Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter

It's #Firgun time.

The word "Firgun" (Hebrew: פירגון/ 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

Rockets, shooting and ramming attacks took place in several spots over the past week, but the world seems to have forgotten what Israel is fighting for in this conflict. Three hostages bodies were recovered from Rafah this week. We must bring them all home.

In the wider tech world, Elon Musk officially announced an oversubscribed $6 billion round for xAI to become "the most truth-seeking AI to advance humanity" and plans to build a Gigafactory for compute, Google search documents leaked, OpenAI created a new safety group and plans to release GPT-5 in 2025, and former board member Helen Toner shared why was Sam Altman fired. Mistral AI released Codestral - a 32k context window coding model supporting over 80 programming languages and setting a new standard in performance and latency and Discord officially enters gaming.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I'm an entrepreneur; I'm not afraid. I see problems as challenges. That's my approach to life.

By Erez Freibach , CEO of Israeli startup ZutaCore operating in Sderot, 3km from Gaza (source)

NEW FUNDING ROUNDS

Israeli tech companies raised $2.2 billion in Q2/2024 (so far), with Wiz capturing 42.9% of the capital raised in the quarter with its $965M series E (and $35M in secondaries).

• Congratulations Ido Neeman and team Firefly on your $23M series A for your code generation engine. May the memory of Firefly co-founder and former CTO Sefi Genis z"l who was killed on Oct 7 forever be a blessing.
• Kudos Amir Kaplan and team ifeel - Humanising Growth on your $20M series B to offer company employees access to online mental health support!
• Well done Guy Altagar and team Unlimited Robotics on securing a $5M seed round to provide hospitals autonomous robotic solutions to tackle staff shortages!
• Way to go Daphna Miller and team NewMoo on coming out of stealth with a $3.5M seed extension to leverage plant molecular farming to produce dairy alternatives!
• Good job Doron Levy and team Colors AI on your $1M pre-seed extension to turn turn unstructured customer feedback into product insights!

EXITS

• Mazal tov Eyal Peso and team Gauzy on the IPO debut next week, valuing the company at $350M! The nano tech company has developed smart glass, which allows for the control of the shading level of the glass in vehicles or buildings!
• Congrats Tomer Ben Ezra and team Tictuk on the acquisition of your restaurant ordering and marketing platform by Yum! Brands for an undisclosed sum!

LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER

Israel:

1. Where are they now? a look at the most promising Israeli startups of 2023
2. AI startup nation - Meet five companies showing how Israel still leads in new tech by Google Cloud
3. Congratulations Shimon Elkabetz and team Tomorrow.io on being featured as one of the 100 most promising companies in 2024 by TIME - you're in great company!

Global:

1. New on VC Cafe: The Magnificent Seven Invest $400 Billion a year in Frontier Technologies
2. 20 use cases for generative AI in the enterprise by Gartner
3. 20 tech trends to watch closely in 2024 - report by CB Insights

MEDIA OF THE WEEK

Something that popped on my social channels this week... If all eyes are on Rafah, we could use your help finding the Israeli hostages.

Related: Sudan is facing the world’s largest internal displacement crisis: More than 9.1 million people have been displaced. Almost 5 million people are on the verge of starvation.

Tel Aviv slipped a few places in the PitchBook ranking of startup cities. I'm sure it will bounce back and hope for better times for Israel soon!

Data from Carta on 905 Series A rounds raised from Apr 2023 thru Mar 2024. Primary rounds only, US rounds only. Industries had to have 10 separate raises to be included.

Super interesting report by Dealroom.co on the "Magnificent Seven" and their $400 billion a year spend on frontier technologies (source) - also featured in my latest post on VC Cafe

Andreessen Horowitz shared its thesis on AI voice startups. Here's a look at the B2C verticals / use cases where they're seeing the most voice agents emerge (source)

AI is coming fast to disrupt the services industry. Here's where Emergence Capital sees the biggest opportunities. (source)

Measuring AI hype and opportunity. The number of times AI was mentioned in earning calls - research by Jefferies

Bari Weiss spoke to Jerry Seinfeld on a wide range of topics. Here's what he had to say about his visit to Israel post Oct 7th.

In our sarcasm corner, Len Markidan won the Internet this week

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

Eze Vidra

#Israel #startups #venturecapital #innovation #vc #startupnation