13 Israel’s Unicorn Success Story Boosts Optimism But what drives Israel’s disproportionate success? As the world faces economic uncertainty, rising costs, and inflation, the tech scene in Israel offers optimism and relief. In Q1 this year, Bloomberg reported over 1,000 unicorns globally, and Israel – with just 0.1% of the global population - accounts for some 8%. In Israel, the number of unicorns is rapidly heading towards the 100-mark. The huge financing deals and large VC funds chasing the next successful investment have raised the value of companies and created unicorns at an unprecedented rate. The USD 25.6 billion Israeli firms raised fromVC is roughly the same as India, with a 100 times larger population, as well as the UK, the leading innovator in Europe, and half that of the European Union, with more than 400 million people. “At the moment, we’re seeing increased activity at the seed level, new startups being formed and new funding available to early stage ventures.We are also seeing Israeli unicorns acquire foreign and local targets that are less optimistic about growth in current conditions or that have remained limited to specific features or single product offering,” adds Yair Geva, head of Start-ups and Emerging Companies at Herzog Fox & Neeman (“Herzog”). Israel’s tight-knit entrepreneurial community, strong research and development, educated population and government support, has helped it produce the most start-ups per capita of any country, with nearly 3,000 in Tel Aviv alone.Moreover, every successful ecosystem has institutions which took a leading role in its creation. In many cases, it is either a university, an accelerator or a massive corporation. In Israel, it is the army, which became one of the world’s top start-up accelerators, by accident. Israeli technology companies raised all-time high of USD 26.6 billion in 2021, over twice that of 2020
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