State of the Israeli seed spread

What the spread is

The spread is the gap between what an investor pays to enter an Israeli seed round and what a comparable company is worth when it exits into the US market. Olivent's thesis is that the gap is wide, it lasts, and only investors who can get into the rounds can capture it. This note tracks the published numbers behind it.

The spread is the gap between what you pay at an Israeli seed and what a US exit is worth.

It also says plainly where those numbers are still missing. The homepage draws the spread as an illustration. This page is the version with axes. It gets updated when the underlying reports do, the dataset date sits under every chart, and every figure links to the report it came from. If a series hasn't been pulled and reviewed yet, the chart says so instead of showing a placeholder.

Entry: Israeli seed pricing

Israeli rounds labelled "seed" are far larger than US seed rounds. Tracked Israeli seed deals in the first half of 2026 had a median of $10.1 million (26 deals, $461 million in total; $8.0 million excluding the four or five largest). The US median seed deal for the same period was $3.0 million, per the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.

An Israeli round labelled seed is often closer to a US Series A in size.

Two cautions explain most of that gap. First, the reporting source decides what counts as "seed", and there's no common definition. Israeli companies also tend to raise their first institutional round later, with a product and often revenue, so the round carrying the seed label is closer to a US Series A in size. IVC's own early-round series (pre-Seed through Series A combined) points the same way: a median of $10.5 million in 2025 and $14 million in the first half of 2026, while pre-Seed medians have sat at $0.2 million since 2023. Second, the Israeli market is small, so a handful of large rounds can move any median from one period to the next.

The number the thesis really turns on is the entry valuation, and that's the series this note is still missing. Neither IVC's quarterly review nor Startup Nation Central's public reports publish a seed pre-money median. Carta's US seed valuation page couldn't be retrieved for verification when this note was compiled (its Q1 2026 summary reports a $24 million median post-money on a $4.1 million round). So both valuation series stay empty, and the chart below says so, until a figure can be pulled from the cited page and reviewed.

Exit: US outcomes

Exit values are the harder half to measure, because most seed companies exit privately and the price often isn't disclosed. This note will use disclosed acquisition values and public listings of Israeli-founded companies in the US, and it will name every transaction it relies on. It won't aggregate undisclosed ones.

Exits are the harder half to measure, because most seed companies sell privately and don't disclose the price.

This section fills in once the entry series above are in place. Until then, the thesis page carries the qualitative version: Israeli-founded companies exit to US acquirers and US public markets at US multiples, and the examples named there (Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Wiz) are public record. On the exit side, IVC's Q2 2026 review notes that events below $20 million consistently account for a high share of the count. Any seed investor should carry that base rate next to the headline exits.

Method and sources

Every figure on this page comes from a published report. It's stored with the report's name, URL and the date it was retrieved, and it's reviewed before it's shown. Nothing is modelled or interpolated. When a source revises a figure, the point gets updated and the dataset date moves with it.

Every figure here comes from a published report, reviewed before it's shown. Nothing is modelled.

As of this update, three of the five series have data: US seed median deal value (PitchBook-NVCA, 2025 and H1 2026), the Israeli tracked seed median round (VC Cafe, H1 2025 and H1 2026) and IVC's early-round median (2025 and H1 2026). The two valuation series are empty for the reasons above. Sources are listed under each chart and in the sources section below. The dataset lives in the site's code, so changing a number means a reviewed change with a date on it. Every guide on this site gets the same discipline.