In memoriam – this week’s version is devoted to Zvi Halfin (z”l), my stepfather and shut member of our household who handed away final week. Might his reminiscence endlessly be a blessing.
The unique model of this text was revealed on Linkedin.
When you’re new right here, the phrase “Firgun” (pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is a casual fashionable Hebrew time period and idea in Israeli tradition (initially Yiddish), which describes real, unselfish delight or pleasure within the accomplishment of the opposite individual. It’s the alternative of “schadenfreude” (which stands for being joyful for another person’s misfortune). Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pleasure, or admiration for members of our group’s accomplishments, luck and wins. Extra about Firgun and why it issues on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
Israeli startups raised $2.1 billion in Q1 2025 in 96 disclosed rounds, with $1 billion raised in March alone. Israeli cybersecurity corporations accounted for $996M, roughly 50% of all investments. There are nonetheless 59 Israeli hostages held in G**a. We should #BRINGTHEMHOME
Within the wider tech world, Trump’s international tariff’s erased $2.2 trillion from the market this week amid uncertainty. US shares undergo worst quarter since 2022. OpenAI raised $40 billion (led by SoftBank) at a document $300 billion valuation. Attention-grabbing information: ChatGPT has hit 20 million paid subscribers. It features 1M customers in a single hour and GPT 4.5 has handed the Turing Take a look at. Amazon launched Nova Act browser agent. Wikimedia Basis shared that bandwidth up 50% from AI crawlers. Runway launched Gen-4 AI fashions and introduced a $308M spherical. Anthropic launched Claude for Training. Google DeepMind outlined its strategy to AGI security in 4 key areas of danger: misuse, misalignment, errors, and structural dangers. NVIDIA faces dilemma as Chinese language companies place $16B in AI chip orders. Meta introduced MoCha, a brand new mannequin that turns textual content or voice into tremendous reasonable speaking characters.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Legacy isn’t leaving one thing for individuals. It’s leaving one thing in individuals.”
— Peter Strople
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Dr. Aharon El-Bahar and crew Retym, Inc on securing a $75M collection D on your AI datacenter chip!
- Effectively finished Shay Levi and crew Unframe AI on popping out of stealth with $50M in funding ($30M collection A and beforehand undisclosed $20M seed spherical) to exchange legacy software program with speedy, tailor-made options!
- Kudos Roy Baharav and crew Hello Auto on elevating $15M collection A to automate drive-thru orders with AI!
- Approach to go Yuval Tal and crew Linguana on securing $8.5M in seed funding for AI dubbing!
- Good things Matan Goldner and crew Conntour (YC W25) on securing $7M in seed funding to leverage AI for safety digicam monitoring!
- Nice information Arik Faingold and crew Autonomy AI on popping out of stealth with $4M in seed funding to combine autonomous AI brokers into improvement groups
EXITS
No exits reported this week.
APPOINTMENTS
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
- A report on the Tel Aviv startup ecosystem – by Dealroom.co and Tel Aviv World
- Deepmind says that AGI could outhink people by 2030
- Every thing you study in YC in 10 minutes – on VC Cafe
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Israeli startups raised $2.1M in Q1 2025 throughout 96 rounds
Over 180 multinationals have R&D facilities in Israel, tapping into native expertise (view report)
Roughly $1.7 trillion was erased from the S&P 500 firstly of US buying and selling on Thursday amid worries that President Donald Trump’s sweeping new spherical of tariffs may plunge the economic system right into a recession. The injury was heaviest in corporations whose provide chains are most depending on abroad manufacturing.
The memes saved coming
U.S. 10-year treasury yields slumped to the bottom in additional than 5 months
OpenAI income forecast ? (as per Bloomberg story)
If OpenAI was a public firm…
The CFO tech stack by Norwest (supply)
AI is reworking the industrial and monetary potential for vertical software program, reducing construct prices and multiplying monetisation alternatives. by Daybreak Capital (supply)
A motive to be optimistic. Thoma Bravo expects the tech market to proceed to develop. AI will profit enterprise software program clients in a minimum of two key methods:
1) Democratize entry in order that extra customers could make use of deep enterprise insights constructed from large information units; and
2) Allow clients to make real-time working choices at scale, with larger pace, precision and fewer labor enter.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.
There’s rather a lot to rejoice in our “small” group. Carry on creating!
I am a former basic companion 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 help of Room to Learn. Since inception in 2012 we have constructed 11 colleges and 50 libraries within the growing world.
