VC Survey 2026
“The sheer velocity of AI-driven threats makes human-in-the-loop a bottleneck rather than a safeguard”
Yoni Osherov, General Partner at Entrée Capital, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“Cybersecurity will be the first vertical to fully leap from copilots to autonomous agents. The sheer velocity of AI-driven threats makes human-in-the-loop workflows a bottleneck rather than a safeguard,” said Yoni Osherov, General Partner at Entrée Capital, when asked which specific vertical will be the first to fully trust AI with independent decision-making.
“We are moving toward ‘autonomous defense,’ where AI agents make millisecond decisions on containment and remediation. In cybersecurity, the cost of not trusting the agent is already higher than the risk of the agent making a mistake,” he added.
“In parallel, contact-center voice and text agents will be among the fastest adopters of agentic models, operating autonomously in increasingly complex customer interactions. While brand risk keeps humans in the loop longer, rapid progress at the infrastructure layer and growing enterprise urgency will continue to push additional verticals toward full autonomy.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Osherov joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Entrée Capital
Total Assets Under Management: $1.5B
Partners/Managers: Avi Eyal, Ran Achituv, Eran Bielski, Yoni Osherov, Saul Levin, Tomer Niv, Eli Dubnov
Notable Portfolio Companies: monday.com, Riskified, HiBob, Gusto, Stripe, Anchor, BRIA, Darrow, Classiq, SpaceX, Empathy, AirEV, Blink, ClassiQ
Notable Exits: monday.com, Riskified, Breezometer, Talon Cyber, Perimeter81, Coupang, Weavy, Deliveroo, Cazoo, Snapchat, PillPack
The Liquidity Leap: After a period defined by cash preservation, will 2026 see the reopening of the IPO window for Israeli tech, or will M&A remain the sole viable liquidity event?
2026 will not mark a full reopening of the IPO window, but rather a disciplined and selective one. We expect a small number of Israeli companies to go public, those that are clear category leaders, with hundreds of millions in revenue, predictable growth, strong Net Revenue Retention, and mature governance.
For the majority of startups, however, M&A will remain the primary liquidity path. Strategic buyers are returning with greater clarity around synergies and pricing discipline, making acquisitions more realistic than broad public listings. The era of “IPO as default” will not return in 2026; liquidity will be earned, not assumed.
We also believe the Tel Aviv stock market will start to become a reasonable liquidity path for mid sized tech companies, however, there is much work still to be done with changing its regulatory environment to be more in line with NASDAQ.
The Valuation Leap: Moving past the market correction, what is the single most critical metric (e.g., EBITDA, NRR) that will drive premium valuations in 2026?
In 2026, as enterprise budgets increasingly shift toward AI and solution trialing becomes frictionless, stickiness of revenue and quality of growth will matter more than growth at any cost.
Gross Revenue Retention will be the baseline signal of true product value, especially as customers rapidly test and discard tools.
And premium valuations will be reserved for companies that pair exceptional GRR with product-driven NRR, expansion that comes from deeper usage and platform adoption, not services or forced upsell.
Companies that demonstrate 95%+ GRR alongside 120%+ NRR, while maintaining operational efficiency through lean, agentic teams, will be rewarded disproportionately in valuation.
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?
Defense technologies themselves are rarely venture-scale businesses, given long procurement cycles, capital intensity, and a narrow buyer base dominated by primes. However, the capabilities developed inside defense, real-time sensing, autonomy, edge intelligence, and decision-making under uncertainty, are highly transferable.
The biggest civilian disruption will occur in logistics and industrial operations, where these battle-tested technologies can be deployed across ports, warehouses, manufacturing floors, and last-mile delivery. These are global, high-volume markets with shorter sales cycles and software-like economics. Companies that successfully abstract defense-grade capabilities into scalable civilian products, rather than remaining defense vendors, will capture the real venture-scale opportunity.
The Contrarian Leap: What is one sector or trend currently ignored by the herd that you believe represents the most undervalued opportunity for the coming year?
One of the most undervalued opportunities is deep vertical software for traditional, non-tech industries. While capital and attention have crowded into horizontal AI platforms, sectors like services and manufacturing operations, insurance and financial back-office, and regulated services remain structurally under-digitized.
Founders who combine domain expertise with modern software and agentic workflows can quietly build highly defensible, cash-generative businesses, with far less competitive noise and significantly more pricing power than today’s crowded AI categories.
Related articles:
- “Israeli tech is increasingly positioned to lead the next wave of value creation across AI-driven verticals”
- “Almost anything proven under battlefield conditions can become a commercial product once it’s translated into civilian workflows”
- “2026 will no longer be a one-way street toward forced consolidation”
Finally, name 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward this year.
AirEV (portfolio) - Expanding at a rapid pace, with defense, and logistics paying customers and its eVTOLs already in the field. It has achieved certification in the USA and is ramping up mass production.
Sensi.ai (portfolio) - The AI company in the elderly care vertical is rapidly becoming the de-facto operating system for the sector. Its Predictive Care Intelligence is gaining traction across the industry.
