AI unicorn Fundamental expands Israel operations as it scales enterprise AI push
The startup is recruiting dozens of engineers in Tel Aviv to expand NEXUS platform.
AI startup Fundamental, founded by Israeli entrepreneur Gabriel Suissa and his partner Jeremy Fraenkel, has announced the expansion of its operations in Israel with the launch of a development center in Tel Aviv and the recruitment of dozens of engineers.
The company’s investors include Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.
In an exclusive interview with Calcalist, Suissa said: “Israel has some of the best engineers in the world. Our first three senior engineers are Israelis. There is world-class human capital here, so we will invest heavily. My ambition is to employ dozens of people in our Israeli center by the end of the year.
“At the moment, we have no need to acquire a company in Israel, but if a suitable opportunity arises, we will consider it.”
The company already employs about 10 people in Israel, and the Tel Aviv development center is expected to open roles in development and infrastructure.
Fundamental has developed an artificial intelligence model called NEXUS, designed to analyze large volumes of structured enterprise data. The model, known as a Large Tabular Model (LTM), is trained on billions of tabular datasets and is capable of processing large databases while avoiding some of the inaccuracies typical of general-purpose AI systems.
“Our model is fundamentally different from others because it is trained specifically on tabular data, and our goal is to apply it across a wide range of industries,” Suissa said.
Regarding the AI bubble, Suissa said: “I view it similarly to the internet revolution of the late 1990s. The internet itself was not a bubble, it completely changed the world. The current revolution is much bigger. In my opinion, Anthropic is the big winner of this era because it has managed to crack enterprise adoption. Our vision is to be exactly that in our field.”
In February, the company raised $275 million at a valuation of $1.45 billion, in a round combining a $30 million Seed and a $245 million Series A, led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Hetz Ventures.
“When we started with a $70 million valuation, people thought it was too large. Within a year, our valuation increased twentyfold. We signed contracts with many companies and secured agreements with AWS and SAP, and that’s what drove the valuation,” Suissa said.
“Every deal we sign is worth seven figures or more. We’ve worked with energy companies to predict resource usage and have saved them hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Fundamental has signed agreements with Fortune 100 companies, including a strategic partnership with AWS that allows customers to deploy NEXUS through its management interfaces, as well as a partnership with SAP to integrate NEXUS’s forecasting capabilities into enterprise systems in areas such as finance, supply chain, and risk management.
