Emerge Ventures | Investment Thesis & Preferences

01Investment Thesis

Back technical, high-conviction Israeli founders building category-defining AI-native and deep-tech products, with hands-on support from a small, concentrated team.

Exclusion Criteria

Avoids broad generalist bets outside deep technical/AI domain expertise; not a late-stage or growth-equity investor.

02Investment Team

DO

Dovi Ollech

Founder & Managing Partner

LR

Liad Rubin

General Partner

03F4 Research Brief

Emerge Ventures Research

Investment Thesis

Emerge Ventures is a Tel Aviv-based early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2015/2016 by Dovi Ollech, former Chief of Staff and Advisor to the Chief Scientist at the Israel Innovation Authority. The firm's public positioning captures its philosophy directly: "It's not about us, we're here to help you do whatever it takes to win." Emerge runs a small, high-conviction team model rather than a broad-coverage generalist fund, favoring deep, hands-on involvement with a concentrated number of portfolio companies over each fund cycle. The firm backs Israeli (and Israeli-founder) technical teams building category-defining products, with a strong bias toward AI-native and deep-tech companies where founders have unusually strong domain expertise.

Sector Focus

Emerge's portfolio spans a deliberately broad set of deep-tech and enterprise categories rather than a single vertical:

Cybersecurity (Axonius, Guardio, Infinipoint)
Healthcare / health AI (Aidoc, CareFam)
Legal tech / legal AI (Chamelio)
Developer tools & AI infrastructure (Deci, Rookout, Explorium, Xpander.ai, Stigg)
Marketing/ad tech (Dynamic Yield, Crosswise)
Fintech / billing infrastructure (Sequence)
E-commerce and agentic commerce (ZyG, Beprofit/Viably)
Robotics / autonomous systems (Percepto, Cognata)
EdTech (Loora)

The firm's active "stealth" bucket (unannounced investments) skews further into agentic commerce, biotech, B2A, fintech, healthcare, logistics, and vertical AI, suggesting the current thesis is increasingly concentrated on AI-native, vertical-specific applications built by technical Israeli founders.

Stage Focus

Emerge is a seed and Series A specialist, describing itself as an early-stage fund and typically the first or among the first institutional checks into a company. It participates alongside larger US funds (Bessemer, Lightspeed, Viola) on seed rounds and continues into Series A/B follow-ons for its strongest performers (e.g., Guardio's $80M Series B).

Check Size

Exact check-size figures are not publicly disclosed on the firm's site. Round sizes the firm has participated in range from ~$10M seed rounds (Chamelio) up to $58M seed (ZyG) and $80M Series B (Guardio) as a smaller participant alongside lead investors, consistent with a fund of Emerge's size ($125M Fund III) writing initial checks in the low-to-mid single-digit millions with meaningful follow-on reserves.

Lead Tendency

Mixed. Emerge co-led Chamelio's $10M seed alongside Work-Bench, but was a participating (non-lead) investor in ZyG's $58M seed (led by Bessemer, Viola, Lightspeed) and Guardio's $80M Series B (led by ION Crossover Partners). Classified as "both."

Recent Activity

Fund III ($125M) appears to be actively deploying: new investments in Chamelio (Jan 2026), ZyG (Mar 2026), and continued follow-on support in Guardio's Nov 2025 Series B. The firm made roughly 3-4 new investments in the trailing 12 months as of August 2026.

Portfolio Highlights

Notable exits: Deci (acquired by NVIDIA for $300M, April 2024), Dynamic Yield (sold by McDonald's to Mastercard for $325M, closed April 2022), plus additional acquisitions of Crosswise, Infinipoint, Intello, and Rookout. Axonius, an early Emerge investment, has since become a cybersecurity unicorn. Active portfolio highlights include Guardio (AI-driven consumer cybersecurity, past $100M ARR run-rate as of 2026), Aidoc (radiology AI), and Chamelio (legal AI, ~100 enterprise clients including Wiz, Fiverr, and Cellebrite).

Team

Dovi Ollech, Founder & Managing Partner — Founded Emerge in 2015/2016; previously Chief of Staff and Advisor to the Chief Scientist at the Israel Innovation Authority. Known for a hands-on, high-conviction approach to early-stage investing.
Liad Rubin, General Partner — Previously Investment Director at Kaedan Capital; studied at Reichman University and IE Business School. Holds board/advisor roles at BeProfit, Now You Know, and Guardio, and led Emerge's Chamelio investment.

Decision Process

Small partnership (two named GPs), consistent with a lean, high-conviction decision-making model rather than a large investment committee.

Founder Preferences

Emerge favors technical founding teams building category-defining, AI-native products, with particular strength in backing Israeli founders leveraging deep domain expertise (e.g., ex-Israel Innovation Authority, ex-military tech units, and enterprise operators).