VC Survey 2026
"In order to build a healthy, long-lasting global business, companies cannot remain disproportionally small"
Red Dot Capital partner Atad Peled joins CTech as part of the VC Survey 2026: The Next Leap, to discuss his outlook on agents, metrics and monetization in the AI era, the sovereignty of Startup Nation, and which sectors are setting themselves apart.
Atad Peled
(Video: Orel Cohen)
“Waiting for humans to solve customer problems at scale is one of the most broken services that annoys the entire consumer sector on a daily basis,” says Atad Peled, partner at Red Dot Capital. As AI agents continue to mature, Peled believes Customer Success will be the first vertical they revolutionize. At the same time, he pushes back on the idea that headcount growth is becoming obsolete, arguing that “in order to build a healthy, long-lasting global business, companies cannot remain disproportionally small.”
Following the turbulence of recent years and the stabilization of 2025, the Israeli tech ecosystem is entering a new era: The Next Leap. Peled 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.
Peled contends that in the AI era, AI-native companies and traditional SaaS players introducing AI will need to rethink monetization. “You cannot price agents’ work to seat-based pricing or just simple subscription models,” he says. He does, however, see AI as a key enabler for agtech, affording the new solution-building and value-creation opportunities needed for the sector to finally realize its full potential.
He also highlights defense tech, noting the pace of innovation in Israel’s defense industries in recent years and adding that more recently, “we’ve been seeing the defense sector booming on the startup level as well.”
You can read the entire interview below:
Fund ID
Name of Fund: Red Dot Capital Partners
Total Assets Under Management (AUM): ~$750M
Partners/Managers: Yaniv Stern, Barak Salomon, Atad Peled, Danielle Ardon Baratz
Notable Portfolio Companies (Active): Coralogix, Quantum Machines, Finout, Utila, Oligo, Travelier, Bria, Anecdotes
Notable Exits: Global-e, which went public on Nasdaq in 2021 and is currently valued at around $7 billion; Armis, which was acquired by Insight Partners and Google’s investment arm for approximately $1.1 billion in 2020 and recently for $7.7B by SeviceNow; Granulate, which was sold to Intel for $650 million; Paragon, which was acquired last year by private equity firm AE for about $900 million; and Sealights, which was acquired by Tricentis.
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?
I don’t think we will see much difference in terms of metrics that correlates with valuations in 2026. Topline growth will continue to drive premiums and are also driving the highest multiples in the public markets. In addition, retention metrics (NDR/GDR) will continue to be a strong predictor to business health and would also correlate with premium valuations. As companies move towards later stages of over $100M in revenues, efficiency metrics such as profitability, magic numbers (sales efficiency), and rule of 40 would earn additional premium and would differentiate the best from good.
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?
I believe we are already seeing one vertical that pulls away from the pack: CS (Customer Success). Waiting for humans to solve customer problems at scale is one of the most broken services that annoys the entire consumer sector on a daily basis. Moreover, having best in class CS is known to be one of the key factors to impact satisfaction and therefore return customers, sometimes even more than quality of goods. That is why companies like Amazon, Costco, AT&T, and even Enterprise have been spending millions on improving their processes to improve customer satisfaction, including investing in AI based software.
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?
I believe that Israel should carefully select its partners like every other country should. Regarding tech stacks, I don’t see a reason to dramatically change specific software platforms that are being used. But I do think that Israel should build and use local systems or platforms in the critical infra level, such as cyber defense capabilities and military capabilities (offense and defense) that will secure its operating freedom in any situation.
We’ve been witnessing Israel defense industries innovating at unprecedented pace in recent years, feeding its forces with state of the art capabilities, but most recently, we’ve been seeing the defense sector booming on the startup level as well. The fact that Israel defense forces are implementing solutions that are sometimes less than a year-old amazes me and it is a show of strength and a proof of Israel’s unique innovative-first mindset.
The Efficiency Leap: In the era of AI-driven hyper-productivity, is the traditional correlation between 'Headcount Growth' and 'Company Success' permanently broken?
Yes and No. In some verticals, a young AI native company could demonstrate incredible growth in sales with little workforce – this was not possible prior to the AI era, just a few years ago. In some rare cases, those companies might stay nimble and reach massive commercial scale. But I argue that in order to build a healthy, long-lasting global business companies cannot remain disproportionally small. They might be more lean in the sense that they won’t be needing as many developers or CS employees as a traditional software company does, but generally speaking I do believe that most companies will continue to grow in headcount as they succeed and grow commercially. Moreover, most deep-tech companies will continue to demonstrate headcount growth as the company scales. So it’s not “broken”, just different.
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?
Agtech. There’s so much to be done in that space that will improve our lives and will benefit humanity. It has been a tough market and historic investments have not yielded high returns, but with AI we could see far better solutions that can create significant value to both customers and shareholders.
Finally, what are 2-3 startups that, in your opinion, are likely to make a leap forward in 2026?
1. Stigg (portfolio company): AI companies and traditional SaaS companies that introduce AI solutions must adjust their monetization and pricing to the AI era – you cannot price agents’ work to seat-based pricing or just simple subscription models. Every company will need to introduce complex pricing models that include governance and controls and for that to happen they must change their monetization infrastructure. Stigg is offering a purposely built AI-ready monetization platform that can be easily integrated to the company tech stack without the need to change your billing stack. We see a surge in demand for a solution like Stigg in recent months, driven by adoption of AI capabilities across industries and advancement of AI solutions from the experimentation to the commercial stage.
2. Utila (portfolio company): Utila offers a secure MPC-based wallet solution optimized for stablecoin operations enabling scalable wallet creation, efficient gas management, and seamless integration with liquidity, compliance, and accounting tools. The platform is built for scale by cybersecurity and cryptography experts, serving more than 150 institutional clients globally. Utila is seeing tremendous commercial traction driven by the increasing adoption wave of digital currencies by financial institutions, payment providers, exchanges, trading platforms, and global enterprises.
