VC Survey 2026
“Almost anything proven under battlefield conditions can become a commercial product once it’s translated into civilian workflows”
Yaniv Jacobi and Lior Segal, Managing Partners at Horizon Capital, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“Wartime innovation in Israel is extraordinary. Extreme constraints force solutions that are faster, tougher, and more operationally grounded than ‘lab tech’,” said Yaniv Jacobi and Lior Segal, Managing Partners at Horizon Capital, when asked which civilian industry will see the biggest disruption from adapting Israeli Defense Tech.
"Horizon’s view is simple - almost anything proven under battlefield conditions can become a commercial product once it’s translated into civilian workflows and procurement realities," they added.
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Lior Segal (left) and Yaniv Jacobi, Managing Partners at Horizon Capital.
(Photo: Horizon Capital)
“That said, the biggest disruptions will come where speed, resilience, and coordination matter most: logistics and supply chain, emergency response, and real-time situational awareness. The winners will be the teams that productize it cleanly: simple UX, measurable ROI, and auditability for regulated customers.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Jacobi and Segal joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Horizon Capital
Total Assets Under Management: $50M
Partners/Managers: Yaniv Jacobi and Lior Segal
Notable Portfolio Companies: Datarails, Siteaware, Verbit, Vee, Spikerz, Aiode, Orbb
Notable Exits: Own (Acquired by Salesforce), Nanorep (Acquired by LogMeIn), Ondigo (Acquired by Gong), BlueRibbon (Acquired by DraftKing)
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?
After a prolonged period of caution defined by war-driven uncertainty, the second half of 2025 marked a clear release of pent-up momentum. Private funding climbed back to around $15.6B, and we’re seeing strong signs that strategics are no longer sitting on the sidelines - they’re actively buying.
Looking ahead to 2026, we expect M&A to remain the dominant liquidity path. Naturally, activity will continue in Israel’s flagship sectors like cyber, but a parallel trend is taking shape: many solid companies that demonstrated real growth but ran out of runway are now seeking soft landings. On the other hand, corporates and PE firms that preserve capital are on the hunt for undervalued opportunities. This creates a wave of exits with smaller ticket sizes - but high strategic value.
IPOs may reopen, but we see that as more realistic toward late 2026, and only for a select group of truly public-ready companies. Even then, the IPO path will compete with compelling acquisition offers (like ServiceNow’s $7.75B deal for Armis) so founders will continue to weigh certainty versus timing.
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?
As early-stage investors, we’re seeing that the path to a Series A isn’t defined by hitting a magic Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) number anymore. It’s about showing healthy QoQ growth and underlying efficiency - that’s what gets a partner meeting today.
We don’t believe there’s a single metric that tells the full story, but we’ve always had a strong bias toward Net Revenue Retention (NRR), especially when it’s paired with healthy, consistent growth.
NRR is the cleanest signal of real product pull: customers expand over time, pricing power compounds, and growth becomes less dependent on landing new logos. It shows whether the product becomes more essential after adoption - not just whether it can be sold once. And in frothy markets, it’s the best lie detector: expansion either happens or it doesn’t. With capital flowing back into the market and more institutional money entering the ecosystem, fundamentals can get blurry. NRR helps cut through that noise.
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?
Truly, we don’t think full autonomy will land in 2026 across most industries. Where we do expect agents to earn real trust quickly is in data-driven functions with tight feedback loops - starting with marketing and paid growth. Outcomes are measurable and fast (CPA, ROAS, creative performance, funnel conversion), so teams can set guardrails and still let agents optimize continuously.
Beyond marketing, we expect meaningful autonomy in other domains where the loop is similarly closed and well-scoped. QA is a good example: agents can generate tests, run suites, detect regressions, and triage failures end-to-end under clear governance. The same pattern applies to additional operational areas where success is objective, measurable, and quickly verifiable.
In coding, finance, and sales, we don’t expect true end-to-end autonomy yet. The workflows are higher-risk, harder to fully verify, and require deeper context. That said, we do think agent capabilities will accelerate rapidly, so while full autonomy isn’t here in 2026, it’s getting closer than most people expect.
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 area we think will rise in 2026 is PropTech. In 2022-2025, higher interest rates and slower transaction volumes put the global category on pause, but as the cycle starts to loosen, we’re already seeing capital and adoption return - especially to products that cut real operating costs, not just “digitize the brochure.”
The rebound is visible: in 2025, global PropTech and adjacent real-estate tech investment reached $16.7B (up ~68% YoY), a meaningful shift after the slowdown.
We believe 2026 will be the year when the next wave breaks through: vertical, workflow-owning systems (often agentic) that can manage property operations, building, maintenance, and energy optimization. Real estate customers don’t adopt because it’s cool - they adopt when ROI is undeniable.
The winners will be the companies tied to measurable efficiency, lower vacancies or operating costs, and faster cycles - not speculative growth narratives.
Related articles:
- “AI doesn’t eliminate headcount growth; it reshapes its timing, purpose, and economics”
- “Israeli tech today represents the ability to build foundational companies that matter at global scale”
- “If productivity and abundance reach sufficient scale, society will gradually redefine why we work, what work means, and how value is created”
Finally, name 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward this year.
Vee.com (portfolio company) - Vee.com is an AI-powered platform helping nonprofits get funded quickly and easily. With AI members, Maggie, Grant, and Donna work alongside nonprofits to streamline social media management, grant discovery and writing, and donor relations.
Spikerz (portfolio company) - Spikerz is a social media security SaaS platform built for brands and public figures. It automatically detects and eliminates social media threats, including cyber-attacks, fake accounts, harmful comments, phishing attempts, spam, and scams.
Bites (portfolio company) - Bites empowers companies to train and upskill frontline teams with AI-driven, social-style content, delivered instantly through the channels they already use.
