It’s #Firgun time!
The original version of Firgun was published on LinkedIn. Subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.
In case you’re new here, the word “Firgun” (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” (which stands for being happy for someone else’s misfortune). Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for members of our community’s accomplishments, good fortune and wins. More about the concept of Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p. In November #FIRGUN officially celebrated 5 years. See my update on what I’ve learned from writing Firgun and what keeps me going. If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to subscribe, you can find previous editions on my blog, VC Cafe.
The US and Iran agreed (in principle) a two-week ceasefire. It’s too early to tell if it will stick, and the tech ecosystem remains on high alert with the fighting in Lebanon still going on. As one journalist put it, we’re used to to wars that look like movies, with a clear beginning, middle and ending. Roaring Lion, however, is more like a TV series and we just finished season two. The big story in tech this week is that AI21 Labs, an Israeli AI unicorn founded by Prof. Yoav Shoham and Prof Amnon Shaashua is in talks to be acquired by Nebius after M&A talks with NVIDIA faltered. The deal is not yet closed. Israel celebrated Passover this week so it’s a bit quieter on the tech front.
In the wider tech world, the AI arms race officially entered a new gear. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google took the unusual step of publicly joining forces through the Frontier Model Forum to share intelligence and clamp down on Chinese labs “distilling” their frontier models. Anthropic also announced project Glasswing, a cybersecurity initiative that will use its Claude Mythos Preview model to help find and fix software vulnerabilities as well as ‘Managed Agents‘ a moved viewed by many as an OpenClaw killer. OpenAI has officially entered the media business by acquiring TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), the acquisition signals a shift from building tools to owning the platforms that explain them. Meta debuted Muse Spark (code-named Avocado), the first major model out of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Google put Gemma 4, it’s lightweight model, available to run locally on people’s phones, without need for connectivity. China’s Z.ai released GLM-5.1 as new open-source coding leader. An open source project from actress Milla Jovovich and Ben Sigman called MemPalace claims 100% on LongMemEval, a level no model or agent has reached. Hermeus, the Atlanta-based hypersonics startup, closed a $350 million round to build unmanned hypersonic fighters, extending the defense-tech momentum into aerospace.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Roaring Lion was a significant operation, but success isn’t binary” –
Amit Segal, Chief political commentator for Channel 12 News
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Way to go Israel Duanis and team Linx Security on your $50M series B to manage Identity Governance & Administration in an AI world!
- Well done Hasan Abasi and team HAAT Delivery on securing $20M series C to continue expandig your food delivery services!
- Congratulations Guy Raz and team Q-Factor on coming out of stealth with a $24M seed round to move Quantum computing beyond current qubit constraints with neutral atom technology!
- Kudos Ravit Netzer and team Scala Biodesign on your $16M series A to accelerate AI driven drug development!
EXITS
NEW FUNDS
- Congratulations Lior Susan and team Eclipse on securing $1.3 billion across two new funds to accelerate the reinvention of physical industries!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
REMAGINE VENTURES/ VC CAFE
ISRAEL
GLOBAL
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Enterprises are using AI today for coding, legal, support, healthcare, and more. Deep dive by Kimberly Tan (source)
The opportunity in vertical AI by Menlo Ventures (source)
VC-backed companies in agentic AI raised over $24 billion across more than 1,300 deals—equivalent to 73% of all dollars in the space from 2015 through 2024, according to our analyst note. The rapid rise means we’ve turned the corner from experimentation to deployment. (source)
Semi is a one-player game. Apps is a two-player game. Infra is the only competitive layer. The most profitable strategy in AI is still selling the shovels. Report by Apoorv Agrawal (source)
Office of the CFO tech landscape by i5invest (source)
Where do LLMs mostly go for answers…
That’s all for this week. Let’s hope for a quiet weekend. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community. Keep on creating!
Shabbat shalom,
Eze Vidra
I’m a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google’s first physical hub for startups.
I’m also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we’ve built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.