Israeli AI founders clash over whether to build big or sell early

Three Israeli AI founders and researchers used a Tel Aviv conference panel to debate how the country should compete in AI: build companies to lasting scale, or move quickly from one venture to the next. Their disagreement gets at a live strategic choice for smaller AI ecosystems, not just a question of startup style.

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

At TECH1 2026 on Wednesday, 28 October, Manifold co-founder Gilad Levy, Hebrew University faculty member and former Meta researcher Yossi Adi, and White Sage co-founder Asaf Gilboa-Amir offered competing views on Israel’s place in the AI industry, CTech reports.

Gilboa-Amir argued that Israel should focus on spotting opportunities, building companies and selling them, rather than trying to create a national AI champion. Levy countered that AI may reward companies that become enormous incumbents, and warned that smaller firms risk being squeezed by the spending power of major players. Adi argued that staying close to the technical frontier, including work on inference and new architectures, would help build expertise across the local ecosystem.

Why it matters

These are different bets on where value will accrue. Selling early can return capital and experience to a startup ecosystem; building for scale may be necessary when customers favour established providers and AI demands heavy investment. Adi’s argument adds another measure of success: whether local teams develop technical expertise rather than relying mainly on technologies made elsewhere.

The panel did not settle which strategy will work. That is rather the point: for founders and policymakers, “compete in AI” can mean building a globally dominant company, finding a valuable niche, or making sure local expertise remains close to the frontier.

Our read

This was a useful argument because the panellists disagree about the shape of success, not whether AI matters. A parade of “we must lead” declarations would be less interesting. The harder question is what kind of leadership a smaller ecosystem can realistically build, and whether it can keep enough technical talent and capability to choose its next move.

What to watch

• Whether Israeli AI startups pursue long-term scale or continue to favour early exits.
• Whether local companies build frontier-level expertise in areas such as inference and model architecture.
• Whether founders can turn that expertise into durable businesses rather than becoming dependent on larger AI providers.

Discussion spark: For a smaller AI ecosystem, is the better strategy to build a few companies capable of lasting scale, or to favour early exits that recycle talent and capital?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.