← What's Your Number?
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
You are listening to an art media podcast.
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C
Yonatan, what's your number this week?
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My number is three. Israel's ranked third best performing economy in the world in 2025. That's from the Economist magazine. Frankly, I did not have this one in my bingo card in December 2024. And honestly, I don't think there's a precedent for a country going through a war that costs so much lives and money and outperforms almost all the other countries and all the other economies in the world during the war. So it's a good way to end 2025 being number three.
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C
My number is not as uplifting as yours, I'm sorry to say. It's a rough week for all of us, I think. Even though it should be a happy time. My number is 99,999. This is the amount that Bill Ackman donated to a GoFundMe campaign that was set up for the money. Muslim man who disarmed one of what appears to be ISIS affiliated terrorists who gunned down Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah, tragically killing at least 15. Maybe this is a little bit of light in the darkness here. I do think that Bill Ackman has done a commendable job of elevating this one little sliver of. I don't know what to call it. Light in an otherwise really horrible, tragic start to the holiday. It's 11:15am here in Palo Alto.
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A
9:15. I just came back from lighting the second Hanukkah candle here in Casa Adiri. You know, the light still shines. And you were saying about Australia, I think the global Jewish peoplehood, it's Israel, it's New York, it's San Francisco, it's Paris, it's London, wherever it is, we're all one big fabric. And it's been incredible to be strengthened by global Jewish peoplehood around October 7th. And we always wanna be able to give back and then provide the same sense of safety and belonging in global community.
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C
So, yeah, and I went to the chabad candle lighting here in downtown Palo Alto yesterday evening for the first candle. And you know, I have to say it was a really, really beautiful showing of support, not just from the local Jewish and Israeli community, but, but also from some of the Palo Alto city officials and from the fire department and the police and really felt very protected. You know, my kids on the way there asked me, is it gonna be safe though? Cause they of course knew about what had happened in Australia. It felt very unifying and it felt really good being there to also show our support to Chabad and everything that they do in the world putting themselves at risk, sadly. So that is the week that we're in. It's a tragic beginning to what otherwise is such a beautif holiday that symbolizes just the epitome of religious freedom. So I'm going to keep that in mind as we go forward with the holiday. But I know there is a lot going on.
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A
Lots of good news otherwise.
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C
Yeah, lots of good news for sure. So give us some of that good news. I know something that you're really looking at and thinking about is this pack Silica summit, which I think a lot of people will not be familiar with. So unpack it for us. And what is the news there that people need to know?
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A
Yeah, look, I think as the year comes to an end, we try to focus a lot on Israel's unique silica silicone posture as part of what I call sort of the marks, right. Material AI, robotics, quantum synthetic biology in space. Silicon is an important element in how Israel plays in the global playing field. That's why we had Elad Raz from Next Silicone here on the show. And this week, this type of geopolitical thinking that comes together with technology was strengthened by the US administration, Jacob Helberg in Washington, who led this Pax Silica alliance between the US and seven other countries, referencing the Pax Americana, right, Basically saying, and this is on the heels of the U.S. national Security Strategy we covered last week that also focused on AI and silicon, saying, look to win, to deliver peace to the world. The famous Pax Americana depends on an element called Pax silica. Do we control? Do we own a stack strong enough to compete with China in silicon? So this is Singapore, this is Netherlands, this is uk, South Korea. Israel is in this group. And it's great to see Israel punching above its weight. But actually, as we argued throughout many episodes, our silicon stack is part of what makes us indispensable in this day and age when it comes to AI. I'm very excited about that and I think the recognition from the top political echelons headed by Jacob Helberg in Washington, is significant. Not just the tech piece, it's the geopolitical side as well.
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C
Very consequential. Much more consequential than the Eurovision, as much as that's been on our minds. Just a. Yeah, a huge recognition being in the company of really exclusive club of countries, especially for the small countries.
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A
Yeah. And look, there's been another piece of news that kind of hid behind the terror attack in Australia is how profound Israel is for chip design and optics in the world. A company, a small company, 25 year old company from Hovot called Loomis announced to the world that it is the brain behind the optic stack of the new Ray Ban meta glasses. Right. So again, you see sort of Israel inside some of the most exciting products that come out into the world. And this has to do a lot with bds, but it also has to do with how fundamentally indispensable Israel is through its tech stack. And that has massive ramification for our ability to be resilient from an economic standpoint, but also for our geopolitical stature. So Lumos, shout out to these guys, check them out online. Super exciting to see 25 year old company that's still alive, kicking and contributing to one of the more exciting, you know, consumer products out there, the new meta glasses.
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C
I grew up in Rehovot and I have to say it has come a long way since orange groves, which is what it used to be known for. Real quick before we move on to what we're really going to deep dive on for today's episode, another company we mentioned recently, I was contacted by them because we mispronounced the name and this is critical, we refer to it as Heven. It is actually heaven. It's H e V e N but it's pronounced heaven. So for all you listeners out there, it's not Heven, it's heaven. Apologies to the company and good luck to you guys. Okay, for today we are going to speak with Nati Guinot. He is the head of Israel Investment banking at Jefferies, which is very, very active in Israel and actually runs the largest tech event there called Tech Trek. It took place in Tel Aviv earlier, just a few months ago and last month Jefferies published a year end report on the Israeli market called Next Gen Middle East Israel's Role in Shaping a Tech Future. It's a really comprehensive report. A lot of stats in there that are really, you know, kind of showcase, highlight what you need to know about the Israeli tech sector and the kind of overall economy as well. So we're going to ask Nati to kind of help us take a look back over the last year, share some of those highlights from the report and I think it just really will give us an opportunity to provide that snapshot. A lot of Yonatan, what you and I have been talking about over the last few months. Also a little bit of just a teaser for what's ahead. Next week's episode. We're going to have Michael Eisenberg back on to talk future looking. So that's going to be really what's next in 2026 for the Israeli economy. And I know you have a lot of thoughts there as well.
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A
This has been a crazy year. 12 days in which the market did not operate during the Iran, Israel, you know, ballistic missile exchan and ultimately the American midnight hammer on the nuclear installations in Iran. This has been a year of war in Gaza. This has been a year of war in Lebanon, in Syria. And it's also been a year of growth to the economy. You know, you always have to keep an eye on the future. Michael wrote a piece a few weeks back in Sapir magazine called the Trillion dollar Economy outlining a vision for the Israeli future. Not distant future, 10 to 12 years out in which we less than double our economy. We are above a half a billion trillion dollar economy already. So I think it's really a great time to look back, but also to look out to in the future. So looking forward to today but also looking forward to next week.
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C
We'll have to share some of our New Year's resolutions too, so be thinking of yours. All right, let's move on. Before we get to the interview with Nati, we want to first take a look at the latest on the Windex, the what's your number index that tracks the performance of publicly traded Israeli based or founded companies. Okay. Yonatan, how is the Windex looking?
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A
So windex is down 0.8% along the lines of S and P and Nasdaq. It's been a red week in Wall Street. It outperformed the NASDAQ by 1.07% and more or less performed in line with the S and P. The notable on the green this week is Elbit going up by 6.3% but more importantly completing almost 100%, 99.5% increase in its market year to date. Israeli Defense Tech, the big behemoth that is already publicly traded in New York, is now a $24 billion company. It's an interesting kind of marker, if you will, of the Israeli industry in a broader sense. And you know, the story of doubling in one year sort of, you know, kind of the numbers tell the story on their own for sure.
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C
I just want to say this is so notable for a number of reasons, including the fact that Elbit was founded in 1966. So these kinds of numbers are pretty rare for a company of a certain age, shall we say. Also want to ask you, there have been quite a few Headlines recently about this mystery deal, this 2.3 billion defense deal with a country that has not been officially named. Sounds like cats out of the bag.
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A
It's hard to comment on this one inaccuracy. I will say one kind of broader comment on Israeli defense that I spent some time there in the last 10 days. It's sort of like a parallel tale. There's one tail of how strong it is and how well it's performing and how well it's going to perform in the next few years considering European spending and so on, which is true. I think the sort of next three to five years are going to be very, very important dynamic. I do think though that above the five year horizon, we're going to see some pretty serious competition to Israeli tech. It's not going to be battle hard and battle tried. But if you think about Germany, for instance, that in its budget last week approved the 180 billion euro new debt and 52 billion euros added budget for defense on top of the 108 billion euro from last year. And Volkswagen closing its production generation of cars in Dresden, while Rheinmetall is the fastest growing defense company in Europe. Israel is going to find very strong competition from Germany, from Italy, from Turkey in the export markets. Call it 2030 and beyond. So I think there's a bit of a cloudy dynamic. And so these 2.3 billion, 3.5, $4.5 billion deals are very important. This is the time for the Israeli defense sector to sprint and secure a long term order book because I think it's going to be a lot more competitive four to five years out.
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C
And we'll get to some of the newer defense tech players as well when we talk to Nati later on. But what else is in the green? And tell us about the red?
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A
So Varanas, that lost quite a lot of weight last week, is regaining most of it back. It seems like more speculative investors have left the stock and those who are seeking, I would say more reasonable yields not associated with the cyber space specifically are taking hold. That's 11.89% in the green. In the red we're seeing Zim continues to battle, losing altitude again, 6.3%. The Hapag Lloyd acquisition intention was not well digested by Wall Street. The management buyout dynamic are not falling into place. And a sad story for new Windex Joiner this year. That's etoro Clos with 11.76% decline in one week and losing about 40% since its IPO price. So really about to close the Year in a bit of a disappointment for those who've invested in the ipo, but a big success for those who've been early stage investors. And I'm a big believer in the company. I think a lot of crypto related companies thought they'll have a greener future considering where the White House is. But that sort of evolved in a bit of a different way.
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C
Yeah. And I was just going to ask you, Yonatan, it does seem like Etoro, what their stock's going through is pretty much aligning with kind of broader macro trends for Fintech, obviously Bitcoin significantly down. I mean, do you attribute it mainly to that?
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A
I think part of the IPO push was associated with the new like the genius act coming out of Washington, which is fantastic and sort of like a lot of tailwind for the indecision. I think they chose the right window for the ipo. And you know, this stuff happens. I have confidence in the management. I'm confident they're going to rise. And yes, it does depend. I mean, Look, Bitcoin is down 8% year to date, uncorrelated with the S and P, which is about to close the year at about 18 or 19%. Uncorrelated obviously with the NASDAQ, which is going to close higher. I think there was a, I don't know if this was a rumor, but there was a point where Etoro was supposed to play sort of like the E wallet for Twitter. I would say one last thing here. I think polymarket is very much what Etoro wanted to be in a way. And that takes away a lot of the users that would otherwise flock into Etoro. They now have other, you know, playgrounds, if you will, to play in and satisfy riskier retail day trading. So yeah, let's see. We're going to open the year and we'll see where Etoro is in the green at the end of Q1 or not. And that would give us, I think, a good sign.
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C
Today we are speaking with Nati Ginor, head of Israel Investment Banking at Jefferies. And we're going to capitalize on Nati being here with us to take a look back at 2025. Here are some of the highlights from Jeffrey's excellent recent report focusing on Israeli tech and more. So, Nati, welcome to what's yous Number.
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Thank you. Happy to be here.
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C
Great to have you. And I understand you came with a number, maybe even two numbers to share with us. So let's start there.
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How could any religious listener not show up with a number my number is 308 and then my second number is 15. It's 308 global institutional investors that flew into Israel in September for our annual tech trek and it's from 15 different countries, despite the challenges and the logistics. And I think that speaks volumes about how investors are seeing the opportunity in Israel.
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A
Pre ceasefire date for our listeners. This was pre ceasefire. Now it's becoming very common. Folks are flying back in. But that was, you guys were there ahead of the ceasefire. And so these numbers are very significant.
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B
Now we would have had at least 500.
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C
Well, well, we'll ask you for your, your new number after next year's conference. Speaking of this report, Share with us what are the takeaways? What do you think are the metrics that capture the story of, you know, in particular, Israeli tech over the last year? Sure.
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B
And it's kind of both tech and economy. And I should say that Josef Angster on my team is the one who kind of burned lots of midnight oil to make sure that we had it out and that we keep it updated. But so thanks to him, Hanukkah Oil. Yes, exactly. So a couple of interesting data points. First of all, I think when you look at private capital raised by Israeli tech companies, and a lot of people talk about their concerns and the ability of Israeli tech companies, Israeli funds, to raise capital, the data shows what we've always believed, which is that the Israeli tech ecosystem in particular is much more impacted by global macro trends and in tech than it is about geopolitical trends as it relates to Israel. With the anomaly of 2023, which of course you have to put aside when you look at 25 and you look at 24, $13 billion plus has been raised by private Israeli companies in 2025. That's already beating 2024, which was 11 billion. I think that speaks very loudly. But even if you compare that to years like 2020, which were by all means a very, very good year, not the anomalous year that 21 was, but a good year nonetheless, that's already beating 2020 as well. Right. So we're back to what I would call normalized, if there is such a thing in Israel, private capital raising. When you look at M and A activity, similarly in 2020, $11 billion, in 2024, $16 billion. And you had $15 billion of closed M and A transactions year to date in 2025. By the way, that doesn't include unclosed transactions like Wiz. And I've heard Sean McGuire speak as well on your recent episode Some of the comments that you both made about venture capital firms in Israel raising. But the truth is venture has been a tough place to raise in the US as well. And so I think when you see challenges on the VC ecosystem in Israel, it's more a comment about where venture is as far as investors engagement focus is relative to growth and private equity and less about anything that's Israel specific.
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C
There are several verticals that are called out in the report and curious to get your take on a couple of them at least starting with cyber. You mentioned Wiz. There's still such a heavy emphasis on the cyber in Israeli tech. 39% of capital going to cyber companies, cyber startups. Do you see this as a risk factor for Israeli tech? Like, is Israeli tech diversified enough, is my question.
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B
Look, I think cyber is by far the most relevant and the fastest growing tam globally in tech. Obviously now AI is coming up, but we could theorize whether AI is its own sector or it's just a part of the tech stack. Yes, Israel Index is very heavily towards cyber, of course. Is it sufficiently diversified? Look, we're seeing a fair amount AI innovation across fintech and vertical SaaS and application software. And so we always want to see broader diversification. Obviously a ton in defense technology that's happening. I know you had your number, 768%, I think it was last week that represented $165 million of defense tech. And I think that was in 2024, based on what we're seeing in 2025 year to date, we've already generated $317 million of growth. That's another 92% off of what was already a pretty high number. So I think in some ways Israel is kind of skating where the puck is going. As the great Wayne Gretzky once said, we could always be broader diversified, but I think in all the areas that are most important, cyber, AI, defense technology, et cetera, Israel, I think is definitely playing its part and kind of punching.
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A
Us off its weight. Another sign of maturity is that you see big realignment in cyber that does include merging and M and A from Israeli companies that are publicly traded. It's been rumored recently that Armis, where we had the founder and CEO on the show a couple of weeks ago, is discussing a $7 billion acquisition. So I think the bets on Israeli cyber are not just sort of to take them out of the market, but actually within Israeli tech. Cyber companies are creating, you know, like the transformers that would join to create the big one. Right. And that's new. I am concerned over one sector that's not purely digital, and that is the biotech sector in Israel that is, I think, seeing far less of a talent pool and far less of investment. And we don't have the big multinationals with that exposure anymore in Israel at the early stages.
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B
That's correct. And I think biotech in general is binary and challenging, and if you don't have a bunch of those kind of wins, then they don't. They get the additional wins. And I think that's right. But I do want to go back to two of the things you just said. We're seeing Israeli companies being acquisitive outside of Cyther as well. Rapid acquired PAYU last year. We just helped advise NICE on their acquisition of a large AI business recently. We just advised last week a kind of an interesting transaction. We just announced the merger between Matrix, which is Israel's largest IT services company, and Magic It's a $4.3 billion combined company, now the 8th largest global IT services company and the largest merger amongst two Israeli tech companies historically. And so we're seeing a lot more of that type of activity. For sure. They're going on the offensive and not just kind of being acquired and taken out.
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C
Can you give us your assessment also on where Israel currently stands with AI and just what you make of the country's exposure? I'm curious how Jefferies thinks about it. Is it just an overall tech stack today, or are you looking at standalone AI companies as standalone AI companies?
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B
I think, first of all, we've seen a number of companies coming out of Israel with incredibly valuable technology that absolutely would fall into the category of AI. I've heard on one hand, statistics about how Israel is doing really, really well in raising capital for private companies and AI. And then I've heard just as many people say that we missed it and we're behind the ball and that, you know, it'll be difficult for Israel to achieve what it did in cyber in AI. And then there's also those that say, what really is AI? It's a part of your text pack. It's not a standalone sector. There's probably aspects of truth to all of that. There's no doubt that I think Israel is doing a better job than a lot of other places in integrating AI and understanding how it can be deployed and what enterprises will most benefit from the specific capabilities that these companies provide. But I do think it's too early to call on whether ahead of the curve or behind the curve in the sector.
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C
Natim, you mentioned how you've really found that what impacts the Israeli market and deals are macro trends, not so much what's happening on the ground geopolitically. How do you think about risk factors? You know, kind of during the war versus is now and going forward? What are the biggest risk factors given everything we just said?
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B
It's been educational for us as well these last few years, just kind of trying to understand what the inputs and the reactions are from kind of global markets and risk profiles and risk tolerances. You know, we saw a much bigger cooling off of engagement with Israel following the election and during judicial reforms. But from the rest of the last two years, we've seen a lot more comfort with people being able to project what they thought would be a recovery than the periods of uncertainty that come during the judicial reform period where people didn't know exactly what the other side would look like. Markets take bad news really well and digest it. They take uncertainty very poorly. Conflict in Israel is not something they can't look back at over the years and see exactly how the market recovers. And in fact, it does. And by the way, Even looking at 2008 and 9 from the global financial crisis, right, Israel's economy, GDP, unemployment, recovered much more quickly than almost any geography on the planet because of its kind of unique dynamic. That was right around the time that Israel got upgraded from the MSCI Developing World Index to the MSCI Developed World Index and of course resulted in liquidity and a number of other things being more challenging in the domestic market. We're working on fixing that. But again, I think the risk is greater from politics internally more than they are from a black swan event or another conflict.
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A
I think that overall, right. You see that also with Germany analysts who cover the DAX and the new Chancellor's policy, that is widening of the debt to GDP in a very kind of UN German way. But there's a story and there's a narrative why he's expanding the deficit to 4.75 out of a traditional like 2.2. Right. Israel will have to come up with a vector or a line of sight in its conversation with the Moody's and the S&Ps of the world as to how, what's the plan?
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C
I think that's a good segue. I wanted to make sure. We also ask you, Nati, outside of tech, when it comes to just kind of broader economic fundamentals, what are the big takeaways from 2025 in the Israeli economy?
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B
It surprised not just us. I think it surprised a lot of people within Israel that when you looked even Nine months ago the Shekel was higher than it was on October 6th. The TASE and the indices and the Windex by extension have all been incredible performers. You know, look, if you look at the banks, the Israeli banks, they're trading at 1.4 times price to tangible book. They're putting up 16, 17, 18% returns on equity with world leading efficiency ratios in their mid-20s. That's astonishing. We spent a lot of time, we became a remote member of the exchange and we became an approved foreign underwriter. One of the reasons we did that was because while it's been great that Israel was upgraded to the developed, that resulted in a lot less passive capital tied to investing in the TASE and for Israel to kind of get where we want it to get and the economy to get where we want it to get. We also want the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to be a world leading kind of mid cap exchange, much as it is in other countries that are innovating for exports, export, Singapore or Taiwan. You know, again, not to lose your audience in the weeds, Israel has the highest mandatory pension savings rate on the planet. When you look at the capital structure in Israel, you effectively have nine institutions with a trillion dollars under management and only $11 billion in total hedge fund assets. And so on one hand you have these great high quality, sophisticated long term shareholders and on the other hand you don't have liquidity. So you know, how do we kind of work together with the Israeli Securities Authority, with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to kind of improve liquidity? We at Jefferies cover, I think it's 40 Israeli companies, each of which is covered by their sector analyst. And so the analyst that covers Elbit is the same one that covers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and the average. The analyst that covers Phoenix is the one that covers Allianz and Generali. And so all of a sudden you end up having a lot more global investors that look at these businesses and say wow, look at the fundamentals of these companies and look at their valuations. These are incredibly interesting. And so we've put 70 new institutional investors into their first ever TASE listed security this year. And as I was kind of heading over here and getting ready for our conversation, I looked at the article that came out today. I don't know if you had a chance to see it yet. $2.4 billion of flows into the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange from global investors year to date. That's a very impressive number, especially for a market that's rather small.
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C
I was just gonna say we should note also that the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange starting early next year is going to be open Monday through Friday. Is this critical? I mean, do you think that this does something?
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B
Abu Dhabi did the same change several years back. They saw that there was no real sacrifice of liquidity, and quite the contrary. And as we think about future normalization, as we all hope we'll see, being on the same trading days as your neighbors and your partners is a really good idea. And they've done a number of other things to improve liquidity. They've built market making now, which is something that didn't exist before. So now there are people that are. Their job is to provide liquidity and specific securities. It's already having an impact. And so all these things make me kind of feel really optimistic about the opportunity in the TASE itself.
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A
And just to connect a couple of dots here in the hopes that it doesn't sound too pessimistic because it's uncharacteristically for me, I'm always sort of on the bullish side. The strength of the Shekel is playing a big deal here, right? If you want to raise $200 million now in Israel, Shekel denominated debt is now worth a lot more. But on the other hand, the biggest threat to Israel in the Next, I think 24 months from a social cohesion perspective is the strength of the Shekel. People don't realize it, but if you just sell your house in Tel Aviv for the shekel amount, you live a very nice life in Greece, a very nice life in Portugal, a very nice life in South Italy. The sort of, you know, cost of living dynamic looks completely different when you sell your house in Israel. And now when the Shekel, being so strong, make the comparison into some of the more failing economies of Europe. This is a big deal in the tech sector in Israel. This is a big conversation, right? People don't realize that it's actually driven by the fact that the economy is so well performing that the Shekel is strong, that they actually can look down upon kind of classic economies in Europe and seek to maybe improve their standard of living. Receiving a salary in Shekel and living in another location, to me that's a big deal. And people don't make that connection.
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B
We're a victim of our own success in that regard, for sure. And we're hearing those discussions as well.
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C
Okay, well, this was very unlike you, Yonatan, as you said, to wrap things up on such a pessimistic note. So I'm going to look to Nati to put A bow on it in a more optimistic way. Give us two questions. You can choose which one you want to answer. One is if you had to give 2025 a headline, what would you give it when it comes to the Israeli economy or if you want to give us something that's a little bit more forward looking, what's kind of like top of mind as you look to next year when it comes to tech, when it comes to what your expectations or hope are for the Israeli economy. And you're welcome to answer both, but give us a little bit of a, hopefully a note of optimism.
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B
Well, I'm Israeli and I'm an investment banker. I have no choice but being optimistic. Two things as far as a title for 25, I think I'd say something like just getting started, parentheses again. And I'll tell you just an interesting thing that I think about, you know, this tech truck conference that we do, I think is a really good barometer, as I mentioned, for different levels of interest at different times. You know, on one hand there was a ton of interest, as I mentioned, from the UAE in 2020 and then less in 23 and in 25. We of course saw less attendance from the traditional private equity sponsors and growth equity firms in Europe this year than we would have seen from years past where they come every single year. And that's I think a testament to kind of the geopolitical views about Israel in Europe right now. We saw a lot more engagement from mission driven investors or activated Jews that that had been invited to come to Tech Trek for years and hadn't come prior. And we're all in now and I think are really looking at Israel no longer as a place just for philanthropy, but as a place for, you know, investment. We advised on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the sale of 5% of the business to Bill Ackman. We advised on the Phoenix transaction where Jared Kushner and Affinity bought 10%. We're working on three other deals like that. We're kind of high profile folks that are looking at really attractive opportunities in Israel. And also I'll just mention, you know, we talked about in your last episode the India delegation and the connectivity with Singapore. So I have no doubt that those that are engaged are engaged, that those that are temporarily disengaged will re engage. My biggest question is whether we keep the Jews, which is interesting, right? The relationship between Israel and American Jewry, as you all know, had been kind of creating a rift more and more over the past several years as Israel became more religious, as 70% of Jews a year married out of the religion. And then of course October 7th, I think galvanized for many a recommitment, a re engagement with it. I really hope we can keep that. And I'm spending a lot of time kind of building those cross border investments and not just have it be ideological but have it be financial as well. So that when we come out the other side of this, we have the Indias and the Singapores, we get Europe back, we keep the galvanized mission driven investors and then in a period of normalization and hopefully some internal kind of navigation of unity, we can really have a period of incredible prosperity going forward. And I fundamentally believe that's going to be the case.
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C
I really appreciate that, all of those closing thoughts and I think you did a really nice job of capturing both the optimism but also realism of the situation that we're currently in. So Nati, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for the report and the conference and everything that you guys do.
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A
Thanks Nati.
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B
Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it. I have to say this is the one podcast that I listen to that gives me a ton of about the market and technology and economics. I follow the Windex. I really appreciate it. It's one of my two favorite podcasts. If I didn't mention my wife's podcast, which is Grace for impact about ideology and about leadership and about religion and about resilience, I'd be remiss. So thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here and.
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C
We'Ll keep listening and your wife's podcast should absolutely be your favorite. So that's very important. Thank you so much. Great to see you.
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B
Thank you.
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A
Thanks a lot.
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C
Well, it was great having Nati on Yonatan. I think we covered so much ground and we're always looking for numbers and there were plenty in that conversation.
- [32:24]
A
Look, what a great conversation. Authoritative, looking back at the 2025. The good, the bad, some of the ugly. Honestly, from an economic perspective, it's been an incredible year. So this gave me some good.
- [32:35]
C
Yeah. Yes.
- [32:36]
A
Although you didn't like my ending.
- [32:38]
C
Although you are also quite a realist this time around.
- [32:42]
A
So, you know, look, I've been having a lot of town halls these days trying to think about the change of the political landscape and the ideas that are going to bring about the third founding moment of Israel. I think people don't realize that a lot of their optionality to emigrate have to do with the strength of the Shekel and it's a bit of an irony or a sad story of how well the economy is performing. And by performing well, it's actually opening the door for people to have higher quality of living in some of the classic European cities we all love to tour, but are actually defunct and don't operate well. But with the shekel being a 3.2, you know, on the dollar and whatever it is now, 3.5 or 3.55 on the euro, you sell your house in Tel Aviv and you go live in a mansion in Tuscany because there are, you know, this year was the worst year for babies born in Italy since 1860. Wow.
- [33:32]
C
Well, Yonatan, the day that you buy a villa in Tuscany is like, then I'll really worry about.
- [33:37]
A
My 4 kids and my wife are here and this is the place we're married to, you know, to make it better. So no risk of that.
- [33:44]
C
All right, we've got just a few more words to end on that I think are going to be bright spots here. As usual, we begin the show with the numbers of the week, and we end with the words of the week. And this week, we chose some words from Noah Algomani, Avina Tan, O's girlfriend and partner, who, as we all know, was a.
- [34:04]
A
A survivor.
- [34:04]
C
A survivor, a hostage herself. Avina Tano is the Nvidia employee and a hostage who was recently freed and returned to Israel. And we've mentioned before just how Nvidia, as his employer and supporter of Israel, stood by him and some of the really inspiring words by his colleagues and managers. And now Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has met with Avina Tano and with Noah Al Gamani. And this is what Noah said about that meeting. She said Nvidia never forgot Avina Tan, who had only worked there for a year and a half before he was kidnapped. Seeing how the company stood by him the entire time shows us what true mutual responsibility really means. How even in days of success and prosperity, they stood by their employee and fought alongside us. Certainly not something Nvidia needed to do, but they did it. So I think. Nice words to end on and hopefully bring a little bit more light to everybody's.
- [35:09]
A
Yeah, it's actually as we speak, the Israeli Planning Authority just published the fact that Nvidia's northern Israel headquarters has been cleared and has been zoned and construction should begin in 2026. Nvidia seeks to have more or less 10,000 employees in Israel within the next 24 months. That's doubling their workforce here. Really an impactful employer in Israel and as you said, said, really cannot be taken for granted. We had some other hostages employed by multinationals and their CEOs did not make any step forward, recognizing that did not want to get into what they considered to be a political swamp. And it takes a Jensen Huang. It takes a guy who has his incredible life story to be able to appreciate the grit and the resilience of Israel and to side with it so openly. And the pictures from this meeting were, you know, we're so moving. So thanks Jensen again and these are great words to conclude the year with.
- [36:09]
C
Well, we'll leave it there. That is it for today's show. Thank you for tuning in to ARC Media's what's yous Number? We hope you found it interesting. And if you did, please be sure to like, subscribe rate review. You know the drill, but most importantly, please share it with others who you think will find it interesting. And if you want to make suggestions or share your feedback, please reach out to us at what's your number? @arcmedia.org.
- [36:39]
A
What's yous Number is produced by Adam James Levine, already sound in video editing. This is by Martin Juergo. Our theme music is by Midnight Generation. I'm Yonatanadiri. Tomorrow is the third candle.
- [36:50]
C
You're ahead of us here. We aren't even on to the second yet. I'm Michal Avram. See you back here next week. And Chag Sameach.
- [36:57]
A
See you next week. Hag Same.
- [37:02]
C
This podcast offers general business and economic information and is not a comprehensive summary for investment decisions. It does not recommend or solicit any investment strategy or security.