Israeli venture investors see an opening for Nvidia’s challengers in the company’s leadership turmoil, TechCrunch reported on 13 November. Nvidia’s own annual report shows what the company has built there: long-lived assets in Israel rose 75% in a year, from $840 million to $1.471 billion, by our arithmetic from the report’s figures.
Israel held 14.2% of Nvidia’s $10.383 billion of long-lived assets at 25 January 2026, by our arithmetic, behind only the United States and Taiwan. The report counts approximately 6,000 employees in the region, about 14% of a workforce of approximately 42,000 by our arithmetic; the latest quarterly report puts the Israel operations at approximately 6,200.
Business Pill · GPUs Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on why AI runs on GPUs, the market Nvidia leads and its challengers target. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Israel or the leadership change.
The key insight: As we read the filings, Israel is roughly one-seventh of Nvidia’s people and of its long-lived assets, and the company’s own annual report already lists Israel-based semiconductor suppliers among the alternatives customers could turn to.
TechCrunch quoted two Israeli investors on what the change at the top could mean. Yanai Oron, a general partner at Vertex Ventures Israel, said “slower decisions at Nvidia could give competitors an opening, but if that uncertainty also slows AI spending, they could end up with a bigger share of a smaller opportunity”.
Adi Levanon, a founder and managing partner at Selah Ventures, said the departure “doesn’t dismantle Nvidia’s technology or ecosystem, but it could give competitors more room to shape what comes next”. Levanon added: “These challengers now have a window to prove a different approach delivers better economics; a leadership change alone won’t win them the business”.
TechCrunch wrote that investors do not think a new chief executive would cause demand for Nvidia’s product to fade away. It also reported that interest, and some venture capital, is flowing into developers of AI-specific chips and inference software that could compete with Nvidia’s. The article does not name Israeli challenger companies or deals.
Nvidia’s long-lived assets by country at the fiscal year-ends of January 2025 and January 2026, from its annual report. Percent changes are our arithmetic.
What Nvidia Has Built in Israel
Nvidia agreed to buy the Israeli chipmaker Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2019 and made it the base for its largest research and development facility outside the US, TechCrunch reported. The annual report says the deal, closed in 2020, “expanded our offerings to include networking, enabled our platforms to be data center scale”.
The report describes the roughly 6,000 people in the region as employees “who primarily support the research and development, operations, and sales and marketing of our networking products”. TechCrunch reported that Nvidia also made plans to build a multibillion-dollar campus in northern Israel.
Israel shows up in the tax notes too. Nvidia paid $1.287 billion of income taxes in Israel in fiscal 2026, out of $20.288 billion paid in total, a 6.3% share by our arithmetic. A reduced statutory rate on qualifying income in Israel lowered the company’s tax by $3.064 billion, or 2.2 percentage points of its rate, per the report’s reconciliation.
The asset figures exclude goodwill, intangibles and lease assets, per the report. Total long-lived assets rose 65% over the year by our arithmetic, so Israel grew faster than the total; Taiwan more than doubled, from $1.481 billion to $3.219 billion.
Israel’s share of four measures in Nvidia’s annual report for fiscal 2026. Shares are our arithmetic from the reported figures.
The Challenger Line in Nvidia’s Own Filing
Nvidia already names Israel as a home of possible alternatives. Its annual report says export restrictions could “encourage customers in China, the Middle East, and other regions to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel”.
The report also lists Israel among places where conflicts could disrupt its operations, and notes that other countries “have restricted and may continue in the future to restrict business with the State of Israel, where we have engineering, sales support operations and manufacturing”. The quarterly report says the networking supply chain, including the Israel operations, “has not been significantly impacted by the conflict in the Middle East”.
One AI chip company with an Israeli operation has already changed hands: NeuReality’s sale to Unconventional AI, as we reported, came with differing reports from Globes and CTech on what happens to its Israeli staff.
The Leadership Backdrop
TechCrunch describes Jensen Huang as Nvidia’s former chief executive; the market chain began with Nvidia’s $158 billion after-hours drop, as we reported. Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer at the time of the 2023 interview, is interim CEO, as we set out. TechCrunch cited a 2023 Globes interview in which Kress said the working day typically started “with Israel meetings, and only then continue[d] to California”.
TechCrunch wrote that the many names floated for the permanent role include two Israelis, though not at the top of a list it called still quite tentative. The names reported by major outlets, and what happens next, are in our succession guide. South Korea has said Nvidia’s 260,000-GPU plan there stands, as we reported.
The Structural Read
As we read the TechCrunch piece, the investors frame the opening as one of timing rather than technology: Oron’s point is that slower decisions could help challengers, but a slowdown in AI spending would shrink the market they are competing for.
As we read the asset table, the Israel build-out did not wait for a new chief executive: long-lived assets there rose 75% in the year to January 2026, faster than the company total. Whether that pace holds is not addressed in the sources we read.
Nvidia, annual report for fiscal 2026
“encourage customers in China, the Middle East, and other regions to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel”
Three Implications
FOR ISRAELI CHIP START-UPS Selah Ventures’ Adi Levanon told TechCrunch the window is to prove better economics; a leadership change alone does not win the business.
FOR NVIDIA Its Israel operations have approximately 6,200 employees, per its latest quarterly report, and it paid $1.287 billion of income taxes in Israel in fiscal 2026.
FOR INVESTORS IN THE CHAIN Vertex Ventures Israel’s Yanai Oron told TechCrunch that slower AI spending could leave challengers with a bigger share of a smaller opportunity.
The framework says: “Inference is a revenue engine: continuous, distributed across millions of applications and agents, incurring marginal cost with every query.”
As we read it, that marginal cost per query is where the challengers TechCrunch describes are competing, through AI-specific chips and inference software. The framework predates the leadership change and does not discuss Israel.
What Is Not Established
Nvidia’s filings do not break out revenue or research spending by Israeli site, and the sources we read carry no Nvidia statement on its Israel plans since the leadership change. TechCrunch does not say whether the planned northern campus is on schedule, and it names no Israeli company that has won business from Nvidia customers.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Israeli investors told TechCrunch that Nvidia’s leadership change gives challengers a window, though not the business by itself. Nvidia’s own filings show the stake on its side: $1.471 billion of long-lived assets in Israel, up 75% in a year, about 6,200 employees, and a filing that already names Israeli suppliers as alternatives.
A note on sourcing. The investors’ views, the Mellanox price and campus plans, and the Kress interview come from TechCrunch’s 13 November article. Assets, headcounts, taxes and the alternatives wording come from Nvidia’s annual report for fiscal 2026 and its quarterly report for the period ended 26 July 2026 on SEC EDGAR. The 75%, 14.2%, 14% and 6.3% figures are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
