Nvidia is in advanced talks to buy Israel-based AI startup AI21 Labs for as much as $3 billion, the Calcalist financial daily reported on Tuesday.
The global tech company declined to comment, while AI21 was not immediately available to comment.
The news comes shortly after Nvidia announced that it would build a planned “multibillion-shekel” research and development campus in the northern town of Kiryat Tivon, outside Haifa, with plans to create a tech hub that will employ an estimated 10,000 people.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has described Israel as the company’s “second home.”
And it comes as the Israeli tech market for “exits” — mergers and acquisitions as well as initial public offerings of shares — recorded one of its best years over the past decade in 2025, despite wars in Gaza, Iran and elsewhere.
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The value of Israeli tech exits, including M&As and IPOs, this year jumped by a whopping 340 percent to $58.8 billion, up from $13.4 billion in 2024, according to a 2025 exit report by consultants PwC Israel.
The big surge was driven by Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity unicorn Wiz, the largest deal involving an Israeli-founded company. In the second-biggest exit in Israeli history, Palo Alto Networks, a Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity firm founded by American-Israeli entrepreneur Nir Zuk, in July announced the acquisition of Israeli firm CyberArk in a deal valued at $25 billion.
Visualization of Nvidia’s new R&D campus in Kiryat Tivon in Israel’s north. (Courtesy of Nvidia)
A 2023 funding round valued AI21 at $1.4 billion. Nvidia and Alphabet’s Google participated in that funding.
Calcalist said the current deal to buy AI21 is estimated at between $2 billion and $3 billion.
AI21, founded in 2017 by Amnon Shashua and two others, is among a clutch of AI startups that have benefited from a boom in artificial intelligence, attracting strong interest from venture capital firms and other investors.
Shashua is also the founder and CEO of Mobileye, a developer of self-driving car technologies. Mobileye made history with its own exit, when US giant Intel Corp bought it for $15.3 billion in 2017, which had then been the biggest-ever Israeli exit.
Calcalist said AI21 has long been up for sale and talks with Nvidia have advanced significantly in recent weeks. It noted that Nvidia’s primary interest in AI21 appears to be its workforce of roughly 200 employees, most of whom hold advanced academic degrees and “possess rare expertise in artificial intelligence development.”
Nvidia has said that when completed, its Israel campus will include up to 160,000 square meters (1.7 million square feet) of office space, parks and common areas across 90 dunams (22 acres), inspired by Nvidia’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters. Nvidia expects construction to begin in 2027, with initial occupancy planned for 2031.
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