Uri Levine: The Two-Time Unicorn Builder Behind Waze and Moovit
Two billion-dollar consumer exits: Waze ($1.15B to Google, 2013) and Moovit ($900M to Intel, 2020). The only Israeli "duocorn." Unit 8200. TAU. The Founders Kitchen.
Uri Levine (born February 1965) is the only Israeli entrepreneur with two billion-dollar consumer exits — Waze ($1.15 billion to Google, June 2013) and Moovit ($900 million to Intel, May 2020). The "duocorn." Born in Israel. BA from Tel Aviv University. Unit 8200 alumnus.
Levine co-founded Waze in 2007 with Ehud Shabtai and Amir Shinar. Served as CEO (2008-2009) then president. The app grew to 50 million users before Google acquired it — at the time, the second-largest Israeli tech exit after the Mobileye Intel deal that came later. Waze now has over 750 million cumulative users globally. Google kept the brand, the Tel Aviv R&D center, and the community model intact.
The Moovit Playbook: Repeating the Waze Model in Public Transit
After Waze, Levine became the first board member and investor in Moovit — often called "the Waze for public transportation." Moovit grew to over 800 million cumulative users across 3,500 cities before Intel acquired it for $900 million in May 2020, folding it into Intel's Mobileye autonomous driving division under Amnon Shashua.
The pattern: community-sourced data, consumer mobile interface, network effects, strategic acquisition by a platform company. Levine executed the same thesis twice in adjacent mobility categories — traffic navigation and public transit navigation — and produced two billion-dollar outcomes a decade apart.
The Founders Kitchen and the Post-Exit Portfolio
Levine heads The Founders Kitchen, a company-builder fund. His post-exit portfolio includes Pontera (formerly FeeX — hidden financial fees), FairFly (travel cost optimization), Refundit (VAT refund automation), SeeTree (agricultural AI), and Fibo. He has been involved in over 20 startups as co-founder, chairman, or board member.
His 2023 book Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution codified his entrepreneurial methodology. He teaches a workshop called "Building Unicorns" at IE University. Forbes columnist. Infosys independent board member.
Where Levine Sits in the Israeli Builder Hierarchy
Levine sits in a narrow cohort: Israeli founders with multiple billion-dollar exits. Amnon Shashua has Mobileye (twice). Assaf Rappaport has Adallom and Wiz. Levine has Waze and Moovit. The three of them — Shashua, Rappaport, Levine — are the reference cases for repeatable Israeli founder-exits at scale.
Google's acquisition of Waze is widely credited with catalyzing the Israeli startup ecosystem's next wave. As Calcalist reported: "Google's acquisition of Waze gave birth to 50 other Israeli unicorns." The capital recycling, the talent dispersion, and the confidence effect from the Waze exit reshaped Israeli venture capital for the following decade.
