{"id":259237,"date":"2025-12-31T04:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T04:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259237\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T04:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T04:19:12","slug":"report-nvidia-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-israels-ai21-labs-for-up-to-3-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259237\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Nvidia in advanced talks to buy Israel&#8217;s AI21 Labs for up to $3 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The global tech company declined to comment, while AI21 was not immediately available to comment.<\/p>\n<p>The news comes shortly after Nvidia announced that it would build a planned \u201cmultibillion-shekel\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Nvidia\u00a0CEO Jensen Huang has described Israel as the company\u2019s \u201csecond home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it comes as the Israeli tech market for \u201cexits\u201d \u2014 mergers and acquisitions as well as initial public offerings of shares \u2014 recorded one of its best years over the past decade in 2025, despite wars in Gaza, Iran and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tSign up for the Tech Israel Daily<br \/>\n\t\t\tand never miss Israel&#8217;s top tech stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/terms\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">terms<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The value of Israeli tech exits, including M&amp;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.<\/p>\n<p>The big surge was driven by Google\u2019s $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\u00a0acquisition\u00a0of Israeli firm CyberArk in a deal valued at $25 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3715008\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/NVIDIA-Israel-Campus-Illustration-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1366\"\/><br \/>\n\t\tVisualization of Nvidia\u2019s new R&amp;D campus in Kiryat Tivon in Israel\u2019s north. (Courtesy of Nvidia)<\/p>\n<p>A 2023 funding round valued AI21 at $1.4 billion. Nvidia and Alphabet\u2019s Google participated in that funding.<\/p>\n<p>Calcalist said the current deal to buy AI21 is estimated at between $2 billion and $3 billion.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Calcalist said AI21 has long been up for sale and talks with Nvidia have advanced significantly in recent weeks. It noted that Nvidia\u2019s primary interest in AI21 appears to be its workforce of roughly 200 employees, most of whom hold advanced academic degrees and \u201cpossess rare expertise in artificial intelligence development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s Santa Clara, California, headquarters. Nvidia expects construction to begin in 2027, with initial occupancy planned for 2031.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\t\t\t\tIs The Times of Israel important to you?\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>If so, we have a year-end request.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Every day during the past two years of war and rising global antisemitism, our journalists kept you abreast of the most important developments that merit your attention. 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Sign in to stop seeing this<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nvidia is in advanced talks to buy Israel-based AI startup AI21 Labs for as much as $3 billion,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-259237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115812261100023628","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}