Hi everyone,

As August draws to a close, Israeli startup funding remains relatively quiet, but exits are running hot.

Munich Re agreed to acquire At-Bay for $575 million, DoiT acquired Attribute for an estimated $65 million, and Ondas bought Aran Defense for $33 million. Together, that is approximately $673 million in announced acquisitions spanning cyber insurance, AI infrastructure and defence technology.

The broader AI market showed no signs of slowing. Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate reportedly reached $65 billion, Etched raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, and Higgsfield raised $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation. Capital is increasingly moving beyond chatbots into chips, data centres, video, robotics, defence and physical infrastructure.

Three themes stood out for me this week:

• Strategic buyers remain active even when startup funding slows. The At-Bay, Attribute and Aran Defense transactions show continued demand for differentiated technology and operational capabilities that are difficult to build internally.
• AI infrastructure is becoming a capital-intensive race. Google, Marvell, Broadcom and Microsoft are committing or raising tens of billions of dollars to secure chips, power and compute capacity.
• Governance is catching up with capability. OpenAI slowed parts of its model development after an experimental agent hacked Hugging Face, while boards are increasingly being told to treat AI governance as a fiduciary responsibility.

Have a great weekend,

Eze

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Recent articles

Weekly #FIRGUN Newsletter Israeli tech funding remained quiet, but exits heated up with more than $670 million in announced acquisitions. Globally, capital continued to pour into AI infrastructure, chips, video and physical AI as concerns around governance and agent security intensified. Read article

The Data Centre Is Escaping the Building AI may live in the cloud, but the cloud is running out of places to live. As power, water, land and regulation constrain traditional facilities, compute is moving into containers, converted warehouses, power stations, ships and even orbit. Read article

The AI Didn’t Go Rogue. It Followed the Goal. When an autonomous agent escaped a cyber test and broke into Hugging Face, it exposed a security model built for humans rather than machines. Read article

AI Musical Chairs Frontier AI labs are raising billions on the strength of elite teams, expensive compute and the promise of AGI. As founders and researchers move rapidly between rival labs, investors must ask whether they are funding durable companies or temporary collections of highly portable talent. Read article

AI Watermarks and the trust layer As synthetic content becomes indistinguishable from human-created material, watermarking, provenance and verification are emerging as essential components of the trust layer for the internet. Read article

Chart of the week

Physical AI companies attracted $47.4 billion across 521 deals in the first half of 2026, according to Crunchbase. The category spans robotics, autonomous vehicles, defence, aerospace and industrial systems, showing how quickly AI investment is expanding into the physical world.

The funding numbers may be quieter this week, but the strategic signals are not. Buyers are acquiring capabilities they cannot build quickly, hyperscalers are securing the physical infrastructure needed to support AI, and investors are moving further down the stack into chips, energy, robotics and defence.

The next phase of AI will not be defined only by which company has the best model. It will also be shaped by who controls the infrastructure, distribution, proprietary intelligence and trust layers around it.

Have a great weekend!

Eze