VC Survey 2026
“I expect Israel’s next export engine to be autonomy and security for the physical world”
Protego Ventures co-founder and managing partner Lital Leshem joins CTech as part of the VC Survey 2026: The Next Leap, to discuss the resilience of Israel’s high-tech sector, evolving deep-tech capital models, and the country’s next export engine.
“Over the last two years, Israeli tech proved something simple to global LPs,” says Lital Leshem, the co-founder and managing partner of Protego Ventures. “No matter what, it delivers.” Leshem says the geopolitical tension of recent years has pushed Israeli founders to think more carefully about dependencies, supply chains, and operational risk. “Founders aren’t just building for the end customer anymore, they’re designing every layer with resilience in mind,” she says.
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Leshem 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.
Leshem further notes that deep tech is increasingly becoming a clearly defined category, marked by dedicated capital and larger cheques written for fewer companies. Combined with Israel’s world-class universities and research pipeline, she argues, this creates a strong foundation for the next wave of quantum and deep-tech companies. Looking ahead, Leshem predicts that by 2030, “I expect Israel’s next export engine to be autonomy and security for the physical world.”
You can read the entire interview below:
Fund ID
Name of Fund: Protego Ventures
Total Assets Under Management (AUM): $70M
Partners/Managers: Lital Leshem, co-founder and managing partner and Lee Moser, co-founder and general partner
Notable Portfolio Companies (Active): XTEND and Prisma Photonic
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'?
Over the last two years, Israeli tech proved something simple to global LPs: no matter what, it delivers. Founders, teams, terms, supply chains, everything was stress-tested, and the ecosystem still kept building and shipping.
So yes, the narrative is shifting from “innovation” to extreme resilience, not just in surviving a downturn, but in building companies that hold up through market shocks, supply chain disruption, war, and geopolitical volatility. That’s a big part of why LPs are leaning in. And you could see it already in 2025 across fundraising momentum, check sizes, and exits, with that dynamic carrying into 2026.
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 can fund high-CAPEX ventures, but it takes a different capital stack than the classic “seed-to-A on software metrics” playbook. At Protego Ventures, we believe the models that work are milestone-based financing, early strategic customers, non-dilutive capital where available.
And the ecosystem is already moving in that direction: deep tech is becoming a real, mapped category with dedicated capital, and investors are writing bigger checks into fewer companies. We also saw it on the ground this past November in Tel Aviv at the first annual deep tech conference, the density of founders and investors was a signal that this category is scaling. Add Israel’s world-class universities and research pipeline, and you get a strong foundation for the next wave of quantum and deep tech companies.
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?
I wouldn’t say it’s pushed Israeli founders to build fully independent “sovereign” tech stacks. It’s pushed them to think much more seriously about dependencies, supply chains, and what happens when a “friendly” country or a critical chokepoint becomes unstable.
The Taiwan semiconductor concentration is the cleanest example: when so much of the world’s advanced chip manufacturing sits in one place, geopolitical risk becomes product risk. So founders aren’t just building for the end customer anymore, they’re designing every layer with resilience in mind.
At the same time, most Israeli startups still build on global clouds and platforms because they sell into global markets and speed matters. In most cases, investing in a fully sovereign stack simply doesn’t make financial sense. The shift is toward smart optionality, not full independence.
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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?
Since starting Protego Ventures, we’ve evaluated more than 100 startups and in the past few months, we’ve started seeing more and more ‘dual-use’ companies that started in the civilian sector and because of their capabilities, decided to use their technology to apply it to the battlefield.
Battle-tested capabilities like autonomous navigation in degraded environments, low-latency teleoperation, drone-based mapping, edge perception, and predictive maintenance translate directly into critical infrastructure: it’s asset-heavy, safety-constrained, labor-constrained, and still massively under-digitized.
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, I expect Israel’s next export engine to be autonomy and security for the physical world: systems that combine sensing, compute, communications, and decision layers across drones, robotics, space, and critical infrastructure. This is where Israel has a compounding advantage because of the built in operational feedback loops that exist on the battlefield, the deep technical talent that exists in the country, and the fact that there’s an urgency-driven customer base that forces products to work in real conditions.
As we’ve seen over the last 24 months, defense is attracting more and more capital and global attention, and that blend is where the next category-defining companies will be built.
Finally, what are 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward in 2026?
1. XTEND (Protego’s first portfolio company) is positioned for a real leap this year because they’re scaling with uncommon discipline, more like a PE-backed builder than a typical venture company. They’re using targeted acquisitions to expand capabilities and industrialize faster, alongside their growing facility in Tampa. Add in that they’re both a hardware and software company and have fresh capital behind the plan, and it feels like a team built to accelerate.
2. ASIO Technologies is another one to watch because it has already done the hard part without external funding. The company is completely bootstrapped, profitable, and operating with mature, combat-validated product lines backed by patented IP and a leadership team with deep EO/IR and US Air Force experience. With global demand rising and strong alignment with US and NATO priorities, ASIO’s leap this year is about converting proven deployment maturity into broader international adoption as they scale manufacturing and get ready for the compliance and qualification hurdles of new markets to accelerate.
