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

Happy 4th of July, USA! As someone put it this week, the big loser from the debate last week was none of the candidates, it was America. With France taking a hard right, and the UK taking a left turn in yesterday's election, the big allies of Israel all seem to be at turning points domestically. I hope that no matter who wins or what their agenda is, they should support the need to free the hostages and #BRINGTHEMHOME.

Israeli tech made a strong recovery in Q2 2024 with $2.9 billion raised in 110 rounds. Even when excluding Wiz 's mega round of $965M, it's still a 19% increase compared to the previous quarter. The number of foreign investors who invested for the first time in Israeli technology companies increased in Q2 after a continuous decline according to preliminary numbers. A good reminder that Israeli founders deliver #NOMATTERWHAT.

In the tech world, 谷歌 reported a 50% jump in emissions due to AI energy use, Figma pulled out its AI features a week after launching them because they kept ripping off existing designs (like the Apple weather app), Perplexity is under fire for recreating paywalled content (and seemingly ignoring Internet politeness standards), Meta introduced new 3D Gen system to produce 3D assets, OpenAI exposed chatgpt chats on the MacOS app, and 微软 released Florence 2, a vision foundation model.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope." - Helen Keller

NEW FUNDING ROUNDS

• Congratulations to Allon Bloch and team K Health on the $50M series G at $900M valuation, to give doctors the ability to offer personalised primary care visits!
• Well done Itay Shrem and team SendBlocks on your $8.2M seed round to streamline blockchain data management!
• Kudos Eyal Cohen, PhD and team COGNIFIBER on securing a $5M seed round to develop processors that perform AI tasks 1,000 times faster than Nvidia!

APPOINTMENTS

• Congratulations Alon Kantor on joining 10D as partner!
• Kudos Ilan Leiferman on joining Vintage Investment Partners to head up their platform/value add!

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER

Israel:

1. Preliminary report on Israeli tech fundraising in Q2 2024
2. Dan Senor : optimistic about Israel but fearful about US jews
3. According to PWC data received by Calcalist, the cumulative amount of M&As and IPOs of Israeli technology companies reached $4.7 billion in the first half of 2024, a jump from $2.7 billion in the same period last year. But there are reasons for concerns.

Global:

1. Mary Meeker releases a new report on the state of AI
2. The state of venture report Q2 2024

MEDIA OF THE WEEK

By the end of Q2/2024, Israeli high-tech seemed to have adjusted to the extreme conditions and grew. Q2/2024 was the first quarter since the beginning of 2022, in which there was no decrease compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

What's the best country to launch a startup? Israel ranks #4 globally (source)

What's the best place to start a cybersecurity startup? (source)

AI startups attracted 28% of all venture funding in Q2 2024, a new record

AI is coming to automate accounting. A new mapping by Andreessen Horowitz

How AI is helping supercharge sales? A new landscape by Sapphire Ventures

15 years of business and life lessons in less than 500 words

Luma Dream Machine brings popular memes to life and stitches them together

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

Eze Vidra

#Israel #tech #startups #venturecapital