Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter

It's #Firgun time.

In case you're new here, 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. It's 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

My quote of the week is by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy:

"Generative AI may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud ... and perhaps since the Internet."

According to US intelligence Israel is expecting to be attacked by Iran in the next 24 to 48 hours, but I realised that #Firgun is the one place where we celebrate positivity, so I'd rather focus on the good stuff.

That's not to say that we shouldn't acknowledge the obvious. There are 134 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza since October 7th. Sadly, many were already confirmed dead. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME.

This week in tech, Elon Musk touted the Robotaxi, OpenAI's GPT-4 regained its place at the top of the LLM list with new updates, Google released its AI photo editing features for everyone and Adobe is buying video data to build its own video AI model.

NEW FUNDING ROUNDS

• Big congrats to Yotam Segev and team Cyera on your $300M series C and new unicorn status ($1.4B valuation) for your data security platform!
• Way to go Amiad Soto and team Guesty on your $130M series F for your property management software platform for the short-term rental (STR) and hospitality industry!
• Kudos Roi Agababa and team Novidea on your $30M series C extension for your cloud-native, data-driven insurance management system!
• Well done Shachar Schnapp and team PVML on your $8M seed round for your secure AI-powered data access platform!
• Mazel tov Yehuda Niv and team Spines on your $6.5M seed round to reduce book publishing time from six months to two weeks by leveraging AI in every step of the process!
• Congratulations Zivan Ori and team Datafy.io on your $6M seed round to provide 50% savings on online storage costs!
• Kol hakavod Micha Y. Breakstone ??????? and team Somite AI on your $5.3M seed round for leveraging AI to produce human tissue for cell therapies!
• Exciting milestone Avinoam Rubinstain and team Carrar on your $5.3M series A for your advanced cooling systems for electric vehicles that extend battery life! Six months ago, the company's R&D centre was damaged from a Hamas rocket!
• Mabruk Yoav Levy and team Upstream Security on your undisclosed strategic investment from 思科 for your connected vehicles and IoT XDR platform!
• Big thumbs up Gil Harel and team Clearitty on your undisclosed pre-seed round to create the glassdoor for sales people!

EXITS

• Massive congratulations Lee A. Rotenberg , Alex Schinasi , Omri Mendellevich and team Clay on the acquisition by Kangarootime - I was privileged to be a small part of your journey with Remagine Ventures

MISCELLANEOUS

• Samsung next is shutting down its presence in Israel. Kudos Eyal Miller and team for the brilliant job you've done over the years supporting the Israeli tech ecosystem with Samsung Next in the past 10 years.

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER

Israel:

• Israeli computer theorist Avi Wigderson wins $1M turing award - known as the Noble Prize for computer scientists, Wigderson's work randomness was recognised
• Wall street beacons a new wave of Israeli tech IPOs
• Team8 records exists of $1.1 billion in 3 months

General:

• Generative AI could be the largest technological transformation since the Internet
• ICMY: How AI startups can differentiate in a crowded market (by me on VC Cafe )
• How Gen-Z is becoming the toolbelt generation

MEDIA OF THE WEEK

The contextual fintech and embedded finance market map by Viola Fintech's was added to my 2024 startup landscape collection. It lists 120 companies operating in the space, including many Israeli startups.

Israel is the global leader in Turing Prizes per capita (source)

The Sequoia/ Forbes AI50 2024 - their selection of 50 promising AI companies (source)

Crypto VC investments are picking up again. VCs invested $2.5 billion globally in startups this past quarter, per PitchBook (source)

Among all the apps owned and operated by the New York Times Company, its gaming app accounts for a disproportionately large share of overall user time spent. According to Matthew Ball , the New York Times “is now a gaming company.” (source)

Yesterday the Israeli race driver Ariel Elkin won third place on the USF juniors Formula 4 car race. He went up to the podium and waved the helmet with the pictures of the hostages instead of waving the trophy, showing the world what's really important.

The 2024 Eurovision in Malmo Sweeden is a month away. This is the song by Eden Golan representing Israel, that had to change its name and lyrics in order to avoid being banned.

A bit tongue in cheek but pretty spot-on

That's all for this week's edition. Thank you to the 4,900 subscribers of this newsletter for tuning in.

There's a lot to celebrate in our "small" community. Keep on creating!

Eze Vidra

#tech #startups #venturecapital #israel #innovation