The unique model of this article was printed on Linkedin.
In case you’re new right here, the phrase “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is a casual trendy Hebrew time period and idea in Israeli tradition (initially Yiddish), which describes real, unselfish delight or delight within the accomplishment of the opposite individual. It’s the alternative of “schadenfreude” (which stands for being blissful for another person’s misfortune). Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, delight, or admiration for members of our group’s accomplishments, success and wins. Extra about Firgun and why it issues on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
Yesterday marked 600 days since October seventh. There’s little or no I can add right here along with the truth that there’s 58 Israeli hostages left behind, about one third are thought of alive and we should #BRINGTHEMHOME ??
Israeli startups raised $1.25 billion in Could 2025. This previous week in Israeli tech marked the closure of two worldwide R&D centres in Israel, Sompo (a Japanese conglomerate which operated an innovation centre for the previous 10 years) and eBay which introduced that it’ll shut down its Israel workplace and is letting go 200 staff. Not excellent news, however on the similar time, a brand new report on Israeli founders in stealth concluded that Israel is experiencing a brand new ‘child increase’ in startups, with a 30% improve in new firm creation. Maybe the 2 issues are associated…
Within the wider tech world, the browser wars are again… Opera unveils Opera Neon, an AI browser for the agentic internet, Perplexity launched Comet, The Browser Firm mentioned it’s going to open supply its Arc Browser… OpenAI up to date ChatGPT Operator with new reasoning mannequin, and Jony Ive is creating AI necklace with iPod Shuffle design Mistral AI launched Brokers API for constructing AI apps. Elon Musk stepped down from DOGE and can return to specializing in Tesla and SpaceX, however in the meantime Neuralink, his mind implant firm, raised $600M in Collection E. GrokAI, X’s LLM, is partnering with Telegram Messenger for $300M a 12 months… UAE gives free ChatGPT Plus to all residents. Grammarly raised $1B to Increase its AI Productiveness Suite. DeepSeek says its R1 replace can carry out arithmetic, programming, and basic logic higher than the earlier model, and comes near o3 and Gemini 2.5 Professional. Tencent has simply open-sourced HunyuanPortrait, an AI framework that transforms static portraits into extremely reasonable animations with only one picture and a video template.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“It’s not that I’m so good, it’s simply that I stick with issues longer.”– Albert Einstein
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Enormous congrats Ron Gura and workforce Empathy in your $72M sequence C to assist households navigate the bereavement course of and to revolutionise life insurance coverage origination.
- Nicely executed Roy Danon and workforce Buildots in your $45M sequence D spherical to modernise international development with AI!
- Kudos Pavel Gurvich and workforce Tenzai in your $32M seed spherical for a stealth mode AI cybersecurity startup!
- Method to go Gilad Uziely and workforce Sequence in your $7.5M sequence A to automate client and SMB funds with ‘programmable transactions’ !
- Mazel tov Nir Gazit and workforce Traceloop on securing a $6.1M seed spherical to your LLM observability platform!
- Kol hakavod Matias Sigal and workforce REplace in your $2.1M seed spherical to speed up clear vitality deployment with website choice platform!
EXITS
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
ISRAEL
- A virtually 30% surge within the variety of stealth-mode startup founders has been revealed in a particular report by Dealigence – New report by Dealigence and Google for Startups Israel
- Israel Acknowledges Use of Laser Weapons to Intercept Drones – a comparatively low cost and scalable defence tech resolution for an enormous risk
- Find out how to dwell as a way to make the world a greater place. Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s Graduation Speech Should Be Heard.
GLOBAL
- State of Enterprise Software program 2025 Report by Silicon Valley Financial institution
- https://ai-2027.com/ is a analysis backed piece on the influence AI can have within the subsequent two years.
- Anthropic CEO warns AI may erase half of entry-level white-collar jobs.
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
The founders in stealth report has some fascinating knowledge on the potential startup increase in 2025 – Supported by Stealth founders inhabitants rising by 27.9% within the final 12-months (supply).
The world’s most educated nations per capita… there’s a variety of work to do…
Monumental sums of cash are going to AI-related startups. Nonetheless, the largest slice of funding is coming at late stage. Over the previous 12 months, practically half of AI-related funding went to late-stage enterprises, in accordance with Crunchbase . (supply)
There’s a sequence A crunch, with solely 15.5% of startups that raised a seed in Q1 2023 graduating to lift sequence A 2 years after. However who’s getting funded on the sequence A stage within the US nowadays? fascinating knowledge by Carta
Overlook about web optimization, it’s time to fret about GEO (generative engine optimisation) – how your model reveals up in LLMs. New analysis by Andreessen Horowitz on How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Guidelines of Search (supply)
How far are we from a superhuman coder or superhuman researcher powered by AI? Ought to we decelerate or speed up the method of getting these in individuals’s fingers? a prediction (supply)
Over 40% (7) $1B+ private-to-private acquisitions have occurred within the final 12 months. OpenAI, Databricks, and Stripe have every spent over 15% of their complete funding thus far on acquisitions within the final two years.
What methods is huge tech adopting in the direction of leveraging AI? from the fascinating newest slide deck by Benedict Evans AI is consuming the world – (supply)
“We’re not what we are saying, we’re not what we expect, and we’re not even what we imagine. On this life, we’re what we do.” – watch this video by the mom of Hersh Goldberg Polin z”l
That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.
There’s rather a lot to have fun in our “small” group. Carry on creating!
I am a former basic accomplice at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google’s first bodily hub for startups.
I am additionally the founding father of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing collectively the startup ecosystem on biking challenges in assist of Room to Learn. Since inception in 2012 we have constructed 11 colleges and 50 libraries within the creating world.
