Hi everyone,

There was a lot to celebrate in our “small” community this week. Israeli and Israeli-founded startups announced approximately $1.4 billion in funding, more than twice the $577.5 million raised during the entire month of August.

​Wonderful led the week with a $550 million Series C at a $5 billion valuation, followed by Upwind Security with $300 million, HiBob with $166 million and Lyte with $165 million. Ten additional companies raised capital across AI security, defence, cloud infrastructure, maritime technology, consumer cybersecurity and smart toys.

Three themes stood out for me:

• Capital is flowing, but it remains highly concentrated. Wonderful, Upwind, HiBob and Lyte accounted for more than $1.18 billion of the total, reflecting investors’ willingness to pay a premium for perceived category leaders.
• Israeli momentum extends beyond cybersecurity. This week’s rounds included enterprise agents, physical AI, defence, hydrogen-powered maritime systems, executive productivity and connected consumer products.
• Liquidity and new fund formation are returning. ServiceNow acquired Sweep, LightSolver found a route to the public markets, XTEND began trading on the NYSE and Swish Ventures announced a new $250 million fund.

Globally, the AI race continued to accelerate. OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, and new models arrived from Google, Meta, World Labs and Microsoft. Meanwhile, Crusoe, Thinking Machines Lab, Cognition and Fluidstack pursued multibillion-dollar rounds at increasingly extraordinary valuations.

Plenty to unpack. But first...

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Recent articles

Weekly #FIRGUN newsletter Israeli startups announced more than $1.4 billion in funding this week, led by Wonderful, Upwind, HiBob and Lyte. The latest #FIRGUN also covers major exits, a new $250 million Israeli fund and the biggest developments across global technology and AI. Read article

Wonderful’s $5B Bet to Own the Enterprise AI Layer Wonderful’s opportunity is not simply connecting AI agents. It is owning the operational layer that turns unpredictable models into governed, measurable and dependable enterprise work. Read article

Why Israeli Unicorns Are Built in America Seventy percent of Israeli-founded unicorns were built in the United States. Israel can remain the engine room, but American customers, capital and commercial leadership increasingly need to be part of the original design. Read article

The Right Model for the Job Model routing promises to match every AI task with the right model based on quality, cost, latency and privacy, but it also creates a powerful new control point in the AI stack. Read article

Chart of the week

Israeli and Israeli-founded startups announced approximately $1.4 billion across 14 funding rounds this week (source)

Have a great weekend!

Eze Vidra