VC Survey 2026
“10 times growth year-over-year has become the new 3 times”
As part of the VC Survey 2026: The Next Leap, Maor Investments partner Ido Hart joins CTech to share his perspective on the future of the Israeli tech landscape, from evolving perceptions of performance to the country’s role in the future of AI.
“Over the past year, the market has rewarded tech companies that grow aggressively,” says Ido Hart, partner at Maor Investments, specifying contingents including growth that is truly exceptional “to the point where 10 times growth year-over-year has become the new 3 times.” However, he believes 2026 will shift the “growth at all costs” perspective, adding that “as the initial AI adoption wave matures and companies enter their first meaningful renewal cycles, investors will begin to scrutinize fundamentals more closely.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Hart joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026, which invites prominent investors to discuss the topics, trends, and “leaps” expected in the year ahead.
Hart continues, adding that with the advent of AI making “doing more with less” a “trendy posture,” he maintains that “the private tech market is in fact rewarding a different approach: doing much more, with more.” Further, he predicts Israeli companies will come to “play a leading role in building the massive infrastructure that underpins the next phase of AI growth.”
Ultimately, when it comes to the narrative of Startup Nation moving into the future, Hart states that “in 2026, we hope to stop showcasing how ‘resilient’ we are, and instead prove that we are simply ‘normal.’”
You can read the entire interview below:
Fund ID
Name of Fund: Maor Investments
Total Assets Under Management (AUM): Over $300m
Partners/Managers: Philippe Guez, Eric Elalouf, Ido Hart, Ilai Pines
Notable Portfolio Companies (Active): Aidoc, Coralogix, WSC Sports, Buildots, Silverfort, Minute Media, Quantum Machines, Finout
Notable Exits: Medigate (acq. by Claroty), Vulcan (acq. by Tenable), Bizzabo (acq. in secondary deal)
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?
During the COVID-era boom, markets effectively operated under a “growth at all costs” paradigm, where top-line expansion often outweighed questions of durability or underlying fundamentals. While this framing has faded from the media headlines, market behavior in 2025 suggests a quiet return to growth-driven investing. Over the past year, the market has rewarded tech companies that grow aggressively, but only when two criteria are met. First, growth must be truly exceptional, to the point where 10 times growth year-over-year has become the new 3 times. Driven by a broad push to adopt AI across industries and functions, many companies have grown at unprecedented rates, prioritizing land-grab strategies while accepting pressure on gross margins and elevated cash burn along the way. Second, companies need to be perceived as genuinely AI-native, though in some cases that perception has been shaped more by positioning than by deep technological differentiation.
Looking into 2026, we believe this perspective is likely to shift. As the initial AI adoption wave matures and companies enter their first meaningful renewal cycles, investors will begin to scrutinize fundamentals more closely. Healthy gross margins and, in particular, strong Net Revenue Retention (NRR) will become increasingly important. This phase will likely reveal that “easy come, easy go” applies to some AI-native products, where shallow moats, low switching costs, or overestimated product value lead to weaker retention. On the other hand, companies that deliver clear, quantifiable value through deeper and more differentiated offerings will likely experience strong expansion dynamics, reflected in improving margins and robust NRR.
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?
Agentic AI shines brightest in environments where data is readily available, tasks are clearly scoped and high in volume, and the cost of error is manageable. By these criteria, software development has been the most compelling AI use case to date and is likely to become increasingly “agentic” over time – bringing with it a growing need for monitoring, guardrails and governance around AI-driven development workflows. Beyond engineering, the next logical verticals are sales and customer support, especially in B2C environments. These functions involve large volumes of repetitive tasks and the cost of making an error with a single prospect or customer is typically limited.
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?
The tech industry is global by nature, and the Israeli tech ecosystem has always been especially global. Maintaining strong collaboration with the broader global tech ecosystem remains essential to Israel’s position as one of the world’s leading innovations hubs. Prioritizing best-of-breed technologies over technological sovereignty has been, and should remain, the right approach.
What the last two years have demonstrated most clearly is the resilience of Israeli tech. Despite heightened geopolitical tensions, companies continued to build, sell and attract capital. In 2026, we hope to stop showcasing how “resilient” we are, and instead prove that we are simply “normal”. A more stable geopolitical environment would allow founders and investors alike to focus fully on business execution and on building the next global leaders in tech. While there was never a scarcity of global capital in the local tech ecosystem, a quieter 2026 should drive a significant increase in demand for Israeli tech by both global investors and corporates.
The Efficiency Leap: In the era of AI-driven hyper-productivity, is the traditional correlation between 'Headcount Growth' and 'Company Success' permanently broken?
Although “doing more with less” has become a trendy posture, we believe the private tech market is in fact rewarding a different approach: doing much more, with more. Stories of bootstrapped companies and the prospect of the first one-person unicorn are romantic, but do not reflect what we see in practice among the strongest companies. The best and brightest companies are raising much larger amounts, scaling headcount faster than ever and trying to conquer new categories as fast as possible, before competition intensifies. AI undoubtedly improves productivity and boosts metrics such as ARR per employee, but it does not eliminate the need for talent and scale. Headcount growth is still highly correlated with company success and continues to signal top-line momentum, ambition and execution capability.
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?
While Israel has found it more challenging to build world-class winners in the lower layers of the AI stack, such as chips and foundational models, we expect Israeli startups to win decisively higher up the stack. For AI to deliver real and sustained impact, specialized solutions are required at the application layer, and even more importantly, a new set of tools is needed at the supporting infrastructure layer to deploy, scale and operate these systems effectively. This has long been the bread and butter of Israeli tech. What we believe is already evident in cybersecurity will gradually extend to adjacent domains required for deploying and scaling AI, such as MLOps, DevOps and DataOps. These categories operate largely behind the scenes, are less flashy and take longer to scale, but create deeper moats and more durable businesses. As AI adoption moves from experimentation to production, we expect Israeli companies to play a leading role in building the massive infrastructure that underpins the next phase of AI growth.
Finally, what are 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward in 2026?
From Maor’s portfolio:
1. lakeFS: A counterintuitive reality of enterprise AI is that progress is less constrained by AI technology or compute power than it is by data infrastructure. As more AI initiatives move from experimentation into production – often operating on unprecedented volumes of data – foundational data infrastructure becomes the primary bottleneck. Just as Git revolutionized software development, lakeFS is reshaping enterprise AI with a Git-for-data approach that delivers versioning, reproducibility and control to large-scale AI datasets. lakeFS accelerates AI project delivery while ensuring data quality, governance and effective collaboration across massive volumes of structured and unstructured data that modern AI applications depend on. The result for enterprises is faster experimentation, more reliable production deployments and greater AI-driven impact across enterprise products and workflows.
2. OneLayer: As enterprises push to embed AI across operations, new connectivity solutions are required to capture data in real-time and enable AI workloads to run also at the edge. Private 5G networks are emerging as a critical component of this infrastructure, but their adoption introduces significant complexity in visibility, security and operational management. OneLayer serves as a catalyst for adopting and scaling Private 5G in enterprise environments. The platform provides complete visibility, asset management and zero-trust security across all devices connected to private cellular networks. Enterprises can maximize operational excellence, prevent cellular breaches and scale networks without needing deep cellular expertise.
3. Quantum Machines: The quantum computing industry continues demonstrating rapid scientific progress, with breakthroughs emerging at an accelerating pace, and the path toward a commercially-viable quantum computer becoming increasingly tangible. Within this fascinating industry, Quantum Machines (QM) has emerged as a global leading provider of quantum control solutions, driving the advancement of quantum computing with its hybrid control approach. By harmonizing quantum and classical operations, hybrid control eliminates friction and optimizes performance across hardware and software, enabling researchers and builders to iterate at speed, resolve setbacks and bring visionary ideas to life. QM’s platform supports virtually any type of quantum processor, empowering the industry to scale systems, accelerate breakthroughs and push the ecosystem closer to practical, real-world quantum computing.
