VC Survey 2026
“With AI companies can hit growth benchmarks that previously required significantly larger teams”
Ophir Reshef, Managing Partner at Israel Secondary Fund, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“The correlation [between 'Headcount Growth' and 'Company Success’] still exists, but the causality is nuanced. It isn’t just that ‘hiring creates success’; success also creates the budget to hire, though there was always a question of whether those extra people are nearly as productive as the existing team,” said Ophir Reshef, Managing Partner at Israel Secondary Fund.
“In the early stages, you still need people, very few companies have figured out how to scale from zero without a team. But at the growth stage, AI introduces another option, scaling revenue without scaling headcount linearly. We are seeing companies hit growth benchmarks that previously required significantly larger teams,” he added.
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Ophir Reshef, Managing Partner at Israel Secondary Fund.
(Photo: Israel Secondary Fund)
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Reshef joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Israel Secondary Fund (ISF)
Total Assets Under Management: $500M
Partners/Managers: Dror Glass, Nir Linchevski, Eva Hubsman, Ophir Reshef
Notable Portfolio Companies: Over 100 unicorns. We don’t disclose due to the nature of secondary transactions.
The Liquidity Leap: After a period defined by cash preservation, will 2026 see the reopening of the IPO window, or will M&A remain the primary liquidity event?
It’s interesting to look at where the actual volume is. While the market focuses on the IPO window, secondary transactions have scaled significantly. By some estimates, secondaries now account for roughly 70% of venture-backed exit value, effectively becoming the third major liquidity lane alongside IPOs and M&A.
As for 2026, we might see a distortion. If giants like SpaceX, OpenAI, or Anthropic go public, the dollar volume for IPOs will look massive, over a trillion, potentially. But for the rest of the market, those "normal" companies targeting a $1B-$10B exit, the IPO window is technically open, but unattractive.
Private valuations are often higher than public ones, and the small-cap IPOs from last year are not performing all that well. As a result, many companies that previously would have looked toward IPO will likely stay private or look to M&A.
The Global Leap: How is the 'Israeli Tech' asset class being rebranded to global LPs in 2026? Are we shifting the narrative from 'Innovation' to 'Extreme Resilience'?
I hope not. "Resilience" means that difficulties don't detract from the value, but it doesn't create the value. LPs invest in Israel because we are the second most important innovation hub in the world, not just because we survive hard times.
The real shift isn't from Innovation to Resilience, but from "Startup Nation" to "Scale-Up Nation". We are no longer just selling quick exits, we are generating multi-billion dollar, sustainable standalone companies. That is the story that drives capital.
The Deep Tech Leap: With the rising focus on hardware-heavy sectors (Defense, Climate, Quantum), is the Israeli VC model adapted to fund high-CAPEX ventures?
First, let's challenge the "High-CAPEX" assumption. Defense, for example, is less capital-intensive than the pharma or semiconductor waves of the past. These companies are reaching profitability faster than before.
As for the model, Israeli VCs are excellent at the early stage. They don't need to fund the entire CAPEX journey alone. Their role is to identify the anomaly early and then bring in global partners for the growth stages. The model isn't broken, we just know which part of the lifecycle we own.
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?
I think we’re going back to oranges.
Jokes aside, Cyber will remain the primary engine because the talent pool and capital ecosystem are just too large to displace quickly. In addition to all the established companies, we have many well-funded early-stage startups. We have enough funded "shots on goal" in this sector that even a small conversion rate will maintain its dominance.
However, the next contender in my opinion is AI Software. This includes both infrastructure that enables AI adoption (e.g. VAST that provides storage to AI data centers), and AI-enabled applications (e.g. Aidoc for hospitals or GONG for sales).
Related articles:
- “Foreign LPs who have waited on the sidelines are returning with increased appetite for Israeli tech”
- “The same sensor fusion and computer vision tech used for military target acquisition are now disrupting surgery”
- “Almost anything proven under battlefield conditions can become a commercial product once it’s translated into civilian workflows”
Finally, name 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward this year.
Lightrun: It provides autonomous QA agents; as large-scale AI coding takes off, companies will have to adapt large-scale AI QA that tests the code in live environments.
Zenity: It provides security for AI agents. Every enterprise is trying to deploy agents to increase efficiency, and Zenity is well positioned to tackle the #1 concern - how to secure those agents.
