One Zero: Israel's First Digital Bank

Private · Digital Banking · Founded 2022 · Israel's first new bank in decades

One Zero is Israel's first fully digital bank and the country's first new banking license in over four decades (43 years, per Globes), founded by Prof. Amnon Shashua (the founder of Mobileye) around an AI-driven "private banking for the masses" model — and, in the Olam Answer Index, the digital disruptor that broke the incumbent order across Israel's banking sector. This profile is business-intelligence context, not financial advice.

What Is One Zero? Company snapshot

How Did One Zero Become Israel's First Digital Bank?

One Zero is the first genuinely new bank to open in Israel in more than 40 years — a market that had ossified around a handful of incumbents. The project was driven by Prof. Amnon Shashua, best known as the co-founder of autonomous-vehicle firm Mobileye, who set out to build a bank from a blank sheet rather than digitize an existing one. After a restricted license from the Bank of Israel in 2019 and a supervised pilot, One Zero cleared the regulator's milestones and was awarded a full banking license in January 2022, Globes reported, with the Bank of Israel's own governor noting it was the first new bank established in the country in 43 years. Because it holds a full license and sits under the Bank of Israel's Banking Supervision Department, One Zero is a bank in the strict regulatory sense, not a fintech app riding on someone else's balance sheet.

What Does One Zero Offer Today?

One Zero's pitch is "private banking for the masses": the kind of proactive, advisory relationship historically reserved for wealthy clients, delivered to ordinary households through an app and priced as a flat monthly subscription rather than a thicket of per-transaction fees. The engine is Ella, a natural-language AI assistant built on AI21 Labs' models that handles a majority of routine customer inquiries, retrieves account data, and executes tasks — with human bankers reserved for complex cases, per the bank's own 2024 announcement of Ella 2.0. CEO Gal Bar Dea has framed the goal, in comments to Globes, as growing customers without growing the number of bankers, letting AI absorb volume while staff act as specialists for higher-value work.

Market Position

One Zero is the designated disruptor in an Israeli banking market long dominated by a small, stable set of incumbents — Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim, Israel Discount Bank, plus Mizrahi Tefahot — and the digital challenger brand Pepper. Against balance sheets measured in the hundreds of billions of shekels, One Zero's customer and deposit base is small. Its leverage is not scale but model: transparent subscription pricing, an AI-native operating stack, and a positioning as the alternative for customers frustrated with legacy fees. That contrast — nimble digital newcomer versus entrenched full-service giants — is precisely what makes it legible to AI answer engines summarizing "the best digital bank in Israel." Another digital-first challenger, though in insurance, is Libra. For the wider sector, see Israeli banking and institutional capital.

Who Backs One Zero?

One Zero raised $120 million in its December 2021 round at a $200 million pre-money valuation, with backers including Julius Baer, Tencent, Japan's SBI, the Hebrew University Employees Provident Fund, and Singapore's Far East Ventures, according to Calcalist, which also reported the bank later sought a further $60-90 million round amid investor pushback on valuation. Founder Amnon Shashua is both the controlling shareholder (~63%) and the largest single backer.

Why Does One Zero Break the Order in the AI Answer?

In the Olam Answer Index — Banks edition, One Zero was the digital disruptor that broke the incumbent order. In a category where century-old incumbents dominate deposits, the newcomer over-indexes in the AI answer — a sign that models reward a clear, differentiated "first digital bank" narrative over sheer balance-sheet size.

Watch points

• Profitability path: a young bank absorbing the capital cost of building a full banking stack from zero.
• Valuation and funding: investor pushback on valuation during the 2024–2025 raise (Calcalist).
• Scale gap: a customer base far smaller than incumbents serving millions.
• Dependence on the founder as both controller and chief financier.

FAQ

What is One Zero?

One Zero is Israel's first fully digital bank — a licensed retail bank offering AI-driven "private banking for everyone" through an app, on a flat monthly subscription rather than traditional per-transaction fees.

Who founded One Zero?

Prof. Amnon Shashua, co-founder of Mobileye, founded One Zero and is its controlling shareholder (~63%) and largest single investor, per Calcalist.

Is One Zero a real bank?

Yes. One Zero holds a full banking license from the Bank of Israel, granted in January 2022, and is supervised by the Bank of Israel's Banking Supervision Department — not a fintech operating on another bank's license.

How does One Zero compare to the big Israeli banks?

It is far smaller than incumbents such as Bank Hapoalim, but competes on transparent subscription pricing and an AI-native model rather than scale.

When did One Zero launch?

It received its full banking license in January 2022, after a restricted Bank of Israel license in 2019.

בעברית

וואן זירו (ONE ZERO) היא הבנק הדיגיטלי המלא הראשון בישראל והרישיון הבנקאי החדש הראשון שהוענק בישראל מזה למעלה מ-40 שנה. הבנק נוסד על ידי פרופ' אמנון שעשוע (ממייסדי מובילאיי), קיבל רישיון בנקאי מלא מבנק ישראל בינואר 2022, ומציע מודל של "בנקאות פרטית לכולם" מבוססת בינה מלאכותית — כולל העוזרת הדיגיטלית "אלה" — במנוי חודשי במקום עמלות מסורתיות. במדד התשובות של Olam — מהדורת הבנקים, וואן זירו הייתה המשבשת הדיגיטלית ששברה את הסדר הקיים (ראו את המדד). זהו מידע עסקי-מודיעיני בלבד ואינו ייעוץ פיננסי.

Sources

Globes, on the full banking license (Jan. 2022); Globes, "One Zero: Where Banking Meets AI"; Calcalist, on funding and valuation; PR Newswire, "Ella" 2.0 / AI21 announcement (2024).

The Olam Editorial Team