceasefire deal used to be signed and the Israelis taken ho***ge will get started returning house in drips, beginning on Sunday. It’s been an emotional week, with quite a lot of ups and downs, and whilst it’s intestine wrenching to barter with te****ists saving the residing and finishing the nightmare for the households of all 98 Israelis held in G**a must be a concern. We should #BRINGTHEMHOME NOW.
The quite a lot of 2024 studies of Israeli tech and project had been printed this week. The sentiment is sure: investments had been up over 31% formally, even supposing the actual choice of investments made is assumed to be nearer to $12.2 billion (over 40% upper than 2023). Exits had been up 70% in 2024. All this in the course of a conflict and with much less connectivity to the worldwide marketplace. An amazing signal of resilience for the Israeli startup ecosystem, and an constructive begin to 2025.
Within the wider tech international, it’s additionally been momentous. The United States is transferring to impose tricky new restrictions at the export of complicated pc chips and different AI generation to dozens of nations, together with Israel. The United Kingdom introduced the AI alternatives motion plan to o turbocharge AI adoption in the United Kingdom. Meta is letting cross 5% of its group of workers and slicing its DEI projects (together with Tampons within the males’s room), in line with efficiency, and can get started automating the paintings of mid-level coders with AI. Meta’s new AI type, SEAMLESS, can translate speech from greater than 100 languages. Grok introduced a standalone cellular app in the USA. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT with Scheduled Duties which we could customers automate and time table movements the usage of chatgpt. TikTok is dealing with a ban in the USA beginning on Jan nineteenth and rumours circulated that Elon Musk may well be a possible purchaser… In the meantime, lots of the 170 million US customers are flocking to every other Chinese language app – Rednote. Microsoft introduced Copilot Imaginative and prescient, it may well see what you do on the internet and talks with you about it. It additionally introduced model 4 of its Phi type Bland introduced the power 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 type is shockingly reaslistic, particularly movies of folks like those pretend influencers. Aligned Knowledge Facilities raised $12 billion (!) to fund its growth. The project marketplace is therapeutic: Perception Companions introduced its new $12.5 billion in new budget. Intel Company plans to spin off Intel Capital, its company project arm, right into a standalone fund by way of mid-2025. NVIDIA introduced SANA, a brand new textual content to symbol AI type that generates surprising outputs in 4K, in seconds. It additionally introduced it is going to be making an investment $500M in a brand new information centre in Israel to make bigger the corporate’s operations within the nation. Mistral AI introduced open-weight Codestral 25.01 coding type to counter DeepSeek, Claude. Blended end result for SpaceX: on one hand, Starship exploded. However, they stuck the booster once more with the large robot fingers in what seems like science fiction.
There’s so a lot more to hide – let’s dive in.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Israel is an unbelievable supply of innovation and remains to be a a success tech hub thru an excessively difficult time. Israeli founders and marketers showcase two “commonplace denominators”—resourcefulness and a willingness to iterate—which can be key to fixing buyer wishes and discovering product-market have compatibility.
George Mathew, Perception Companions
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
Congrats Roy Ok. and staff Orchid Safety for popping out of stealth with a $36M seed spherical to to routinely establish the protection necessities for every in their shoppers’ interior packages!
Kudos Leeor Solnik and staff qbiq on saying your $16M collection A to automate architectural making plans!
Smartly accomplished Henrik Shimony and staff Reeco on securing a $15M collection A to revolutionise procurement within the hospitality house with AI!
Approach to cross Daniel Kalish and staff Nilus in your $10M investment spherical to your AI-powered treasury control platform!
Kol hakavod David Bleicher and staff Jotit in your $8M seed extension (bringing the overall spherical to $10M) to turn out to be how scholars, lecturers, and oldsters keep organised with handwriting-focused gear!
Mazel tov Eran Dagan and staff Botika on securing an $8M seed spherical to make professional style visuals easy and out there!
Large thumbs up Aharon Twizer and staff ControlMonkey on elevating a $7M seed spherical to permit DevOps groups to regulate, govern, and scale their cloud infrastructure the usage of Terraform!
Mabruk Naveh Ben Dror and staff Spikerz Safety on saying a $7M seed spherical to offer protection to social media accounts from hacking!
Excellent task Daniel Kashmir and staff Momentick – Emissions Intelligence on securing a $5M seed spherical to offer insurance coverage firms with actual emissions information on an international scale!
Smartly accomplished Natan Voitenkov and staff Genway AI on elevating an undisclosed seed spherical to supercharge analysis with AI!
EXITS
Large congrats Yoni Assia and staff eToro for submitting to IPO with a goal valuation of $5 billion! hope it is going properly and that it’s the primary of many Israeli IPOs in 2025!
Congratulations Elad Fouks and staff Alterya at the acquisition by way of Chainalysis for $150M to locate malicious virtual identities and dangerous actors throughout other networks and virtual fee rails!
Smartly accomplished Roee Hemed and staff Covver at the acquisition by way of Snappy for an undisclosed sum! Snappy is taking a look to roll up different swag and gifting firms for the company international.
Mabruk Moshe Yanai and staff Infinidat at the acquisition by way of Lenovo, the corporate’s first in Israel, to make bigger its world garage portfolio and to ascertain a building centre in Israel!
Mazel tov Ari Margalit and staff TECTU at the acquisition by way of World AI for an estimated $13M!
APPOINTMENTS
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
Making an investment in resilience: the Israeli startup ecosystem in 2024 – new by way of me on VC Cafe analysing the newest marketplace studies
Israeli tech evaluation 2024 – document by way of IVC Knowledge and Insights
Annual document 2024 – the 12 months of the dimensions up powerhouse – by way of Startup Country Central
Bonus: Israel defies expectancies with surge in tech investment regardless of the conflict – by way of The Wall Side road Magazine
Bonus II: Unreported rounds push Israeli tech investment previous $12 billion in 2024 – by way of Calcalist ???????
GLOBAL
State of Startups 2024 by way of 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 way of Ivan Landabaso
Open Cloud document 2024 – by way of Battery Ventures
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
2024 used to be a greater 12 months than 2023 for the Israeli startup ecosystem throughout each metric, regardless of the difficult cases
The facility for project budget to fundraise has been decrease (in step with the worldwide development) as LPs search for liquidity (from Antique Funding Companions – State of the Challenge Marketplace 2024)
Mapping Israeli Open Supply startups (by way of Greenfield Companions) supply
Making Europe nice once more? American vs Ecu Startup Dynamism (supply)
Whilst Israeli startup investment used to be up 30%-40%, Ecu startup investment -5% YoY to $51B in 2024 -44% from the marketplace top of $117B in 2021.
On the other hand, issues are slowly bettering for Ecu startups (by way of Dealroom.co)
Israeli startups raised formally $10.6 billion in 2024, however the actual determine is estimated at $12.2 billion because of unannounced rounds. To place this in context, listed here are the unofficial 2024 investment numbers for quite a lot of Ecu nations. (supply)
The 12 spaces ripe for AI Brokers disruption (from the 2024 AI developments document)
The AI Local Move to Marketplace Stack (by way of Battery Ventures) – supply
46% of far off staff not going to stick if far off paintings ends
Agentic AI. Revolution or hype?
Nintendo introduced the approaching Nintendo Transfer 2. Watch the trailer.
Within the wake of the Israel-H***s ceasefire deal, this cool animated film is 10 years outdated however unfortunately nonetheless related
That’s fascinated by this week.
Thank you once more to the 6,000 subscribers who track in to learn #Firgun. Please proportion this version with anyone who may benefit.
Eze is managing spouse of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund making an investment in bold founders on the intersection of tech, leisure, gaming and trade with a focus on Israel.
I am a former normal 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 give a boost to of Room to Learn. Since inception in 2012 we have now constructed 11 faculties and 50 libraries within the creating international.
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