Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter

It's #Firgun time!

The word "Firgun" (Hebrew: ??????/ 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

18 living ho****es were released in the past 3 weeks (including 5 Thai nationals) as part of the first phase, including Yarden Bibas, who still doesn't know the fate of his wife and two little children, including Kfir who was just 11 months old when he was taken from his home by armed te****ts. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME. Every last one of them.

Israeli startups raised nearly $700M in January, compared to $473M in January 2024. Despite the strong start to the year, it's been a turbulent period for the tech industry with several venture backed shut downs (such as NanoLock Security , GuardKnox , etc) and big layoffs announcements from 英特尔 , AppsFlyer , Placer.ai and even Moon Active . I attribute these shakeouts to the tech cycle and the relative difficulties companies face in securing growth capital (especially if they were already overpriced). On the flip side, the talent that is becoming available will find its way to startups as employees or founders.

In the wider tech world, it's been a momentous week. 谷歌 unveiled it's new reasoning model, Gemini 2.0 Flash with 1M token context window. The search giant said it is planning to spend $75 billion in AI infrastructure this year. Hugging Face launched its new app store, Spaces, offering 400K open source apps. It cloned an open-source version of OpenAI's deep research in 24 hours from its debut. OpenAI launched a new model, o3 mini, pushing the frontier of cost-effective reasoning. The company is in talks to raised $40 billion, at $300 billion valuation (2x). Links to China didn't slow down the spread of DeepSeek AI who's open source R1 reasoning model is now available on Azure, GitHub, NVIDIA NIM & Windsurf. Meta announced EDITS, an AI video editing app to compete with 字节跳动 's CapCut (in case it gets banned). Zuckerberg said he plans to increase spending on AI technology to as much as $65 billion this year. Speaking of Bytedance, the company launched OmniHuman, which is able to create talking videos from a single image and it's scarily good. Mistral AI released Small 3, a local, open source model that could rival GPT4. Meanwhile, Elon Musk started publishing how taxpayer money was spent on the Doge X account - not everyone is amused. While most of the AI fundraising happens in the US, European AI startups raised $8 billion in 2024.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." - Dr. Seuss

NEW VENTURE DEALS

• Congrats Alex Bouaziz and team Deel on raising $300M in a secondaries transaction, valuing the platform for remote employees at at $12B!
• Well done Jonathan Jaglom and team flō Optics on securing a $35M series A to replace traditional lens coating with printed tech!
• Kudos Amit Flohr and team Bigabid on raising a $25M series A extension to boost gaming adtech growth!
• Way to go Doron Fridman and team Lowental Hybrid on your $5M seed round to solve the restricted flight duration of UAVs!
• Mazel tov Itamar Perlov and team ecton.io on your undisclosed seed round to reinvent healthcare payments!

EXITS

• Well done Pini Mandel and team Quicklizard on the acquisition by Riverwood Capital for $52.5M!
• Congrats Amir Banet and team PerfectScale by DoiT on the undisclosed acquisition by DoiT to upgrade their kubernetes capabilities!

NEW FUNDS

• Congratulations Gil Dibner and team Angular Ventures on the debut of your $125M fund III to invest in Israel and Europe early stage B2B tech!
• Kol hakavod Nathan Shabot and team LIP Ventures Boutique on the launch of your new $90M early stage fund to connect Israeli startups with LATAM opportunities!

APPOINTMENTS

• Mazal tov Ophir Shay on joining TLV Partners as associate after spearheading the Next October initiative to commemorate the memories of Oct 7 victims with startups.
• Kudos Gil Gilboa on joining Repeat Ventures !

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER

ISRAEL

1. The 2025 Israeli fintech report by Viola Ventures
2. The 2025 Israeli agritech and food tech report - by Startup Nation Central
3. The 2025 Israeli digital health and wellbeing report by Good Company VC
4. Bonus: Why invest in Israeli startups? because they drive oversized returns -

GLOBAL

1. The rise of Chinese AI stars - you may have heard about DeepSeek AI but there are 6 other 'Dragons' - by me on VC Cafe
2. The extended 2025 requests for startups list - with new updates from Y Combinator , ARK Investment Management LLC and others
3. Why companies are leaving Delaware - by Elad Gil

MEDIA OF THE WEEK

Interesting chart: top countries VC funding vs. population in 2024

To put in context, here's the global venture capital investment volume by annum (source)

After a drop in December, January 2025 saw a rise in private funding to $647M, with standout rounds including Quantum Machines ($100M), Eleos Health ($60M), Oligo Security ($50M), and UVeye ($41M). This reflects strong global confidence in Israeli diverse innovation.

- FinTechs make up nearly half of the top 15 highest-valued private tech companies in Israel, including Rapyd ($15 billion), Deel ($12 billion), and Tipalti ($8.3 billion)

- FinTech remains the second-largest category in Israel's tech ecosystem, accounting for 12% of total capital raised in Israel in 2024

The Israeli fintech landscape was added to my 2025 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe (source)

The 2025 Israeli Agriculture and food tech landscape features 115 startups operating in the space. It was added to my 2025 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe (source)

The 2025 Israeli digital health and wellbeing landscape showcases AI-driven diagnostics, personalised medicine via genomic sequencing and 3D printing, as well as remote patient monitoring. It was added to my 2025 Israeli startup landscape collection on VC Cafe (source)

Israel boasts one of the most active and vibrant startup ecosystems in the world (By Amazon Web Services (AWS) ) (source)

Increased spend on AI infrastructure has driven big tech’s combined capex past $50B in recent quarters.

Voice AI technology is experiencing significant growth, particularly due to advances in AI model development during 2024. These voice AI systems can function as automated agents, offering continuous support across various business functions. They're being deployed in multiple sectors including:

• Customer service operations
• Human resources (particularly for interviewing)
• Sales departments (handling outbound calling)
• Financial services (such as debt collection)

The increasing prominence of this technology is evidenced by a trend at Y Combinator, where startups focused on voice AI applications are taking up an increasingly significant portion of their startup cohorts, as noted in analysis by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

?

How AI is transforming strategy development (and consulting) by 麦肯锡 (source)

the Agentic AI workforce is likely about to get a lot more crowded (source) - AI employees are coming

Getting from Seed to Series A has become a longer process and more challenging according to new data by Carta (mostly US sample)

谷歌 has 5 separate businesses that make more than $30 Billion a year

China’s DeepSeek has put the spotlight on the country's AI development ecosystem. More about the rising Dragons in my blog post on Rising Stars In China's AI ecosystem (source)

Finally, give it to the Red Cross for winning "Bystander of the year" award. Satirical video by Eretz Nehederet. Watch the red cross ride share app commercial.

I keep hoping this is not true.

That's all for this week. We have a lot to celebrate in our "small" community. Keep on creating!

Eze Vidra