Insight Partners cofounder and managing director Jeff Horing has been visiting Israel this week to meet with entrepreneurs, investors and senior figures in the country's tech industry. The US venture capital and private equity firm, which manages assets worth more than $90 billion, has become one of the biggest investors in Israel's tech ecosystem over the past decade with more than 128 investment in Israel totaling over $5.8 billion.
Insight Partners Israel portfolio includes cybersecurity company Wiz, in which it was one of the first investors, SentinelOne (NYSE: S), monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY), and Run:AI, which was sold to Nvidia. Horing met with Israeli journalists yesterday.
"Israel is an upgraded version of Silicon Valley"
"Israeli entrepreneurs are the highest quality entrepreneurs in the world. Period," Horing said. "There is a rare combination of integrity, work ethic, wisdom and diligence here. Our feeling as investors is one of deep confidence in local entrepreneurs - a feeling that is almost absent anywhere else." Horing referred to the well-known Israeli strength, which is cybersecurity, and said, "In our policy, Israel is almost always first when it comes to cybersecurity. That doesn't mean we won't invest in other places but you have simply built an extraordinary culture here. In every parameter, it is an upgraded version of Silicon Valley."
In the field of AI, Insight also maintains intensive, albeit cautious, activity. In recent years, the fund has invested in 10 and 15 Israeli AI companies. "We have not entered the race for basic models," he said, "but we are investing in dozens of companies that use AI to solve real problems. We've seen cases of companies that have practically gone from zero to $10 million in revenue in less than a year - something we wouldn't have seen before."
He also referred to the current IPO market and said that today the window of opportunity to go public is much smaller than in the past. "IPOs have become a difficult journey. Even if you manage to get through the window, you may be stuck with shares that cannot be sold. The public market today is simply not prepared for a large wave of new offerings, especially not for companies that are worth, say, under $10 billion."
"Excess of entrepreneurship, sometimes without enough depth"
Along with high valuations, Horing also shared the difficulties he identifies in the ecosystem: "Sometimes there are simply too many entrepreneurs in the same market segment. Four companies that look good but there's no way they'll all succeed. There is an excess of entrepreneurship, but too little deep building behind it."
Horing spoke to "Globes" about the record sums being raised by new AI companies, including, for example, Ilya Sutskever's SSI, which has also opened offices in Israel. Companies that are raising funds at a valuation of billions, when they don't yet have a product or even a business model. "Ilya (Sutskever) has also founded a company - you actually have here two companies. Perhaps Ilya with his high valuation and large fundraising will be able to challenge the big players and he certainly has the reputation for having built something spectacular. But this is a financing round that for reasons we have already decided , we won't be competing in this race."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 7, 2025.
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