Mind the Tech NY
“Bigger than Wiz”: Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire says Israel can build trillion-dollar companies
Maguire urges Israeli entrepreneurs to think beyond current success stories like Wiz, noting that “Right now, the smartest thing to do is to invest in Israel.”
Shaun Maguire - Mind the Tech NY
(Tomerico - Live Focus)
“I'm optimistic about many categories in Israel. Obviously, Israel has dominated cybersecurity for decades, but especially recently. I'm extremely optimistic about defense tech in Israel and we backed a company called Kela, which came out of stealth last week. I'm also optimistic about other areas, and I think that the most important category of technology for Israel to get right after defensetech is AI," said Shaun Maguire, a Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, speaking at the Mind the Tech NY 2025 conference by Calcalist and Bank Leumi.
According to Maguire, who spoke with Calcalist’s Sophie Shulman, "If you look at the percent of Israel's GDP in 15 years, I think it will be a much larger fraction of the defense tech than it is today. I think there will be hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue coming into Israel in like 20 years or so for defense. I think it will be one of the core pillars of the economy."
Did Israel miss the artificial intelligence train?
“Israel is significantly behind in AI right now, but I think in a different way than people realize. To create a foundation model lab you need insane amounts of compute, which is very expensive and requires huge amounts of power,” Maguire explained. “A prerequisite to competing on the foundation model levels requires Israel to invest even more in energy and then in compute. You also need the talent in which Israel is doing unbelievably well.”
Maguire pointed out that many of the key figures driving AI innovation are Israelis based in the U.S., such as Ilya Sutskever, one of the founders of OpenAI, who recently launched a major competitor in Safe Superintelligence.
“If you look at the people that have led the biggest breakthroughs in AI from an algorithms perspective, quite a few are Israelis that live in America, like Ilya Sutskever and Noam Shazeer, who's credited as the primary creator of the transformer, which is what has led to this evolution of AI. Israel has the talents, but doesn't have the compute resources to create something vertically integrated. The acquisition of Mellanox by Nvidia is proof of Israel’s impact in AI, but strategically, Israel needs to expand its data center capacity. Without significant investment and government support, that will be a challenge.”
What do you say to investors who are pulling out of Israel due to the war and political tensions?
"Investors were already coming back even before Wiz was acquired for $32 billion by Google. We're also investors in companies like Eon and Decart who are seen as some of the most promising startups in the world," Maguire said.
Will Sequoia invest more in Israel in 2025?
"There’s a misconception about how Sequoia operates," Maguire clarified. "Today, 25% of the companies traded on Nasdaq were backed by Sequoia at some point. But we don’t make many new investments annually—we invest in about 30 new startups per year, with checks of $2 million or more. Out of that, 3–5 investments are in Israeli companies. I don’t see that number increasing, but Israel’s share remains significant. At the end of the day, quality matters more than quantity.
“I think people have the wrong impression of how Sequoia operates," Maguire clarified. "We've backed something like 25% of the market cap of the Nasdaq. Apple, Google, Cisco, Oracle, Nvidia, we were the first investors in Nvidia and led the Seed round. But we actually don't make many investments per year. It's really crazy. Globally across the U.S. and Europe, we probably invest in about 30 new companies per year roughly, and maybe not counting if we put a 200K check into something, but over $2 million check size. And we've probably been doing 3-5 investments in Israel a year for the last four years. I don't think we'll do more than that. We focus on finding the absolute best companies and ones that kind of fit our interests and our vision of the future."
Maguire has been one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal supporters of Israel since the war that broke out on October 7. "I love Israel. I bought a house in Israel 3.5 months ago. I feel like home there," he said.
On his personal connection to Israel
"My great grandfather lived in Eastern Europe and fled to the U.S. in the 1930s. I grew up hearing stories about the Holocaust, which shaped my understanding of why Israel is crucial for Jewish security," Maguire shared.
He also discussed how his experience growing up with the internet allowed him to track narratives about Israel. "In 2023, I saw Hamas using digital tactics to sway Western public opinion. On October 7, I knew I had to speak out on social media to support Israel. I understood the context, and I knew exactly what to say."
Have you paid a price for your activism?
"I’m past that point now. For about six weeks, I faced real threats—people wanted me fired from Sequoia. Not from within the firm, but from people in the ecosystem. I knew that would happen. But after two months, people realized I wasn’t going to stop, and they lost their power to intimidate me."
How has the war changed your investment strategy?
"The best investors make their biggest bets in difficult times. During COVID-19 in 2020, we at Sequoia recognized that Israel’s startup ecosystem had entered a new phase, with entrepreneurs becoming even more ambitious. So we doubled down and invested heavily, knowing the opportunities were there."
Maguire believes the same is true today. "My goal is that Israel creates at least a $1 trillion company over the next decade or so. I think that would truly revolutionize the economy. I think Israel can build companies even bigger than Wiz. But that requires ambition. After October 7, we decided to double our commitment to Israel. We reopened our local office, appointed a new partner in January 2024, and I personally bought a home in Israel. I spend long periods there. Right now, the smartest thing to do is to invest in Israel—not just from a business perspective, but also from a moral one. When others are pulling out, that’s when the best opportunities arise."
