The Israeli AI Silicon Stack: Annapurna, Habana, Mellanox, Run:ai, Hailo
Five Israeli companies, three exits totaling over $9.5 billion to US hyperscalers, and one of the most strategically positioned clusters in global AI infrastructure. Annapurna, Habana, Mellanox, Run:ai, Hailo.
Five Israeli companies, three exits totaling over $9.5 billion to US hyperscalers, and one of the most strategically positioned national clusters in global AI infrastructure.
Israeli companies help power the infrastructure underneath the global AI boom. Annapurna designs AWS custom silicon. Mellanox sits inside Nvidia's networking business. Habana defines Intel's AI accelerator line. Run:ai orchestrates Nvidia's GPU stack. Hailo operates independently in edge AI. Together they form the Israeli AI silicon stack.
Annapurna Labs
Founded 2011 in Yokneam. Acquired by Amazon in 2015 for approximately $370 million per trade-press estimates. Annapurna designs Amazon's custom silicon: AWS Graviton (ARM-based server processors), AWS Nitro (the AWS hypervisor and networking offload silicon), and AWS Trainium (AI training accelerators).
The 2015 acquisition price ($370M) understates the position's current strategic value by multiple orders of magnitude.
Habana Labs
Founded 2016. Acquired by Intel in 2019 for approximately $2 billion. Habana designs AI training and inference accelerators — the Gaudi training silicon and the Goya inference silicon — that compete directly with Nvidia GPUs and AMD MI accelerators in the AI training market.
Mellanox Technologies
Founded 1999. Acquired by Nvidia in 2019 for $6.9 billion — at the time one of the larger Israeli technology transactions in history. Mellanox designed InfiniBand and high-performance Ethernet networking silicon. The Yokneam operation now powers Nvidia's networking, InfiniBand, and high-performance interconnect business — a core component of modern AI training clusters, where networking bandwidth is often the bottleneck.
The 2019 acquisition price was big. The position's current value to Nvidia's data-center strategy is substantially larger.
Run:ai
Founded 2018 by Omri Geller and Ronen Dar. Acquired by Nvidia in 2024 for approximately $700 million. Run:ai operates Kubernetes-based GPU orchestration enabling enterprise AI workload scheduling and resource optimization.
The acquisition positions Nvidia in the AI orchestration software layer alongside its core silicon and networking business. Geller is widely reported to trace through the IDF Talpiot program.
Hailo
Founded 2017. Operates independently. Designs edge AI accelerators — silicon optimized for inference at the device layer (automotive, industrial, consumer). Hailo has raised approximately $400 million in venture capital across multiple rounds, representing the largest independent Israeli AI silicon company.
Why Israel powers AI silicon
Engineering talent depth. The Israeli semiconductor talent base — built through Intel Israel's 50-year presence, the Mellanox legacy, the academic chip-design programs at the Technion and Tel Aviv University, and a substantial pool of senior IC designers — produces sustained supply of senior chip engineering talent.
Strategic acquisition path. US hyperscalers have demonstrated repeated willingness to acquire Israeli silicon companies at scale. The pattern is now established.
Geographic concentration. Most major Israeli semiconductor operations sit within a 30-minute drive of one another — enabling talent mobility and ecosystem co-location effects.
What comes next
Annapurna, Habana, Mellanox, and Run:ai continue to operate under their hyperscaler parents at expanded scale. Hailo continues to expand independently. The Israeli AI silicon stack remains one of the most strategically positioned non-US clusters globally.
Source data: SEC filings of acquirer companies; corporate disclosures; coverage in Calcalist, Globes, Bloomberg, Reuters, TechCrunch. Data current as of Q2 2026.