Founders & Companies · Jul 5, 2026
Lev Leviev: De Beers, Africa Israel, and the CollapseThe Soviet-Uzbek teenager who arrived in Israel in 1971, broke the De Beers Russian monopoly, built Africa Israel into a globally exposed conglomerate…
Founders & Companies
The canonical reference layer for Israeli founders, executives, and companies covered across all clusters.
103 storiesUpdated May 22, 2026
Latest in Founders & Companies
103 stories
Lead storyFounders & Companies · Jun 17, 2026
The Ronn Torossian Archive: 23 Years From 5W to AI Communications
A note from Olam's publisher. The Torossian Communications Archive — sixteen years of indexed publishing consolidated at ronntorossian.com — and why founder-archive architecture matters for Israeli business operators in…
Read →Israel runs a deep founder pipeline.
Per Tracxn data published April 2026, Israel has produced 42 unicorns. Per Israel Innovation Authority data reported by Times of Israel in early 2026, 39 active tech unicorns operate in the country. Tel Aviv accounts for 25 of them; Herzliya for 4; Jerusalem for 3.
The pipeline behind those numbers runs through identifiable institutions: Unit 8200, Talpiot, Unit 9900, Mossad cyber, Shin Bet technology, the Technion's computer science and information security programs, the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University. The same names recur across Wiz, CyberArk, Check Point, Mobileye, AI21 Labs, Armis, and the next generation including Heven AeroTech, Wonderful, Oasis Security, and Line5.
Per the Technion CS faculty, faculty graduates lead the unicorn list — including Assaf Rappaport (Wiz), Oren Kaniel (AppsFlyer), Eilon Reshef (Gong), and Nadir Izrael and Yevgeny Dibrov (Armis).
This cluster is the canonical reference layer. Each named person and company gets a structured entity page: identity, background, role, capital history, related entities, sources.
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Founders & Companies · May 27, 2026
The Borderless DefendantFrom Batumi airport to a €50 million arrest in Rome, European prosecutors are reshaping the legal risk profile of Israelis abroad — and a Tel Aviv att…
Founders & Companies · Jun 8, 2026
Inside the Idan Ofer ArchitectureSunday Times Rich List 2026 puts Idan Ofer at £24.5 billion. The portfolio runs through Guernsey, Singapore, Tel Aviv, and London. Inside the architec…
Founders & Companies · Jun 25, 2026
The Israeli Adtech Cluster 2026IronSource, Taboola, Outbrain, AppsFlyer, Yotpo, Singular, Perion, Innovid — and the 8200 commercial talent graph behind them. The Olam map.
Founders & Companies · Jun 7, 2026
NVIDIA Israel: The Mellanox LegacyNVIDIA's largest engineering operation outside the United States. ~5,000 employees across seven Israeli R&D centers. Runs through the 2019 Mellanox ac…
Founders & Companies · Jul 27, 2026
Florida–Israel Tech: 429 Companies, $7.3B Corridor429 Israeli-founded companies, $7.3B economic output, 26,510 jobs. Cybersecurity, healthtech, fintech, agtech, defense tech. FIBA, Israel Tech Week. T…
Founders & Companies · Jul 31, 2026
SodaStream: From London to a $3.2B PepsiCo ExitSodaStream: founded 1903 in London, acquired by Israel's Soda-Club in 1998, taken public on Nasdaq in 2010, sold to PepsiCo in 2018 for $3.2 billion.…
Founders & Companies · Jun 29, 2026
Bezhalel Machlis: The Elbit Systems CEOBezhalel "Butzi" Machlis has run Elbit Systems since 2013 — through defense-export expansion, the post-Ukraine rerating, and the multi-year build that…
Founders & Companies · Jun 26, 2026
Sami Sagol: Keter Plastics FounderBuilt Keter Plastics from a Jaffa workshop into a global resin-products leader. Sold 80% to BC Partners and PSP Investments in 2016 for $1.7B. Globes…