Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter

As every Friday, it's my pleasure to share a weekly summary of the movers and shakers in Israeli tech and venture. If you're not yet subscribed, click the button get the next edition straight into your inbox.

"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. More about Firgun and why it matters on?VC Cafe :?https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p

Naturally, I had to ask ChatGPT to help me with the definition of "Firgun" and how it's used in practice. Here's the answer:

"Firgun" is a Hebrew term that is often translated as "altruistic pleasure" or "kindness" or "generosity." It refers to the act of feeling happy or satisfied when others succeed or are fortunate, and is often used to describe a person who takes pleasure in the success or happiness of others. In practice, Firgun can be expressed in many ways, such as by offering congratulations, expressing appreciation, or by taking actions that help others achieve their goals. It is an important value in many cultures, and is particularly prevalent in Israeli culture.

My quote of the week is:

There’s no TAM, there’s no SAM, only early beachhead customers.” – Jim Goetz

NEW INVESTMENT ROUNDS

- Way to go? Nir Yaron ?and team? HyperGuest ?on your $23M series A to optimize inventory allocation, streamline operations, and increase revenue and margins for hotels and travel operators!

- Mabruk? Guy Guzner ?and team? Savvy ?on coming out of stealth with a $22M series A and $8M seed round for your new SaaS cybersecurity startup!

- Well done? ilan Samish and team? Amai Proteins ?on your $16M series B for your sustainable sugar substitute!

- Congratulations? Udi Cohen ?and team? Vendict ?on your $9.5M seed round to automate security compliance with Generative AI!

- Kudos? Michal Cieplinski ?and team? Capstack Technologies ?on your $6M seed round for your bank-to-bank marketplace to provide visibility into portfolios!

- Well done? Yoav Einav ?and team? Guidde on your coming out of the garage with $6M raised to date to help create tutorial videos with AI!

- Great stuff? Leonard Frankel ?and team? Bring It On on your $4M seed round to launch your skills gaming studio, starting with Bingo!

EXITS

- Congratulations? Udi Levy and team Cobwebs Technologies on your $200M acquisition by Spire Capital

- Kol hakavod? Elad Ben Meir and team SCADAfence, a Honeywell Company on your acquisition by 霍尼韦尔 for an amount estimated at tens of millions.

- Mazal tov? Oren Charnoff and team Fondue on your acquisition by Postscript for an undisclosed sum.

APPOINTMENTS

- Congrats? Gadi Fisher on joining the investment team at Hanaco Ventures

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER:

1) ?????Generative AI mega rounds and the opportunities for Israeli startups - an overview of where are Israeli startups when it comes to generative AI and what's next?

2)?Global venture funding falls to the lowest level since Q2 2020 (data by CB Insights ) and in Israel the fall has been even steeper (report by IVC Data and Insights ). In a more positive note, inflation eased to 3% in June ,

3)?This was another big week of generative AI progress

• Elon Musk launched xAI with the goal "to understand the true nature of the universe" - with the general idea using AI to “solve math”
• Anthropic launched Claude2 - the latest model has improved performance in coding, math and reasoning. It can produce longer responses, and is available in a new public-facing beta website at claude.ai in the US and UK.
• OpenAI ?launched "Code Interpreter" in beta to all paying subscribers and it's pretty amazing (Here's Ethan Mollick 's guide to how to use it ). Upload a data set and let the AI do the work. There has been a huge GPT-4 leak , including information on training data and weights. OpenAI announced new deals with both Shutterstock (to get image training data and help Shutterstock build Generative AI tools ) and The Associated Press (to get training data and license news stories ). The company got hit with fresh copyright infringement lawsuits , including one involving comedian Sarah Silverman.
• 谷歌 launched a number of upgrades for BARD , including the ability to add images to the prompt and availability in the EU and it now supports 40+ languages. The company also developed Med-Palm 2, a medical focused LLM to generate responses to medical questions.
• AI startup Hugging Face is raising $200M in new funding that will value the company at $4B
• Shopify announced a new AI sidekick - an AI bot that can answer questions and automate tasks like redesigning the homepage or putting products on sale.
• Stripe started using AI for fraud prevention .
• Stability AI Stability AI releases Stable Doodle , a sketch-to-image tool. CEO Emad Mostaque gets sued by co-founder who claims he was duped to sell his shares for $100 shortly before the company's round.
• Meta ?launched a new open-source Intermediate Graphics Library (IGL)
• China publishes interim rules on generative AI
• Adobe added an 'indemnity clause' to help enterprise adopt visual generative AI tech without fearing a lawsuit

The list goes on, but check the 'housekeeping' section if you want to stat more frequently informed.

HOUSEKEEPING

?? I got very positive feedback on my?#GENAI ?Whatsapp group but I'm considering where to take it next. Rather than 'come as you are' I'm going to make a new group that's invite-only and more curated.?Fill this short form ?to express interest.

???Please subscribe?to my new?Youtube Channel ?and?TikTok channel ?- I post videos regularly on Generative AI, startups and venture capital

Say Something Nice, Make Someone Happy - NEXT WEEK!

The 10th (!) International? #FirgunDay ?is coming on July 17-18th 2023 , and you are invited to join, VIRTUALLY, from anywhere in the world sharing the spirit of?#Firgun ?(Hebrew: ?????) - an act of kindness performed solely to make another person feel good.

So, How do you celebrate FirgunDay?

You come up with a Firgun — a compliment, a kind word, a small pat on the back — for someone (person, startup ,business or group) who deserves it and post it on any of your social networks, adding a photo or video and the hashtag?#Firgun . That's it!

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Chamath Palihapitiya speaks at University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business on the future AI startups needing much fewer people by embracing automation

CHARTS OF THE WEEK

Israeli investments were down in Q2 2023, but the monthly trend is looking more positive (source ) more here

Generative AI startups raised $15.2B so far in 2023 ??

(data by Dealroom.co )

I gave a talk this week at the Xoogler.co AI Symposium in London on the investor perspective in Generative AI. (Thanks Sal Mohammed !)

Here's one of the slides I created...

Industries ranked by their automation potential

Related, where AI is likely to significantly impact jobs according to the OECD

Snowflake vs. Databricks - How two cloud giants are now battling in the AI domain (source )

Another day, another Generative AI landscape, this time by Next47 (shame that it fails to mention Hour One and Munch , but oh well)

How is generative AI embraced in fintech companies (by Viola Ventures )

Interesting trends in generative AI

Where generative AI meets healthcare landscape (source )

Stability AI releases Stable Doodle , a sketch-to-image tool?

That's all for this week, thanks for tuning in. There's so much to celebrate in our "small" community!

Keep on creating!

Eze Vidra

#tech #startups #Israel #venturecapital #generativeAI