VC Survey 2026
“When Taiwan gets tense, every AI chip gets expensive. Companies building around that constraint will own the next decade.”
Judah Taub, Managing Partner at Hetz Ventures, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“The next breakthrough won't be a better ChatGPT. It'll be applying the same architecture to something we haven't thought to model yet," said Judah Taub, Managing Partner at Hetz Ventures, when asked to highlight a sector or trend that represents the most undervalued opportunity for the coming year.
"We forget that ‘Large’ makes models more robust and ‘Model’ makes sense regardless, but the underlying technology is transferable to domains that don't require 'Language'. I think we'll see other transformational models emerge beyond language,” he added.
He went on to highlight “material-light, supply-chain-resilient designs,” which he believes will “outperform best-in-lab designs when the world gets tight.”
“When Taiwan gets tense, every AI chip gets expensive. The companies building around that constraint will own the next decade. As rare materials become scarcer and global tensions rise (or even just the perception of tension increases), the ability to build tech that scales without chokeholds becomes critical. Sodium-ion batteries, rare-earth-free electric motors, grid alternatives. These aren't flashy, but they're strategic.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Taub joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Hetz Ventures
Total Assets Under Management: $500M
Partners/Managers: Judah Taub, Managing Partner; Pavel Livshiz, General Partner; Guy Fighel, Partner & Head of Hetz Data Program; Anat Eitan, Partner & CFO
Notable Portfolio Companies: Majestic Labs, BlinkOps
Notable Exits: Prompt Security, acquired by SentinelOne (2025); Silk Security, acquired by Armis (2024); Granulate, acquired by Intel (2022)
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?
IPO readiness remains challenging, and the alternatives keep proving themselves - therefore, I don't think we'll see many Israeli companies IPO in 2026.
Late-stage fundraising is strong, and the M&A market for large acquisitions continues to deliver. Both paths offer real liquidity without the public market overhead.
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?
Velocity. Everything matters, but given the pace of innovation, especially in AI, teams that execute rapidly will be rewarded handsomely. That means building fast, moving on GTM, closing partnerships, building community.
Speed is the premium: In AI, standing still for six months is the same as moving backward for a year.
The Agentic Leap: As we transition from 'Copilots' to autonomous 'Agents,' which specific vertical will be the first to fully trust AI with independent decision-making?
Cybersecurity operations, specifically SecOps. Detection engineering, triage, investigation, response orchestration. Two reasons: the domain is already highly automated and policy-driven (runbooks, playbooks, permissions), and the cost of delay is massive. Organizations will accept controlled autonomy faster when it cuts time-to-contain.
Early "full trust" will look like bounded agents operating independently inside strict guardrails: defined scope, approval workflows, rollback capability, full audit trails. Authority expands as reliability gets proven.
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?
I wouldn’t say Israel has ‘mastered’ defense tech - yet. There are phenomenal companies, absolutely, but we're riding a massive global tailwind more than we've mastered the category. Israel is naturally well-positioned to benefit.
In the civilian arena, I'd love for the biggest disruption to be in agri-tech, but logistics has the most system-leverage and highest ROI. Like defense, these systems are global by nature. To fully benefit from new technologies, you need a global view.
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Finally, name 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward this year.
Majestic Labs (portfolio) - unique in its speed, approach, and above all, ambition. They're developing a competing chip to Nvidia, potentially solving a compute inference constraint in a monopolistic market. As they work toward tape-out, they're primed for a major leap.
BlinkOps (portfolio) - as an increasing portion of SecOps gets automated and agentified, 2026 will likely be pivotal for startups [like BlinkOps] to cement their success.
