$9.3B raised marks strongest half for Israeli startups since 2022
Even without the exceptional $2B capital raise by Safe Superintelligence, an AI company with ties to Israel but not clearly defined as an Israeli company, total fundraising still reached $7.3B for the half year, a pace well above the roughly $10B raised in all of 2024.
After the end of the war with Iran, Israel’s high-tech sector is also recording a victory: the first half of 2025 was the strongest since 2022 in capital raised by startups. According to data from Startup Nation Central (SNC), total fundraising jumped 54% compared to the same period last year, reaching $9.3 billion in the first six months of 2025.
This pace seemingly signals a return to the high-flying days of 2020–2021. However, it includes an exceptional $2 billion capital raise by Safe Superintelligence, an AI company with ties to Israel but not clearly defined as an Israeli company. Industry trackers began including it in Israeli stats following the announcement by founder Ilya Sutskever, an Israeli-born entrepreneur, that the company would maintain headquarters in both Palo Alto and Tel Aviv. Even without this one-off deal, total fundraising still reached $7.3 billion for the half year, a pace already well above the roughly $10 billion raised in all of 2024.
Safe Superintelligence’s massive round also made the second quarter one of the strongest in recent memory, with $6 billion raised compared to $3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2025. According to SNC, as of June, 31 funding rounds worth a total of $1.3 billion have been reported, with a third of those deals closing after June 13, that is, after the start of the war with Iran.
Alongside the jump in total capital, there was a drop in the number of rounds, from 214 in Q1 to 151 in Q2. This trend holds for the half-year summary too: 365 rounds, down 10% compared to the second half of 2024. However, larger deals are back. The number of rounds over $50 million rose from 20 to 32, signaling renewed investor appetite for scale-ups and more confidence in growth-stage companies.
Another notable shift is the rise of the enterprise software sector, which overtook cyber to claim the top spot, pulling in $3.2 billion across 71 rounds, up 32% compared to the previous half-year. Still, the Safe Superintelligence round skews the picture here too. Cybersecurity startups raised $2 billion in 56 rounds, led by Cyera’s $540 million at a $6 billion valuation and Island’s $250 million raise. Cyber companies also posted the highest median round size at $25 million.
Fintech came in third, with $750 million raised in 29 rounds, most of it driven by Rapyd’s massive $500 million raise. Fintech also led the M&A charts thanks to the sale of Melio for $2.5 billion last week, which followed Next Insurance’s exit for a similar sum.
The first half of 2025 also marks a historic high for Israel’s M&A sector, driven by Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz, which pushes total exits to $39.2 billion. Overall, 60 deals closed, the highest since the first half of 2022. Excluding the Wiz deal, the total exit value was $7.2 billion, similar to the previous half-year.
However, the median deal size for exits is still trending downward, suggesting a preference for smaller acquisitions. Notably, 51% of transactions were made by international strategic buyers and 42% by Israeli buyers, evidence that local purchasing power continues to strengthen.
