Yuval Passov

Tech continues to drive Israel’s economic resilience, but beneath the surface the ecosystem is showing signs of strain and health tech is feeling the pressure most. The announcement of clinical AI company Aidoc's recent $150 million raise, backed by General Catalyst, Square Peg, nVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), and four major U.S. health systems, is a sign of what is still possible: when the science is solid, the platform is ready, and the value is global, capital will follow. This is proven by the over 45 million patients currently benefitting from Aidoc's integration across more than 150 health systems. Aidoc’s success is an outlier today, but it should be the model. As the largest sector in Israeli innovation, with over 1,600 companies, health tech should be a source of strength. Instead, in the first half of 2025, it drew just $630 million in private funding — the lowest total in five years. Median deal sizes are shrinking, and time from seed to Series A has stretched to 54 months, pointing to deep structural challenges rather than a short-term slowdown. Capital is flowing elsewhere, toward sectors with faster cycles and clearer paths to scale. Cybersecurity raised $2.2 billion with a median round size of $25 million in H1 2025, while business software led all sectors with $3.2 billion. Health tech is struggling to compete for attention, investment, and talent. These trends are part of a broader shift. Israel’s global innovation position is narrowing, infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with the needs of deep tech, and overreliance on a few sectors is leaving others under-supported. Talent shortages and limited access to global markets are compounding the pressure. At Startup Nation Central, we are seeing this firsthand. Through our work with the 8400 The Health Network Health Network and across the ecosystem, the signals are clear. Health tech is underfunded and underprioritized at a time when its relevance has never been greater. Still, the fundamentals are here. Israel has a strong scientific foundation, a deep pool of entrepreneurial talent, a world-class healthcare system, and health professionals with a track record of innovation. Add to that a growing global demand for health solutions, and the potential is clear. With targeted investment, a renewed focus on translational research, and the right strategic partnerships, health tech can not only recover but take the lead as Aidoc has. The opportunity is real and so is the urgency to act on it. 

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🎙️✨ #SPOTLIGHT E6 is live! Stav Levi Neumark (Co-founder & CEO, Alta | AI Revenue Workforce) joins Avi Eyal (Managing Partner, Entrée Capital) to talk about how #AI #agents are transforming the way sales get done and reshaping #GTM execution. Together they dive into: 🔥 The data and infrastructure behind agent performance 🔥 How AI agents unlock pipeline most teams ignore 🔥 Rethinking how AI tools are priced and measured 🔥 What early-stage founders should get right from day one If you're building with AI agents, thinking about GTM scale, or rethinking how sales get done, this one’s for you. 🎧 Watch & listen now 👉 https://bit.ly/3IxMu5A 

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Moving to the US could be a startup's best move    Relocation to the US significantly increases the chances for international startups to become unicorns, according to our research.    For example, 44 Israeli VC-backed startups that moved to the US reached unicorn status. By contrast, only 3 unicorns in a comparable US-based sample were based in Israel. This suggests that Israeli startups relocating to the US are about 15 times more likely to achieve unicorn status.    We observed similar trends for other countries:  – India-founded startups relocating to the US are 6 times more likely to become unicorns (12 vs 2).  – UK-founded companies see an 8.5 times greater chance of achieving unicorn status after moving to the US (17 vs 2).    These numbers indicate that the US offers unique advantages for high-potential startups from around the globe, particularly from countries like Israel, India, and the UK.    Thank you to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Venture Capital Initiative for support.    Note: all unicorns in our sample must be US-based at the time of their first unicorn round. 

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🚀 Welcoming Insignito Solutions Ltd to the ICI Fund Portfolio! Excited to share our investment in Insignito, an Israeli startup pioneering the field of #drone #acoustics. Insignito's AI-powered technologies dramatically reduce drone noise, enable accurate long-range acoustic detection, and provide mission planning tools that optimize performance in real-world environments. What makes Insignito truly stand out is its founding team — Itay Nourian (CEO), Yarden Eilat (CTO), and Dor Ruf (VP R&D) — three longtime colleagues from the Israeli Air Force who bring deep technical expertise, operational excellence, and the trust that comes from years of working together in high-stakes environments. We believe Insignito has the potential to set the global standard for drone acoustics, opening new opportunities across commercial, defense, and urban applications. 👏 Grateful to back this visionary team and excited to see what’s ahead. 📩 Read more about Insignito in our latest newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dgM5u24d . Innovation • Community • Intelligence #DroneTechnology #AIInnovation #DeepTech #IsraeliStartups #VentureCapital #FutureOfFlight #AerospaceInnovation Timothy Jones Prof. Yaron Wolfsthal Aviv Nizri Ari Goldfarb

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The startup nation has done it again! 👏🏼 Google for Startups just announced the first cohort of its Growth Academy: AI for GovTech, with 25 companies that leverage AI to assist governments and improve life for citizens across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And among those selected companies, there is an Israeli startup: CargoSeer, that streamlines how customs agencies check international cargo shipments using AI. I’m humbled to see founders who bring fresh solutions to the complex problems societies have been trying to solve for years and even decades. And so proud of how Google& Google for Startups Israel supports the ecosystem and helps innovative startups make a real difference in the world!

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#Deeptech Venture Capital funds? The new Yozma #FoF by the Israel Innovation Authority is open for applications until November 4th, to support Israeli or foreign Venture Capital funds who have a dedicated Israeli focused Deeptech fund, led by experienced GPs. * Winners will recieve an investment of between $4m to $10m per fund. *Min size of targeted fund: $32M, Max IIA investment: 12.5% of the fund size. * All fund sizes are eligible, from early-stage to growth-stage investors. The deadline for submission of applications is November 4th, 2025 For more details: https://lnkd.in/d6_r6EQy

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Ever since Eyal Melamed joined as our VP R&D, we've been having some incredible, thought-provoking conversations. These aren't your typical executive check-ins. We get into the weeds on the technical challenges that fascinate us both - the kind of deep infrastructure work that brought Eyal to Rise in the first place. We talk about what it truly takes to make AI work at scale in ad tech - a massive undertaking that spans tackling infrastructure challenges, processing hundreds of trillions of data points in real-time, and building auction systems that simply never fail. Eyal calls our Smart Auction Management technology "one of the most sophisticated AI-powered auction engines in the industry." Coming from someone who’s seen and navigated scale at some of the most advanced tech organizations, that hits differently. This piece came out today about his take on what we've built here. https://lnkd.in/dbuSK2Nd Honestly, during all these conversations, one thing became clear to me: we’ve spent so much time building that we haven’t shared how we actually think differently about AI infrastructure. We’re built on a foundation of big data expertise - processing hundreds of trillions of data points every single day (take a moment to let that sink in..). We’ve engineered AI-based autoscaling that maintains performance at millions of requests per second. Our optimization models don’t hide behind black-box magic - they deliver transparent, explainable results.  And now, we’re layering Gen-AI on top of an infrastructure that already runs at scale like few others can imagine. So something this big calls for something new: Every week, I'll be sharing insights from our journey building AI-driven programmatic technology - the technical and strategic thinking behind systems that actually work in production. Excited to share the lessons we're learning while building AI at scale. P.S. Curious what you see here — authentic photo or AI-generated?

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