Tech brief
Tel Aviv AI Independence and Autonomous Systems
Decart rebuffs Anthropic's $6B exit to stay in Tel Aviv as Israeli physical AI and cyber defenses gain global momentum.
Tech
Decart's co-founders rejected a $6B exit to keep their R&D team in Tel Aviv — proving top Israeli AI talent can preserve local independence despite massive US buyout offers.
BackgroundDecart develops AI model inference software and real-time world models designed to run complex computations on fewer graphics processors. High-profile AI acquisitions increasingly face friction over physical research talent placement and national operational hubs.
- Co-founders Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev control 64% of equity and chose to remain based in Tel Aviv.
- Decart had previously raised $300 million from Nvidia and Radical Ventures to build its Oasis interactive simulation platform.
- Both companies are transitioning to commercial vendor partnerships rather than a complete corporate buyout.
Tech
OpenAI and Meta's push into background agents shifts the AI battleground from chatbots to execution — handing Israeli software developers new building blocks for enterprise automation.
BackgroundFoundation model providers are expanding beyond conversational chat interfaces into autonomous agents that control desktop software and execute multi-step workflows. Cloud availability allows software teams worldwide to embed these capabilities directly into commercial applications.
- GPT-6 Astra introduces advanced computer-use features capable of navigating complex desktop enterprise software directly.
- Meta's Muse operates inside isolated virtual machine environments to run personal task automation continuously for users.
- Israeli software teams are shifting R&D focus toward agent orchestration layers that build upon these underlying foundation models.
Tech
Israel has become the world's chief target for geopolitical cyberattacks — forcing local infrastructure operators to fortify defenses as hacktivist groups align with regional conflicts.
BackgroundDistributed Denial of Service attacks overwhelm online infrastructure with artificial web traffic to take government and corporate services offline. Geopolitical hacktivist groups increasingly coordinate digital attacks alongside physical military conflicts.
- Israel faced 784 recorded attacks in the first half of 2026, more than double second-ranked Ukraine and exceeding the United States.
- March military escalations triggered a 103% monthly spike in hacktivist strikes, drawing roughly 60 distinct threat groups.
- Financial, government, and defense digital portals absorbed the heaviest volume of automated traffic overload.
Tech
Xtend's $1.5B market debut highlights surging investor appetite for Israeli physical AI — positioning its software as a standard operating system for defense robotics.
BackgroundXtend builds human-guided autonomous systems that allow operators to control remote drones and ground robots through virtual reality interfaces. Defense departments are rapidly adopting software layers capable of orchestrating mixed robotic fleets.
- Chief Executive Aviv Shapira stated the platform aims to become the standard operating layer across global military and security hardware.
- The software cuts operator training times from weeks to minutes while enabling third-party developers to build custom physical AI apps.
- Capital from the NYSE transaction will fund international sales expansion across US and European defense procurement markets.
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