Israel
Israel
Israel is world renowned as being the “start-up nation” and is the world leader for number of start-ups per capita—with 2,000 startups founded in the past decade, another 3,000 small and medium-sized startup and high-tech companies, 30 growth companies, 50 large technology companies, and 300 multinational corporations R&D centers. Profit-driven Israeli innovations include a long list of market firsts such as disk-on-key technology, IP telephony, ZIP compression, the ingestible pill-size camera, and many more.
AgriTech
There are now more than 400 Israeli agritech startups working on innovations for the global agriculture sector. These agritech startups are innovating across a range of challenges such as drought and water efficiency, as well as crop productivity and waste.
Biological or chemical substances used for protecting the crops from pests & diseases, water conservation, nontoxic and environment-friendly are just some of the areas in which Israel is pioneering.
Click here to see a comprehensive overview of Israel AgriTech.
Defence/Security
Israel is a well-developed and sophisticated market for Defense and Security. Israel’s security-awareness and high level of preparedness are the driving forces for the development of the country’s cutting-edge security industry. This is one of Israel’s high-growth export industries.
Israel has some 600 exporters of security technologies and services, including many integrators and service providers. According to Israel’s MOD, in 2016, military exports totaled $6.5 billion, an increase of $800 million (14 percent) over 2015. Eight percent of total defense exports consisted of cyber systems and intelligence and information systems.
Israel is an attractive market for U.S. manufacturers of high-end equipment and components that can be integrated into Israeli systems. Israeli manufacturers are important end-users of imported security equipment and components that are integrated into locally produced security systems for export.
U.S. security equipment, which enjoys an excellent reputation in Israel due to its high reliability, is often used for sensitive applications by high-security industries and for key infrastructures and installations. The market offers good opportunities for U.S. exporters of high quality and sophisticated detection and screening systems, CCTV, sensors, biometric solutions, x-ray systems, non-lethal weapons, etc.
Israel too is one of the world’s major exporters of military equipment, accounting for 10% of the world total in 2007. Three Israeli companies were listed on the 2010 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute index of the world’s top 100 arms-producing and military service companies: Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries and RAFAEL.
Autonomous Vehicles
Israel – a country that has no domestic car manufacturing industry but has become a worldwide powerhouse for autonomous-driving technology. Driving is no longer about the engine but Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and Network Connectivity, a place where Israel has a lot of IP [intellectual property] and experience.
Every US built automobile will soon contain Israeli technology, that will make your car safer, and may have a significant impact on insurance rates.
Today and in the future, whether we’re driving vehicles or the vehicles are driving us, avoiding car accidents is increasingly dependent upon built-in driver-assistance technologies. Israel’s advances in machine vision and robotics are in high demand by vehicle manufacturers everywhere, to make driving safer. As many as 150 Israeli companies are involved in security, communication and vision systems for vehicles.
CyberTech
A regional power devoted to ensuring its own survival, Israel has burgeoned into a high tech epicenter built around Internet security, anti-virus software, and other cyber defense technologies. Much of this is an extension of its self-reliance, and the added fact that since the creation of modern Israel, the nation has faced enemies on its borders.
In 2013 alone, Israel had $3 billion worth in cyber security exports, a sum that accounts for five percent of the global internet security market, which totals nearly $60 billion.
With continued innovation and the rise for cyber protection needs, Israel continues to push the boundaries in these areas, seeing the nation’s elite military intelligence forces and strong government support that helped in raising almost $600m in funding for cyber security last year.
BioTech
Blockbuster prescription drugs sold worldwide that treat multiple sclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, derive from Israeli biotechnology. Israel creates more medical devices per capita than any other country, and its life sciences exports earn more than $3 billion a year.
Israeli research is at the forefront of the emerging fields of stem-cell therapy and genomics. Two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, the first to Profs. Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the second to Prof. Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science, number among the many awards bestowed on the country’s biotech scientists.
The pace of innovation, development and growth in Israel’s biotechnology sector is unparalleled. Israel’s biotech industry is the most aggressive in the world, with more startups per capita than any other country. Its 180 biotech companies – each built on a combination of academic excellence, a highly-skilled workforce, cutting-edge technological inventiveness and entrepreneurial daring – are creating therapeutic products, diagnostic tools and revolutionary drug-delivery techniques benefiting people all over the world.
Big Data
Big Data is growing and making dramatic headway through its innovation. This has been born out of necessity, and having breakthrough successes across its industry. With an ever-growing range of sensors and capabilities feeding the Israel Air Force (IAF) with vast quantities of intelligence, IAF personnel would be swamped without big data processing and analytical tools.
This has made for breakthroughs in many areas, including the medical profession, which is struggling to deal with an over-saturation of information on patients. And now the big data tools are being employed to detect disease and prioritize information, keeping doctors focused on the important data.
Israel-based operations of Google, Microsoft and Facebook have contributed to these efforts – enhancing the technologies coming out of the region.
Med Tech
There is virtually no area of medicine to which Israeli devices have not made significant contributions – cardiology, genetics, neurology and ophthalmology are but a few of the sciences benefiting from advanced Israeli technology. Israeli scientists, universities and companies are working to benefit the global health system – from physician to patient and to medical administrators and insurers.
Israeli medical and biotechnological innovations include state-of-the-art surgical lasers, fully computerized no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer, an intelligent medical sensor that can be used to track and direct instruments to an exact three-dimensional location in the heart or other organs via a real-time virtual image, the fully flexible waveguide fiber for endoscopic surgery, unique computerized monitoring systems for critical care patients, pain-relieving transcutaneous devices, a revolutionary autoclave design to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases, and many more.
Blockchain
It’s not just ICOs that are raising Israel’s profile within the world of blockchains however, with the use of blockchains now on the rise amongst companies looking to take advantage of blockchain’s functionality. Those include secure tagging, tracking and the tracing of any digitized item, with blockchain even being considered for tracking intellectual property and digital rights.
Israel’s high-tech industry looks set to take advantage of certain elements of blockchain’s offerings, with the financial sector set to take on blockchain. The fintech sector is looking for advancements in the way business is carried out, funds are mobilized and of course in the way funds are currently raised, with crowdfunding having been a popular approach to raise capital within the country.
Demonstrating advancement and continued innovation within the blockchain sector, Israel’s largest bank – Bank Hapoalim, is working with software giant Microsoft to develop a blockchain-based platform for creating digital bank guarantees where they will look to digitize the largely paper-based process.
BIRD Foundation
Established in 1977, the BIRD Foundation is a joint initiative between the U.S. and Israeli governments. Operating from its main offices in Tel Aviv, with representatives throughout the U.S., the BIRD Foundation aims to stimulate, promote and support joint industrial R&D of mutual benefit to Israel and the United States.