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

Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president. He chose to include the families of the hos***es as the first topic in the ceremony and they stood right behind Trump in his main speech. It was hard not to get emotional watching Emily, Romi and Doron re-unite with their families last Sunday ?? (see video). Incredibly brave women. We are expecting 4 more women to return this Sunday as part of the current ceasefire deal. We must bring them all home so the healing can begin. #BRINGTHEMHOME ???

Slowly the normalcy seems to be returning to the Israeli startup ecosystem. More airlines have resumed regular flights to Tel Aviv. There are optimistic signs that hostilities are winding down and Israel’s geopolitical reality is brighter than it's been, with potential to expand the Abraham accords to other countries in the region. Here's to hoping.

The biggest news in tech this week was the announcement of Stargate Project - a $500B AI infrastructure investment plan for the US. OpenAI is standing to be the main beneficiary, and it already stirred controversy with Elon Musk's comments. The company also announced its first AI Agent, called Operator, available to PRO users only for now. Perplexity launched AI-powered assistant to help with daily tasks. Chinese AI heating up competition: DeepSeek AI rocked the AI world this week with its R1 Model showing similar results to OpenAI's o1 model, just open source and at 5% or 10% of the cost of OpenAI's API. 字节跳动 also unveiled upgraded AI model Doubao-1.5, which surpasses OpenAI’s o1 on AIME, a benchmark evaluating AI performance on complex tasks. Speaking of, TikTok 's US ban lasted 1 day, as President Trump granted the company a 75 day extension. The company is hoping it won't have to sell. 谷歌 is investing another $1 billion in Anthropic . The search giant also rolled out a new Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Model with advanced reasoning. Google also introduced Titans, a research paper detailing a novel approach that could replace the transformer model used by LLMs today. Are we about to see layoffs in banking? 高盛 CEO David Solomon says that AI can draft 95% of an S1 IPO prospectus “in minutes” (vs. a team of 6 and weeks of work before). French Open Source LLM Mistral AI is looking to IPO, Spline introduced Spell, a model to generate 3D worlds. And finally, Trump signed an executive order to promote crypto, potentially develop national digital asset stockpile, led by David O. Sacks .

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world." - Donald Trump, 2025 Inauguration Speech.

NEW FUNDING ROUNDS

• Congratulations Alon Joffe and team Eleos Health on securing a $60M series C to to power proprietary behavioural health AI technology with data from real sessions.
• Mazel tov Roy Tuvey and team Vertice on your $50M series C to continue scaling your SaaS spend optimisation platform!
• Well done Tal Mozes and team Mitiga on your $30M series B to protect enterprises from cybersecurity threats in their cloud environments.
• Kudos Ziv Fass and team PACKAGE.AI on your $14M series A to streamline last mile deliveries and logistics with AI!
• Way to go Matan Cohen and team Doti AI on your $7M seed round to help enterprises securely access and utilize internal data!

EXITS

• Not all exits are happy but nevertheless an outcome. Congratulations Avi Golan and team Oosto (formerly Anyvision) on the acquisition of your facial recognition technology by Metropolis Technologies for $125M.

NEW APPOINTMENTS

• Big congrats Mor Chen on your new role as Partner at Greylock focusing on early stage Israeli startups! Hope we can do a deal together soon!

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER

ISRAEL

1. Why I'm bullish about the Israeli tech sector - by Noam Bardin , former CEO of Waze (Acquired by Google for $1.4 billion)
2. For now, Israeli officials expect the agreement to hold - by Jerusalem Post
3. State of the cyber nation 2024 report - by YL Ventures and related:

GLOBAL

1. M&A involving VC backed startups picked up in 2024 - by Crunchbase
2. Tech leaders pledge $500 billion to invest in AI - by The Wall Street Journal
3. Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025 - by World Economic Forum

MEDIA OF THE WEEK

The 2025 Israeli retail-tech startup map by Coresight Research and the Retail Innovation Club was added to my new 2025 landscape collection on VC Cafe .

The resignation that wasn't. Calcalist, a leading Israeli publication, published that Michael Eisenberg is leaving the VC firm he helped create, Aleph , but didn't wait for confirmation. The article was deleted after he denied it on X and an apology was issued. Globes has more.

The proactive security startup landscape by MMC Ventures (source)

The fastest growing markets in 2025 revolve around AI.

That being said, only 32% of the strategy leaders we surveyed have active genAI deployments at their organisations. (source)

The top 3 pain points strategy teams cite as barriers to genAI adoption are:?

• Security & privacy risks (46%)?
• Competing internal priorities (42%)
• Legal & regulatory considerations (40%)

Live long and prosper (maybe with a bit of help from AI?). The new longevity startup landscape published by CB Insights

DeepSeek R1 rivals OpenAI’s o1 in Artificial Analysis Quality Index at lower cost

Thoughts on the evolving role of AI in SaaS and its potential disruption of traditional software models

Gaming is huge, but did you know that Roblox is the size of Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation COMBINED? It reaches 50% of US households.

The agent economy. Landscape by Felicis (source)

Europe’s VC shakeup. The European VC landscape is experiencing a significant contraction, with a 30% drop in active funds and a substantial decrease in fundraising, suggesting a shift towards established players and specialized smaller firms. (source: Sifted )

And finally, a wholesome moment of relief and emotion for Emily, Romi and Doron. May all the families waiting for their loved ones get to experience this.

We have a lot to celebrate in our "small" community. Keep on creating!

Eze Vidra