VC Survey 2026
“Israeli tech is not being ‘rebranded’ it is being more clearly understood”
Blumberg Capital managing director Yodfat Harel Buchris joins CTech to share her perspective on resilience as a competitive advantage, the state of deep and dual-use tech, and what will propel Israel’s next export engine in the years ahead, as part of the VC Survey 2026: The Next Leap.
The narrative for Startup Nation in 2026, according to Yodfat Harel Buchris, managing director at Blumberg Capital, “isn’t shifting away from innovation. It’s evolving.” She continues, “Innovation is now paired with extreme resilience. Resilience as a competitive advantage.” Describing what she terms a quality-over-quantity movement in Israel’s high-tech sector, Harel Buchris notes that “tourist capital” is thinning out, while high-conviction global investors are increasingly concentrating into fewer, stronger teams.
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Harel Buchris joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026, which invites prominent investors to discuss the topics, trends, and “leaps” expected in the year ahead.
With dual-use gaining ground, Harel Buchris predicts that the civilian sector set to see the greatest disruption from Israel’s battle-tested technologies is logistics and supply chain orchestration. By 2030, she further envisions Israel’s tech leadership being anchored in Secure Intelligent Systems, and names quantum as a “next frontier.”
That said, she cautions about the challenges ahead, including scarcity in deep hardware, AI infrastructure, and quantum expertise, alongside the departure of top researchers. “Stronger academia-startup bridges and programs to retain elite technical talent are essential to capture Israel’s deep-tech opportunity,” she says.
You can read the entire interview below:
Fund ID
Name of Fund: Blumberg Capital
Total Assets Under Management (AUM): $870M
Partners/Managers: David Blumberg, Yodfat Harel Buchris, Bruce Taragin, Steve Gillan
Notable Portfolio Companies (Active): BioCatch, Yotpo, Trulioo, Addepar, Hootsuite, Angle Health, Sharegain, Fundguard
Notable Exits: DoubleVerify, Braze, Nutanix, Finaro, Check Point Software, Medigate
The Global Leap: How is the 'Israeli Tech' asset class being rebranded to global LPs in 2026? Are we shifting the narrative from 'Innovation' to 'Extreme Resilience'?
Israeli tech is not being ‘rebranded’ so much as it is being more clearly understood.
For years, global LPs associated Israeli tech primarily with innovation density, deep technical talent, cybersecurity leadership, and breakthrough engineering. That story is still true. But what has become impossible to ignore is the extraordinary resilience of Israeli founders and companies.
If one were to look at how Israeli startups have continued to build, sell, hire, and scale through repeated cycles of geopolitical instability, global market drawdowns, and operational disruption, a pattern becomes clear. These are companies that don’t pause when conditions are hard – they adapt. They keep going.
So the narrative in 2026 isn’t shifting away from innovation. It’s evolving. Innovation is now paired with extreme resilience. Resilience as a competitive advantage.
This is a quality over quantity movement, and the data supports this idea. In 2025, the number of rounds fell toward decade lows, while the median deal size climbed to $10.5M, a 50% YoY increase. In other words, “tourist capital” thinned out, while high-conviction global investors concentrated into fewer, stronger teams.
The Deep Tech Leap: With the rising focus on hardware-heavy sectors (Defense, Climate, Quantum), is the Israeli VC model adapted to fund high-CAPEX ventures?
Israel’s venture capital ecosystem is starting to adjust to high-CAPEX deep-tech, but the transition is still underway. Historically, Israeli VC excelled in software and cybersecurity, low-capital models with fast paths to exit, which built Israel’s innovation brand but doesn’t fit capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, quantum, and industrial AI.
Today, VCs are writing larger checks, and partnering with corporations or governments to share risk. Multinationals like Nvidia, Intel, and Amazon are investing billions in local R&D, strengthening the pipeline of systems-level engineering talent.
Yet bottlenecks remain: deep hardware, AI-infra, and quantum expertise is scarce, and some top researchers are leaving, seen by 20% of computer science (CS) graduates who are moving abroad. Stronger academia-startup bridges and programs to retain elite technical talent are essential to capture Israel’s deep-tech opportunity.
The Sovereign Leap: Have the geopolitical lessons of recent years pushed Israeli startups to build independent, 'sovereign' tech stacks to reduce reliance on global platforms?
Israeli startups build independence through data ownership, while still building on top of global platforms.
The economics are clear: the hyperscaler layer is concentrated, for example: AWS, Microsoft, and Google captured about 63% of the enterprise cloud infrastructure market, and the same applies for LLMs, so most startups will keep using these providers rather than recreating a sovereign cloud from scratch.
The government's job is to lay the floor, not force every startup to build an independent stack. Project Nimbus is a $1.2B government cloud program designed to keep critical workloads on local infrastructure and improve continuity. Meanwhile, the Israel Innovation Authority selected Nebius to build a national AI supercomputer with over $150M total investment so startups can focus on product value rather than reinventing compute and cloud foundations.
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The Dual-Use Leap: Israel has mastered Defense Tech. Which civilian industry (e.g. Construction, Agri, Logistics) will see the biggest disruption from adapting these battle-tested technologies?
One civilian sector poised for continued disruption from these battle-tested technologies is logistics and supply chain orchestration.
Israeli companies have long demonstrated resilience and adaptability, from pivoting core technologies to thrive in dynamic environments to layering advanced cybersecurity into every part of the digital stack. That DNA is now flowing into civilian industries in profound ways.
Modern defense systems demand real-time intelligence, predictive modeling, robust communication networks, and autonomous decisioning under uncertainty, the very capabilities that enterprise logistics teams now need to manage complex global flows, accelerate delivery times, and optimize resilience against disruption.
This shift is reinforced by broader market dynamics. Big Tech’s AI-cloud-security race is pulling Israeli winners into M&A, as platform players buy scarce capabilities instead of developing it themselves. The liquidity mix reflects this, with Israeli tech deals and listings jumping to nearly $80B in 2025 from $13.4B in 2024.
As IPOs thaw and potentially lean beyond classic SaaS, scarcity premiums keep the best private longer, creating strong incentives to adapt national security-grade technologies to large, mission-critical civilian systems like global logistics.
The Next Engine: Cybersecurity has been Israel's primary export engine for a decade. Which domain is best positioned to take the lead by 2030?
By 2030, Israel’s tech leadership will be anchored in Secure Intelligent Systems: a combination of cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, quantum computing, semiconductors, and industrial-scale energy. Cybersecurity remains essential but increasingly as part of the infrastructure protecting AI models, data pipelines, and compute.
Quantum will also be the next frontier. In 2025, Israeli quantum startups raised nearly $500M, including Classiq (over $200M total) and Quantum Art ($100M Series A). With hardware, error-correction, and cryptography, supported by semiconductor and energy buildout for high-performance AI and quantum environments, Israel can build a resilient, trusted technology stack that extends export leadership well beyond cybersecurity.
Finally, what are 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward in 2026?
From Blumberg Capital’s portfolio:
1. Anchor: Anchor is building the infrastructure for agentic AI, letting autonomous AI agents interact reliably with real-world web environments. Its AI browser platform bridges reasoning and execution, enabling enterprises to scale AI safely and effectively. Anchor is already working with strategic partners and demonstrates how secure, resilient AI infrastructure becomes operational at scale.
2. Aryon Security: Aryon prevents cloud and AI attacks before they happen. Its platform enforces security policies upstream, stopping misconfigurations and vulnerabilities from entering production. This proactive approach meets urgent enterprise demand for built-in, scalable security.
3. Sharegain: Sharegain is building core infrastructure for modern capital markets by modernizing securities lending at scale. Its platform productizes a traditionally opaque, institutional-only process, enabling brokers to offer passive yield on idle shares in a transparent and compliant way, improving capital efficiency in a foundational market mechanism.
