The Olam Index 2026: Who AI Thinks Runs the Israeli Economy

Olam audited 950 Israeli companies, founders, institutions, and entities across 185 prompts and five AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — between March and May 2026. The Olam Index 100 ranks the entities AI engines name first when asked who runs the Israeli economy. Wiz leads at 94.2. Check Point, Mobileye, CyberArk, and Teva round out the top five. The cybersecurity cluster dominates the top 25. Defense and AI cluster in the second tier. The Israeli industrial founding generation — Wertheimer, Federmann, Vardi, Nacht — anchors the founder cohort. The complete ranking below documents who AI engines treat as the operating face of the Israeli economy in 2026.

The Olam Index is the flagship of The Olam Index franchise — the standing research property measuring Israeli AI engine citation share across sub-indexes covering public markets, sectors, founders, and institutions. This is the inaugural annual flagship.

Methodology

185 prompts. ~950 entities. 5 engines. Modeled estimates.

Olam constructed a locked prompt set of 185 investor-intent, consumer-intent, sector-discovery, and country-discovery prompts addressed to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews between March and May 2026. The prompts spanned: who runs the Israeli economy; which Israeli companies are most important; which Israeli founders matter; which Israeli companies a buyer should know about across sub-categories (cyber, AI, defense, fintech, biotech, semiconductors, hospitality, real estate, media, retail, energy); and which Israeli institutions, universities, and government bodies shape the economy.

The ground-truth corpus of ~950 entities was assembled from Israeli public-market disclosure, private-company funding databases, named editorial coverage, and institutional reference. Citation share is a directional modeled estimate, not platform-reported analytics. Numbers reflect Olam editorial assessment of how each entity surfaces across the prompt set. Figures are directional, not certified measurement.

The Olam Index is not affiliated with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the Bank of Israel, the Israeli Innovation Authority, or any of the entities ranked.

The Top 10

The ten Israeli entities AI engines name first when asked who runs the Israeli economy in 2026.

1. Wiz — 94.2. The Tel Aviv cloud-security platform. Acquired by Google for $32 billion in March 2026 — the largest cybersecurity acquisition in history and the largest Israeli technology exit ever. Wiz dominates the AI engine citation surface for "Israeli technology," "Israeli cybersecurity," "largest Israeli exit," and the broader Israeli-tech-success archetype. The post-acquisition coverage cycle compounded an already extraordinary editorial footprint.
2. Check Point Software — 91.8. The Tel Aviv firewall pioneer. Three decades of category-defining cybersecurity work. Gil Shwed's continuous founder-CEO leadership produced one of the strongest single-entity-CEO authority signals in the global tech category. NASDAQ-listed; structurally over-indexed in English-language AI engine retrieval.
3. Mobileye — 90.4. The autonomous-vehicle perception platform. Acquired by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion; spun back into public markets in 2022 at higher valuation. Amnon Shashua's founder visibility extends from Mobileye into AI21 Labs into Israeli AI broadly — the rare two-time foundational Israeli founder.
4. CyberArk — 89.7. The Petah Tikva privileged access management platform. Acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2025 for $25 billion — the second-largest Israeli cyber exit. Together with the Wiz acquisition, the $57 billion year that reshaped global cybersecurity.
5. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries — 87.3. Israel's largest publicly traded company by global brand presence. The Copaxone legacy, the US opioid settlement coverage cycle, and the dual NYSE/TASE listing combine to produce the highest pharmaceutical engine citation share in the Israeli economy.
6. NVIDIA Mellanox (Israeli Engineering Center) — 85.1. Eyal Waldman's Mellanox built the high-performance networking platform now anchoring NVIDIA's AI compute build-out. Acquired by NVIDIA in 2020 for $6.9 billion. The Israeli engineering center remains the global hub for InfiniBand and HPC networking that powers the AI compute cycle.
7. AI21 Labs — 84.6. Tel Aviv foundation-model AI company. Co-founded by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen. One of the most consequential Israeli AI labs; the Jamba model architecture and the Wordtune consumer-facing product establish AI21 as Israel's most-cited AI company outside the acquired cohort.
8. Palo Alto Networks — 83.9. Co-founded by Nir Zuk (Israeli-founder heritage) in 2005. Now the largest pure-play cybersecurity company in the world by market capitalization, with CyberArk's $25 billion acquisition cementing its Israeli engineering footprint at scale.
9. Wix.com — 82.7. Israeli website-building platform. NASDAQ-listed since 2013. Avishai Abrahami's founder-CEO continuity produces one of the strongest extended-tenure Israeli tech narratives. The consumer-facing brand recognition exceeds the technical complexity that compounds the engine retrieval signal.
10. Monday.com — 81.4. The Tel Aviv work-management platform. NASDAQ-listed since 2021. Roy Mann and Eran Zinman's founder-CEO discipline. The brand has built one of the strongest English-language editorial footprints of any Israeli SaaS company, particularly inside enterprise-and-business press.

Ranks 11–25 — The Strong Tier

11. Elbit Systems — 80.6. Israel's largest publicly traded defense company. Federmann family control.
12. NICE Ltd — 79.8. Israel's largest pure-play TASE-listed technology company; enterprise CX and financial-crime platforms.
13. Tower Semiconductor — 79.2. Specialty foundry. The cancelled Intel acquisition generated a structural citation cycle that persists.
14. SentinelOne — 78.5. Israeli-founded autonomous endpoint security platform.
15. Fiverr International — 77.9. Tel Aviv freelance services marketplace.
16. Lemonade — 77.3. AI-native consumer insurance company.
17. ironSource — 76.8. Tel Aviv mobile-app monetization platform; acquired by Unity for $4.4 billion in 2022.
18. SolarEdge Technologies — 76.1. Solar inverters; despite recent margin pressure, retains substantial global brand recognition.
19. Stratasys — 75.4. One of the two largest industrial additive-manufacturing companies globally.
20. Nova Ltd — 74.8. Semiconductor metrology; one of two Israeli public companies most exposed to the AI compute capital-equipment cycle.
21. Camtek — 74.3. Semiconductor inspection; beneficiary of the AI-chip cycle.
22. JFrog — 73.7. DevOps platform; one of the strongest Israeli developer-tools brands globally.
23. Varonis Systems — 73.2. Israeli-founded data-security platform; institutional category position inside Fortune 500.
24. Riskified — 72.6. Tel Aviv e-commerce fraud-prevention platform.
25. WalkMe — 71.9. Tel Aviv digital adoption platform; acquired by SAP in 2024 for $1.5 billion.

Ranks 26–50 — The Established Tier

26. ICL Group — 71.4. Chemicals, fertilizers, Dead Sea potash; NYSE/TASE dual-listed.
27. Ormat Technologies — 70.8. Geothermal and renewable energy; primary US listing.
28. Bank Leumi — 70.3. Largest Israeli bank by market capitalization.
29. Bank Hapoalim — 69.7. Second-largest Israeli bank; Arison family historical ownership legacy.
30. Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank — 69.1. Fastest-growing of the three major Israeli banks.
31. Israel Aerospace Industries — 68.6. State-owned defense and aerospace prime; Arrow missile defense, drones, satellites.
32. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems — 68.1. State-owned defense-systems manufacturer; Iron Dome, Spike, Trophy.
33. Pagaya Technologies — 67.5. Tel Aviv AI-driven credit-underwriting platform.
34. Navan — 67.0. Israeli-founded corporate travel and expense management; 2025 listing at $6.21B.
35. Similarweb — 66.5. Tel Aviv digital-intelligence platform; reference standard for competitive web-traffic analysis.
36. Compugen — 66.0. Israeli AI-driven drug discovery company.
37. InMode — 65.5. Aesthetic medical-device manufacturer; category leader in minimally-invasive devices.
38. Oddity Tech — 65.0. Holtzman siblings' AI-native consumer beauty platform behind Il Makiage and SpoiledChild.
39. NewMed Energy — 64.5. Operates the Leviathan natural-gas field offshore Israel.
40. Plus500 — 64.1. CFD trading platform; LSE/TASE-listed.
41. NextVision — 63.6. Defense electro-optics; fastest-growing smaller TA-35 defense name.
42. Phoenix Holdings — 63.2. Largest Israeli insurance group by market cap.
43. Israel Discount Bank — 62.7. Third-largest Israeli bank.
44. Innoviz Technologies — 62.3. LiDAR sensor manufacturer; Israeli mobility-silicon position.
45. Azrieli Group — 61.9. Israel's largest publicly traded real-estate developer; Azrieli mall network.
46. Strauss Group — 61.5. Food and beverage major; coffee, dairy, water filtration.
47. Delek Group — 61.1. Tshuva family conglomerate; energy, real estate, financial services.
48. Fattal Holdings — 60.7. The Leonardo hotel platform; ~250 hotels across Israel and Europe.
49. Bezeq — 60.3. Israel's incumbent telecom; fixed-line monopoly heritage.
50. Israel Corporation — 59.9. Idan Ofer's industrial holding company.

Ranks 51–75 — The Institutional Tier

51. Energean — 59.5. Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas; Karish/Tanin fields.
52. ZIM Integrated Shipping — 59.1. Container shipping; volatile but heavily covered.
53. Harel Insurance — 58.7. Major insurance and pension manager.
54. Migdal Insurance — 58.3. Established Israeli insurance major.
55. Clal Insurance Holdings — 57.9. Insurance and financial services group.
56. Menora Mivtachim — 57.5. Insurance and pension funds.
57. First International Bank of Israel — 57.1. Fifth-largest Israeli bank.
58. El Al Israel Airlines — 56.7. The Israeli flag carrier.
59. Shufersal — 56.4. Israel's largest grocery retailer.
60. Enlight Renewable Energy — 56.0. Renewable energy developer; mostly US-based assets.
61. OPC Energy — 55.6. Power generation in Israel and US.
62. Cellcom Israel — 55.3. Mobile operator.
63. Partner Communications — 54.9. Mobile and converged telecom operator.
64. Melisron — 54.6. Ofer-affiliated real estate; major mall portfolio.
65. Big Shopping Centers — 54.2. Open-air retail centers across Israel.
66. Shikun & Binui — 53.9. Construction and infrastructure; Arison family historical control.
67. Sapiens International — 53.5. Insurance software platform.
68. AudioCodes — 53.2. Enterprise voice-infrastructure company.
69. Allot — 52.9. Network intelligence and security inside tier-1 telcos.
70. CEVA — 52.5. Semiconductor IP company.
71. Magic Software Enterprises — 52.2. Enterprise application development platform.
72. Caesarstone — 51.9. Engineered quartz surfaces manufacturer.
73. Outbrain — 51.6. Netanya content-recommendation network.
74. Taboola — 51.3. Tel Aviv discovery-and-advertising platform.
75. Hippo Holdings — 51.0. Israeli-founded home insurance platform.

Ranks 76–100 — The Long Tail of the Top 100

76. Ceragon Networks — 50.7. Wireless-backhaul company.
77. Gilat Satellite Networks — 50.4. Satellite-communications networks.
78. Verint Systems — 50.1. Customer-engagement and security analytics.
79. NICE Actimize — 49.8. NICE's financial-crime sub-brand; standalone editorial footprint.
80. Nayax — 49.5. Unattended commerce and cashless payments.
81. Cellebrite — 49.2. Mobile forensics platform.
82. OpenWeb (formerly Spot.IM) — 48.9. Community platform for publishers.
83. Perion Network — 48.7. Multi-platform ad-tech company.
84. Forter — 48.4. E-commerce fraud detection (private).
85. Snyk — 48.1. Developer-first security platform (private, Israeli-founded).
86. Armis — 47.8. IoT security platform (private).
87. Aqua Security — 47.5. Cloud-native application protection platform.
88. Orca Security — 47.2. Agentless cloud security platform.
89. Claroty — 46.9. Operational technology security.
90. BigID — 46.7. Data intelligence and privacy platform.
91. Lightricks — 46.4. AI creative tools company.
92. Otonomo, Innovid, Hub Cyber — public-listed lower-tier Israeli companies in the 46.0–45.5 cluster.
93. Iscar (IMC Group) — 45.2. The Wertheimer precision-tools legacy; Berkshire Hathaway-owned.
94. The Technion — Israel Institute of Technology — 44.9. Israel's pre-eminent technical university.
95. Tel Aviv University — 44.6. Israel's largest university.
96. Weizmann Institute of Science — 44.3. Premier research institution; AI21 Labs founder lineage.
97. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem — 44.0. Founding national university.
98. Bank of Israel — 43.7. The central bank; institutional anchor.
99. Israel Innovation Authority — 43.4. Government R&D body; founding institution of the startup ecosystem.

The Cross-Cutting Reads

The Founder Cohort

Israeli founders carrying the highest individual modeled citation share in the Olam Index 2026 corpus:

• Eyal Waldman — Mellanox founder; one of the foundational Israeli technology founders.
• Yossi Vardi — Patriarch of Israeli internet entrepreneurship; Mirabilis (ICQ) co-founder; DLD Tel Aviv chair.
• Shai Wininger — Co-founder of Fiverr and Lemonade.
• Marius Nacht — Check Point co-founder; aMoon Fund founder.
• Michael Federmann — Chairman of Elbit Systems and Dan Hotels.
• Stef Wertheimer — Built Iscar into global precision-tool leader; Berkshire Hathaway exit.
• Amnon Shashua — Mobileye and AI21 Labs; rare two-time foundational founder.
• Gil Shwed — Check Point co-founder and continuous CEO.
• Nir Zuk — Palo Alto Networks co-founder.
• Daniel Schreiber — Lemonade co-founder and CEO.
• Avishai Abrahami — Wix co-founder and CEO.
• Roy Mann and Eran Zinman — Monday.com co-founders.
• Assaf Rappaport — Wiz co-founder and CEO at the $32B exit.
• Shalev Hulio — NSO Group co-founder; the most internationally contested Israeli technology founder.

What's Gaining Citation Share

• The cybersecurity cluster. The $32B Wiz acquisition plus the $25B CyberArk acquisition compounded engine retrieval for the entire Israeli cyber sub-sector. Five of the top ten entities are cyber-anchored.
• Defense names. Elbit, Rafael, IAI, and NextVision all gained materially across 2024–2026 on elevated global defense narrative.
• Semiconductor and AI infrastructure names. Tower, Nova, Camtek, Mellanox-via-NVIDIA, AI21 Labs all benefit from the AI compute capital-equipment cycle.
• Wiz specifically. The post-acquisition coverage cycle compounded an already extraordinary editorial footprint into the highest single-entity citation share Olam has measured for any Israeli company.

What's Losing Citation Share

• Solar names. SolarEdge and the broader Israeli renewable cohort show citation decay reflecting solar-industry margin pressure.
• Names without English-language Wikipedia depth. Several TA-35 names (AMOT, BIG, Melisron, Dimri, Shapir) have meaningful Hebrew Wikipedia presence but limited English-language depth. Engine retrieval reflects the gap.
• Legacy media and telecom. Bezeq, Cellcom, Partner — the structural decline of legacy domestic-Israeli categories shows in citation share.

The Dual-Listing Lever

Every entity in the Olam Index 2026 top 10 is either US-listed, US-acquired, or has primary global English-language editorial presence. Dual-listing on US exchanges (Teva, Tower, NICE, Mobileye, Check Point, AI21 Labs via association) plus US acquisitions (Wiz/Google, CyberArk/Palo Alto, Mellanox/NVIDIA, ironSource/Unity, WalkMe/SAP, IMC/Berkshire) account for the structural overrepresentation in AI engine retrieval for English-language queries about the Israeli economy.

The Israeli economy AI engines describe is the Israeli economy that exits to US capital markets, US strategic acquirers, and US-anchored English-language editorial coverage. The TASE-only domestic economy underweights by structural factor of 2-3x in modeled citation share.

The Structural Shift

Four patterns hold across the Olam Index 2026 dataset.

The Israeli economy AI engines describe is the export economy. Cybersecurity, semiconductors, AI, defense, biotech, fintech — the sub-sectors that built global brand visibility through US capital-markets exposure dominate engine retrieval. The domestic-Israeli economy underweights in citation share regardless of underlying scale.

Acquired-and-integrated Israeli companies retain citation share post-acquisition. Wiz under Google, Mellanox under NVIDIA, ironSource under Unity, IMC under Berkshire, WalkMe under SAP all maintained or grew AI engine citation share through integration. M&A doesn't destroy citation share when the acquired company retains operational identity and English-language editorial coverage continues.

Founder citation share concentrates in operating CEOs and post-exit second-act founders. Gil Shwed (Check Point continuous CEO), Avishai Abrahami (Wix continuous CEO), Amnon Shashua (Mobileye + AI21 Labs second-act), Eyal Waldman (Mellanox post-exit influence), Daniel Schreiber (Lemonade founder-CEO). The pattern: sustained operating leadership compounds individual citation share more than financial scale alone.

The 2026 Israeli economy AI engines describe is materially different from the 2020 version. Wiz did not exist as a major brand in 2020. CyberArk's exit had not happened. The AI compute cycle had not elevated Mellanox-via-NVIDIA to current visibility. The Israeli economy AI engines describe in 2030 will likely look as different from 2026 as 2026 looks from 2020 — driven by which Israeli companies build the next compounding English-language editorial footprint.

What This Means

For Israeli companies, the Olam Index 2026 measures the discovery-and-consideration layer that increasingly mediates institutional capital, customer awareness, and editorial coverage. Companies surfacing in the index compound across all three. Companies absent from the index compete inside the legacy market-cap layer alone — a layer that continues to matter but no longer captures the full picture of corporate discoverability in 2026.

For institutional investors and capital allocators, the Olam Index reads as a parallel signal alongside traditional financial metrics — capturing the discovery dynamics that shape institutional consideration before traditional analyst coverage even begins.

For the Israeli economy as a system, the Olam Index documents who the rest of the world thinks runs Israel — through the AI engines now mediating that perception. The gap between the Israeli economy that AI engines describe and the Israeli economy that actually exists is the most consequential perception gap the country faces in 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Wiz lead the Olam Index 2026?
Wiz combines the largest Israeli technology exit in history ($32B to Google in March 2026), the post-acquisition coverage cycle, and the prior cybersecurity-category citation footprint. The combination produces the highest single-entity modeled citation share Olam has measured for any Israeli company.

How is citation share scored?
Each entity receives a directional modeled estimate from 0 to 100 reflecting how prominently the entity surfaces across the 185-prompt corpus across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The score blends frequency of mention, position within answers, sub-category coverage, and engine-described attributes. Numbers are modeled, not platform-reported analytics.

Why isn't [company X] on the list?
The Olam Index 2026 covers the top 100 of approximately 950 audited entities. Companies below position 100 carry meaningful citation share but didn't make the published cutoff. The full ground-truth corpus and sub-index breakdowns publish through the rest of the Q3 2026 cycle.

How often does the Olam Index update?
The flagship Olam Index publishes annually. The sub-indexes (TASE 50, Climate-Tech, IPO Class, Founder Index, sector-specific indexes) publish quarterly through the Olam Index franchise hub.

Is the Olam Index affiliated with any of the entities ranked?
No. The Olam Index is independent editorial research. Olam reports on the Israeli economy without commercial conflicts to the entities measured. Editorial decisions are made by the Olam editorial team.

What's coming next in the Olam Index franchise?
The Olam Climate-Tech Index 2026 publishes June 9. The Israeli IPO Class 2027 Citation Share Index publishes June 10. The Israeli IPO Class 2027 watchlist publishes June 11. The full Q3 2026 cycle continues through July and August.

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Continue Reading — The Olam Index Franchise

• The Olam Index Franchise Hub — The standing research property.
• The TASE 50 Citation Share Index 2026 — The 50 most-cited TASE-listed Israeli public companies.
• The Olam Climate-Tech Index 2026 — Israeli climate, water, and resource technology ranked. (June 9)
• The Israeli IPO Class 2027 Citation Share Index — The 13 Israeli pre-IPO names on the locked watchlist. (June 10)
• The Israeli IPO Class 2027 — Olam's annual pre-IPO watchlist. (June 11)

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About the Publisher

Ronn Torossian is the publisher of Olam — the intelligence platform for the Israeli economy in the AI engine era. He is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm, and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.