VC Survey 2026
“Most investors still treat AI and crypto as separate worlds. The real opportunity lies in the infrastructure layer that connects them.”
Ran Levitzky, general partner at Magenta Venture Partners, joined CTech for its 2026 VC Survey.
“Today, most investors still treat AI and crypto as separate worlds. The real opportunity lies in the infrastructure layer that connects them: protocols that enable agents to discover counterparties, negotiate, commit, and settle transactions programmatically,” said Ran Levitzky, general partner at Magenta Venture Partners.
Asked what sector or trend is currently ignored that he believes represents the most undervalued opportunity for the coming year, Levitzky pointed to AI-Crypto convergence. “As AI agents become autonomous economic actors, they need the ability to identify themselves cryptographically, hold value, and transact without human intermediaries or centralized payment rails,” he said.
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Ran Levitzky, general partner at Magenta Venture Partners.
(Magenta Venture Partners)
“This is about building the transaction fabric for agent-to-agent commerce. The winners in this category will effectively become the connective tissue of the machine economy.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Levitsky joined CTech to share insights for its VC Survey 2026.
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Fund Name: Magenta Venture Partners
Total Assets Under Management: $100M
Partners/Managers: Ori Israely, Ran Levitzky, Daisuke Makino, Ari Dotan
Notable Portfolio Companies: Workiz, Onebeat, Findings, Sensos, HQ, Monogoto
Notable Exits: Autotalks (acquired by Qualcomm), Valens Semiconductor
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?
Net Revenue Retention will be the headline metric, especially above roughly 110%. It captures what the market currently rewards most: real product value, organic expansion inside existing accounts, and efficient growth rather than growth bought by burn. Companies crossing 120% NRR will continue to command premium multiples, since compounding comes from their existing customers rather than incremental CAC.
The important shift is that the market is no longer paying up for “AI wrappers.” AI alone is not a moat. Premium valuations will accrue to companies with domain defensibility: proprietary data loops, deep workflow embedding that is painful to rip out, and clear capital efficiency.
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?
Logistics and supply chain look like the earliest large-scale adopters. This is already a data-heavy, automation-minded environment where decisions are frequent, structured, and measurable.
We are now reaching the point where an AI “operations manager” can autonomously reroute shipments, adjust inventory, and respond to exceptions in real time. (Magenta portfolio company) Sensos, for example, is deploying agents that oversee global shipping flows and handle disruptions. (Magenta portfolio company) Onebeat is using autonomous decision-making to continuously optimize retail inventory rather than relying on rigid planning cycles.
On the services side, field service operations are also moving fast. (Magenta portfolio company) Workiz’s AI assistant “Jessica” already answers calls, understands intent, and books jobs independently for home service businesses. Trust is growing because the ROI is immediate: fewer missed calls and fuller schedules.
These types of environments, where outcomes are measurable and risk is non-lethal, will embrace autonomous agents first.
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?
There is definitely more awareness around resilience and dependency, but not a mass departure from hyperscalers. Israeli startups are still heavily built on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure because of practicality and ecosystem dominance.
What has changed is mindset rather than platform choice. Founders increasingly design with optionality in mind: multi-cloud deployments to reduce lock-in, greater use of open-source tools instead of fully proprietary stacks, and better attention to data portability.
The lesson of recent years is not “go it alone”, but “have a plan B for critical infrastructure.”
The Efficiency Leap: In the era of AI-driven hyper-productivity, is the traditional correlation between 'Headcount Growth' and 'Company Success' permanently broken?
In many cases, that correlation is now structurally broken. AI-native companies can reach tens or even hundreds of millions in ARR with teams that are a fraction of the historical norm.
We are seeing startups achieve 15–25x efficiency improvements, with revenue-per-employee levels of $500K to over $1M no longer unusual. Customer support, QA, and large parts of routine operations are increasingly automated, while product teams move faster with AI-driven development.
The new signal is not how many people you hire, but how much throughput and revenue a small team can produce. Success is being decoupled from headcount and recoupled to capital efficiency and output.
Finally, what are 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward in 2026?
Workiz (Magenta portfolio) - A leading field service management platform in North America. The company’s AI product, Genius Answering, already acts as a 24/7 virtual receptionist, handling calls and booking jobs autonomously. With labor shortages in the trades and a large installed base, Workiz is positioned for strong AI-driven expansion.
Sensos (Magenta portfolio) - Provides smart IoT labels and an AI control tower for full real-time visibility into global shipments. validated with global shippers and pharma customers and fresh off a Series A, Sensos is scaling into a market hungry for efficiency and resilience in supply chains.
Onebeat (Magenta portfolio) - An AI-driven retail optimization platform that dynamically manages inventory and replenishment at the SKU/store level. With hundreds of retailers already live and growing U.S. presence, Onebeat is benefiting from retailers’ need to defend margins through smarter operations rather than just top-line growth.
