VC Survey 2026
“With LPs, the 2026 story isn’t a rebrand so much as a reframing: innovation plus extreme resilience”
Aaron Rinberg, partner at Ibex Investors, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“As a US based investment firm that operates for many years in Israel, I can say that with LPs, the 2026 story isn’t a rebrand so much as a reframing: innovation plus extreme resilience,” said Aaron Rinberg, partner at Ibex Investors, when asked how the 'Israeli Tech' asset class is being rebranded to global LPs in 2026.
“Data from Israel Innovation Authority and Startup Nation Central show strong capital concentration, larger rounds, record M&A, and rising export share despite the macro and war backdrop, hard numbers that validate ‘delivery under stress’ as a durable trait, not a slogan. In 2025 Israel tech posted its strongest funding period since 2021 and M&A topped records, while the recent State-Of-High-Tech report flagged flat local headcount but expanding exports (signals of disciplined operating models and global revenue engines that LPs can underwrite),” he said.
“That’s the pitch we see landing: fewer ephemeral dollars, more conviction capital backing scale-up fundamentals and resilient supply chains.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Rinberg joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Ibex Investors
Total Assets Under Management: ~$1B
Partners/Managers: Justin Borus, Aaron Rinberg, Adi Dangot Zukovsky
Notable Portfolio Companies: Honeycomb, Arya, Localbird, LeanCon
Notable Exits: N/A
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?
Trust in AI agents isn’t about making them more “human”; it’s about strengthening the guardrails that govern their autonomy. Today, agents already make independent decisions in tightly scoped, low-risk contexts (such as issuing refunds, canceling subscriptions, or resetting passwords) where policies are clear, data is reliable, and dollar values are modest. These decisions aren’t suggestions; they’re executed within predefined rules and logged for accountability. The next wave of adoption will hinge on making those guardrails as trustworthy as the frameworks we use for human employees: clear authority boundaries, transparent policies, escalation paths, audit trails, and continuous evaluation. Enterprises often respond to risk by shrinking agent capabilities, but real trust comes from codifying governance - formalizing policies, instituting risk-tiered autonomy, enforcing tool contracts, and auditing outcomes. Done well, the “agentic leap” won’t be a sudden revolution, it will be a steady expansion of responsibility (earned through operational rigor) rather than anthropomorphism.
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?
Yes, geopolitics has pushed founders to reduce single‑vendor and single‑region exposure and we’re seeing more “sovereign‑by‑design” stacks: multi‑cloud and on‑prem footprints, domestic routing and key management, export‑friendly data controls, and swap‑in components across compute, storage, and AI infra. Over the course of 2024/2025 there seems to be a migration toward deep tech and infrastructure (chips, AI tooling, industrial systems), as well as a quality‑over‑quantity shift with dual‑use pragmatism (exactly the mix you need to de‑risk platform dependence and keep go‑to‑market open across jurisdictions).
The Efficiency Leap: In the era of AI-driven hyper-productivity, is the traditional correlation between 'Headcount Growth' and 'Company Success' permanently broken?
The headcount‑to‑success proxy is broken (likely for good) but not because people vanish; because output per FTE compounds and firms redeploy savings into moats. Accelerating since mid-2024 we’re seeing much wider spread AI use with modest, function‑level P&L gains today, and management teams channeling productivity back into new AI capabilities. We’re expecting step function shifts in productivity over the next decade driven by smaller, more nimble businesses whereas enterprise‑level impact will likely lag unless workflows are redesigned around agents. We’re expecting to see slimmer teams per dollar of ARR, higher gross margin, and more capital intensity in data/infra levels driving success decoupled from headcount growth and re‑anchored to unit economics, velocity, and defensibility.
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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?
Over the next few years I’d expect a new category to emerge around the intersection of autonomy, sensing, and safety as Israel’s next export engine. The data already point therewith a vibrant, acquisition‑proven chip R&D base that underpins AI and edge compute and investor sentiment moving toward “autonomy and security for the physical world” as a defining theme. This plays to native Israeli strengths (systems engineering, cyber, edge AI, constrained‑resource design) and sells globally into energy, logistics, manufacturing, and defense‑adjacent civilian markets (large markets that reward reliability as much as novelty).
