Israel Advanced Technology Industries

IATI operates as a member-funded association connecting participants across Israel's technology ecosystem, including investment funds, Israeli companies, multinational research-and-development centers, startups, academic institutions, incubators, health providers, and service firms.[3][6] It organizes action-focused workgroups and task forces, represents shared industry concerns before policymakers, connects members with overseas stakeholders, and offers access to networking and industry knowledge.[6]

Its activities span public-policy advocacy, economic and sectoral research, international engagement, workforce programs, and industry conferences. These efforts cover both high tech and health technology and extend into fields such as cyber, artificial intelligence, food and agriculture technology, water, and infrastructure.[7]

IATI was formed through the consolidation of pre-existing industry bodies. One account describes it as a merger between the High-Tech Industry Association (HTIA) and the Israel Life Science Industry (ILSI), producing a single organization with two co-chairpersons and one chief executive.[2] A separate account describes the combination of three bodies that had previously represented venture-capital funds, high-tech industries, and life sciences independently.[8] These accounts may reflect different stages or descriptions of the consolidation process.

Karin Mayer Rubinstein serves as IATI's CEO and President, a position she had held for more than a decade by 2025.[3][9] A 2015 account identified Erez Tsur and Yoram Yaacovi as IATI's joint chairmen and described the organization as the forum for multinational high-tech and biomedical development centers in Israel.[10] IATI's offices are located at Medinat Ha'Yehudim 89, Herzliya Pituach, Israel, and its staff roles include finance and member-account management, development and industry relations, government relations, public relations, project coordination, and design.[9]

The organization is a private nonprofit financed solely by industry.[8] Members pay an annual fee and receive benefits including networking with companies, investors, and international delegations, access to industry knowledge, and participation in IATI workgroups.[6]

IATI's membership encompasses many categories of participants in Israel's innovation economy. A 2013 account described representation of startups; medical-device and biotechnology companies; multinational development centers including IBM, Google, and Microsoft; Israeli and foreign venture-capital funds; university technology-transfer companies; incubators; accelerators; professional-services firms; patent lawyers; and commercial and investment banks.[11] By 2016, approximately 700 entities from Israel and abroad operated under its umbrella.[12] The Israel Foreign Trade Administration's government trade page reports more than 600 members, though without specifying when that count was measured.[5]

Beyond high tech and life sciences, IATI's scope extends to innovation-based sectors including cleantech, foodtech, agtech, and fashiontech.[2] Its materials identify fields spanning cyber and security, health technology, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and food, agriculture, water, and infrastructure technologies.[7] An IATI presentation describes ecosystem participants as including entrepreneurs, hospitals, growth and mature Israeli companies, municipalities, innovation centers, multinational companies, incubators, technology-transfer offices, startups, venture-capital funds, service providers, R&D centers, banking technology groups, and academic researchers.[7]

Multinational corporations have been a particularly prominent constituency. A 2015 account described IATI as the forum for multinational high-tech and biomedical development centers in Israel.[10] The Institute for National Security Studies reported that approximately 430 multinational companies operating in Israel directly employed about 86,000 people—approximately 18 percent of the high-tech workforce—and accounted for 50 percent of research-and-development investment. The institute noted that its numerical data drew collectively on several sources, including reports prepared for IATI.[1]

IATI functions as a technology-industry policy voice, connecting member companies and funds with government ministries and regulatory bodies. Its stated advocacy priorities include budgets and taxation, diversity and inclusion, STEM education, inclusive economic growth, and greater diversity of human capital within Israel's technology sector.[6]

One prominent area of advocacy has been increasing Israeli institutional investment in high tech. In a March 2017 meeting with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, IATI co-chair Erez Tsur and CEO Karin Mayer Rubinstein presented findings that 96 percent of nearly $5 billion entering the high-tech industry in the preceding year was foreign capital, while only 4 percent was local, and that only 0.2–0.3 percent of approximately NIS 1.5 trillion managed by Israeli institutional investors was allocated to Israeli venture capital.[13] IATI had also recommended allocating 1–2 percent of pension and provident fund assets to technology investment, with a partial government safety net.[11]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, IATI coordinated industry-wide requests to Israel's tax authorities.[3] A joint survey with the Israel Innovation Authority covering 825 companies found that 69 percent reported research-and-development processes were slowing or had stopped completely, 45 percent said they could not sustain changed operations for more than six months without additional funding, and 60 percent of companies already in the sales stage reported a decline of more than 25 percent in sales volume.[14]

During the Israel-Hamas War, IATI again coordinated emergency measures, working with the Israel Innovation Authority, the Finance Ministry, and tax authorities on a response plan. The government subsequently approved half a billion shekels in incentives and allocated NIS 4 billion to strengthen local venture-capital funds in January 2024.[3] IATI also established a defense-technology committee that works with Israel's Directorate of Defense Research and Development (MAFAT) and the Israel Defense Forces to define a national strategy, map gaps, and strengthen the defense-technology ecosystem.[3]

IATI regularly commissions and publishes research documenting the contribution of Israel's technology sectors to the national economy. A report produced with Deloitte Israel, written between May and October 2022, estimated that Israeli high tech grew by almost 11 percent annually over the preceding five years, compared with approximately 4 percent for the rest of the economy, and attributed nearly 45 percent of Israel's economic growth between 2017 and 2021 to high tech.[15] It calculated direct 2021 GDP contribution at NIS 240 billion, or 16 percent of GDP, and estimated total contribution including satellite industries at NIS 360 billion; high-tech employees, representing about 12 percent of the workforce, generated approximately 34 percent of employee income tax.[15]

A Jerusalem Post summary of IATI's Deloitte collaboration presented a different aggregate measure, stating that high tech contributed NIS 340 billion to gross domestic product in 2021. It also reported that the sector accounted for 45 percent of GDP growth over the preceding five years, generated NIS 55 billion in state tax revenues, produced $67 billion in exports equal to 54 percent of Israeli exports, and employed 11.9 percent of the workforce.[16]

In the life-sciences domain, a 2023–2024 IATI report produced with PwC and the Israel Innovation Authority said that Israel's health-tech landscape included 1,800 innovative companies and a 78,000-person ecosystem, with $2.2 billion raised, including $1 billion in foreign investment, across medical devices, digital health, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals.[17] IATI translated this annual life-sciences report into Spanish, French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Arabic to broaden international access.[18]

In September 2024, IATI and the RISE Israel policy and research institute published The State of Israeli High-Tech—In the Shadow of a Year of War, covering October 2023 through September 2024. The report found a 6 percent decline in venture-capital investment in Israeli companies and an approximately 30 percent decline in the number of foreign and Israeli investments, with the ten largest deals accounting for about half of total 2024 investment and 76 percent of companies raising significant amounts headquartered outside Israel.[19] It also noted that Israel fell from seventh to ninth in Tortoise Media's international artificial-intelligence ranking over the year.[19]

IATI organizes the annual MIXiii Health-Tech.IL conference, one of Israel's major life-sciences gatherings. The 2025 edition took place March 4–5 at Jerusalem's International Convention Center, bringing together hundreds of experts, investors, and entrepreneurs. Its program included rehabilitation technologies, a digital-health startup competition with EY, pharmaceutical developments with Teva, cancer diagnosis and treatment, academic research sessions with the Weizmann Institute and Hebrew University, eye-disease innovation, and artificial intelligence in drug research, alongside business meetings between Israeli entrepreneurs and international investors.[20] The conference received support from government ministries, the Israel Innovation Authority, the Jerusalem Development Authority, and the Export Institute.[20]

In 2018, IATI supported the Israeli national pavilion at the BIO International Convention in Boston, where nine Israeli biotechnology companies selected by the Israel Innovation Authority participated at an event expected to attract 16,000 professionals from more than 74 countries.[21] IATI's workgroup activity has also included hosting meetings of its multinational-company forum at Amdocs, its HR Global Companies Workgroup at Google's Israeli R&D center, and its VC and Investment Funds Committee at Team8, the latter initiating three task forces.[18]

In May 2024, IATI led a delegation of Israeli industry leaders at a Nasdaq MarketSite opening-bell ceremony, an event it presented as a symbol of Israeli resilience and technological innovation, noting that more than 100 Israeli companies were listed on Nasdaq at that time.[18] In August 2022, IATI signed a fintech-cooperation agreement with Bahrain FinTech Bay, committing to joint projects, community events, and introductions among fintech organizations and venture-capital firms seeking to expand in Israel and Bahrain. The agreement was signed at the Tel Aviv Hilton in the presence of Bahrain's ambassador to Israel, Khaled Yousif al-Jalahma.[22]

At the community level, IATI organized a social-impact weekathon in 2017 in which approximately 35 employees from multinational companies with Israeli R&D centers—including HP Indigo, Marvell, Motorola Solutions, Siemens, Nokia, eBay, and HP Enterprise Software—worked in cross-company teams. One mixed team drawn from Marvell, Siemens, eBay, and HP developed an application intended to help restaurant customers identify food ingredients.[23]

Broadening the human-capital base of Israel's technology industry is a stated IATI priority. The organization works with government on technological education and the integration of Arab, ultra-Orthodox, and peripheral communities into the high-tech workforce.[8] Its advocacy priorities explicitly include diversity and inclusion, STEM education, inclusive economic growth, and social mobility.[6]

In 2024, IATI launched the "Meshuhreret-Tech" program in partnership with the Social Economic Forum, Jerusalem Development Authority, IDF, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Check Point. Approximately 60 female soldiers released from the army participated in Jerusalem; the program provided intensive mentoring and encouraged participants to pursue academic engineering studies, with the broader goal of increasing the number of women in Israel's high-tech industry.[18]

Some of IATI's public claims are organizational self-characterizations or derive from research it commissioned. Membership figures also vary by source and date: a 2016 account described approximately 700 entities under its umbrella, while the Israel Foreign Trade Administration reports more than 600 members without specifying when that count was measured.[5][12]

Published summaries of IATI's Deloitte collaboration use different aggregate figures for 2021. CTech reported a direct GDP contribution of NIS 240 billion and a total contribution of NIS 360 billion including satellite industries, while The Jerusalem Post reported an annual contribution of NIS 340 billion.[15][16] Both accounts identify the research as work produced by or in collaboration with IATI and Deloitte.

The IATI-RISE assessment of the 2023–2024 war period presented a pessimistic investment picture that Globes described as contradicting more optimistic data from IVC-LeumiTech and reporting connected with the Israel Innovation Authority.[19] Separately, an IATI and Israel Innovation Authority survey of 30 venture-capital funds reported that approximately 30 percent of Israeli companies and startups had relocated significant activities abroad; this was an organization-reported survey finding rather than an independently established sector-wide count.[18] IATI's descriptions of itself as Israel's largest umbrella organization and as supporting Israel's position as a global innovation leader are likewise organizational self-characterizations.[2][4]

In 2019, IATI's CEO publicly criticized an Israeli company's claims that its research could lead to a cure for cancer, stating that such claims were premature and could damage the international image of Israel's life-sciences industry. The intervention drew attention to IATI's role in setting reputational standards for the sector.[24]