Eitan Carmi

Eitan Carmi Serial entrepreneur 🇮🇱 | Built & scaled 3 companies | Sharing what actually works in business & mindset | Tel Aviv ↔ the world 🌍

07/10/2026

Citi just led a $120M round in Capitolis at a $1.9B valuation, with Bank of America, Nomura, Tradeweb, UBS, Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan and State Street in the mix. These aren't just investors. They're the customers.
When the banks that use your software own a piece of it, that's not confidence. That's commitment. And most of the money backs a $200M acquisition, their fourth in five years.
Own the customers. Buy the missing pieces.

06/10/2026

Western Union just bought an Israeli fintech called GMT for about $70M. Most will call it a company acquisition. I call it a license purchase.
A Bank of Israel banking code. A payments license that lets it compete with banks. 350+ service points. Anyone can build an app. Very few can get permission to move money.
If your industry is regulated, your license is your moat.

05/10/2026

Most investors run from early-stage biotech. Arkin Capital just aimed a $100M fund straight at it, backing up to a dozen companies worldwide.
That's not spray and pray. That's concentration, with hands-on help on strategy and clinical positioning, from a team with 20+ exits behind it.
The real returns usually sit in what the crowd is afraid to underwrite.

04/10/2026

Marketing teams spend months building a strategy around a channel, and by the time results show up, the channel has already changed. That's not a talent problem. It's a speed problem.
enso just raised $15M ($23M total) to fix it with AI agents that test continuously, while an embedded engineer and marketer keep strategy and judgment human.
The future of growth isn't humans or machines. It's machines testing while humans keep the steering wheel.

03/10/2026

Tel Aviv just ranked 4th in the world for startup ecosystems - behind only Silicon Valley, New York, and London. Third year running. During an active war.
$250.3B in ecosystem value. Three pillars carrying it: cybersecurity, AI, and life sciences - not one lucky sector, three separate engines.
Resilience isn't a story you tell after the fact. It's a number you can actually measure.

02/10/2026

Israeli startups raised $2.5 billion in September - during a month full of holidays. That's not a quiet season. That's capital that refused to wait.
$11B raised in the first nine months of 2026, already beating all of last year. But look at where it went: 6 of the 10 biggest rounds were cybersecurity or AI security. Not random. One thesis, stacked.
When the smartest money chases the same problem six times in a row, that's your answer about where the next decade of value sits.

01/10/2026

An Israeli AI startup called Inferize was founded in January. Nine months later - sold for an estimated $100-150M.
This is Nebius's third acquisition building the exact same capability: fixing idle GPU waste. First Eigen AI. Then Clarifai's team. Now Inferize. One obsessive thesis, three purchases.
You don't win by being the biggest. You win by being exactly the missing piece of someone else's obsession.

30/09/2026

Defense technology is becoming an asset class - not equipment governments buy, but an investment category. A new Israeli fund just closed $125M, proving it.
Their first bet: XTEND. A $70M Series B turned into a public listing valued at $1.5 billion. That's not a lucky bet - that's a thesis working exactly as designed.
When money moves into a category everyone used to avoid, that's not a trend. That's the market catching up to where the value's been all along.

29/09/2026

Bluevine just sold to a US bank for $340M. Sounds fine - until you learn they'd raised nearly $700M to get there, once valued at $700-800M years ago. This wasn't a triumphant exit. It was a landing.
But look at what the bank actually bought: $2.1B in deposits, 99% from customers who don't even borrow. Cheap, stable funding wrapped in a slick app.
Sometimes the biggest win isn't the number. It's finding the one buyer who needed exactly what you had.

28/09/2026

Assaf Rappaport had a $23 billion offer from Google, signed and ready. At 4am, he called it off - because his gut said it was too soon.
Six months later, Google's CEO handed him an envelope with $30 billion written on it, by hand. His answer wasn't yes - it was "let's work on the numbers." Final price: $32 billion. The largest exit in Israeli tech history.
The walk-away isn't a bluff. It's conviction you're willing to live with - even at 4am, even when it terrifies you

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