Israel is entering a new tech growth cycle – and needs the best people here - opinion

The bigger story is that Israel’s technology sector is entering a new growth cycle – one that needs its most experienced people back at the center of the action, while also inviting outstanding global talent to help build what comes next.

This is not about coming back from the global frontier. It is about joining the place where one of the next frontiers is being built.

Israel today is one of the few places in the world where artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital health, semiconductors, climate technology, academia, venture capital, multinational R&D, and government investment intersect at exceptional speed.

Ideas move quickly here. Companies move quickly. The distance between research, product development, customers, and capital is unusually short.

That is one of Israel’s most important strategic advantages.

That rebound is not incremental. It is the beginning of a new company-building wave, and it will require far more than ideas and capital. It will require founders, AI experts, product leaders, engineering managers, scientists, go-to-market professionals, and operators who know how to scale companies globally.

When I meet founders, investors, and executives from multinational R&D centers, I hear a different conversation from the one we were having five or 10 years ago. Startups still need capital. They still need access to markets. But increasingly, they are asking for something else.

“We need people who have done this before,” they tell me.

People who have scaled products from dozens of customers to millions. People who have built engineering organizations across continents. People who have entered regulated markets, worked with global customers, and taken companies from promising technology to real commercial leadership.

Ideas are plentiful. Experience is becoming harder to find.

Much of that experience already exists. It resides with Israelis who have spent recent years building careers abroad. It also resides with exceptional non-Israeli professionals who want to build at the frontier of global technology and can see the scale of the opportunity now taking shape here.

They have worked inside the world’s leading technology companies. They have seen how global products are built, how markets are opened, how organizations scale, and how companies compete at the highest level.

That experience is not separate from Israel’s innovation story. It is now part of Israel’s next opportunity.

At the same time, artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of competition across almost every industry. Israeli hi-tech companies need AI talent at a scale we have not seen before: people who can build models, deploy them responsibly, integrate them into products, secure them, commercialize them, and turn them into a real business advantage.

This is where globally experienced Israelis can make a decisive difference, and where world-class professionals from abroad can also find an ecosystem ready for their ambition.

An engineer who has built AI systems at scale brings knowledge that cannot be recreated overnight. A product leader who has launched across multiple markets brings judgment that younger companies need. A researcher who has worked inside a global technology company brings standards, networks and practical insight that can accelerate entire sectors.

For Israelis abroad considering their next move, the reality is clear: Israel offers the chance to work at the center of some of the most important technological shifts of the next decade.

Israeli companies are building in areas that matter globally – AI, cyber resilience, quantum, digital health, defense technologies, advanced chips, food and climate technologies, and industrial innovation – and they will need many more experienced people to turn this momentum into global leadership.

Coming back to Israel means entering an ecosystem where the next major opportunities are already being built – and where experienced talent can have an immediate, visible impact.

Israel’s recent hi-tech tax reforms matter because they address one of the practical barriers that has made this decision more complicated than it needed to be.

For Israelis abroad, questions surrounding stock options earned overseas, equity compensation, and cross-border taxation have often created uncertainty. These may sound like technical issues, but they affect real decisions: where to work, where to raise a family, where to found a company, and where to build the next stage of a career.

The new reforms are designed to make those questions simpler and more predictable from now on. Moreover, Israelis abroad who return to Israel or new olim who make aliyah by the end of 2026 may be eligible for additional special income-tax benefits in the years from 2026 until 2030 – benefits that, for qualifying professionals, can be significant.

That matters because, in the modern innovation economy, countries compete for people as much as they compete for investment. Companies increasingly build where experienced talent is available. Investment often follows. The countries that lead the next decade of technology will be those that create the best conditions for ambitious people to build there.

Israel already has world-class universities, exceptional entrepreneurs, sophisticated investors, leading multinational R&D centers, and one of the world’s strongest startup cultures. Returning professionals can amplify every one of those strengths.

They bring international networks that open new markets. They bring lessons learned inside global companies. They bring management experience, product discipline, and commercial understanding.

And because Israel’s technology community is unusually interconnected, that knowledge spreads quickly from company to company, from multinationals to startups, and from experienced leaders to first-time founders.

The decision to return or make aliyah will always be personal. Careers, spouses, children, schools, and quality of life all matter. No government policy can make that decision for anyone.

But the government can remove unnecessary barriers. It can make the professional and financial case clearer. It can recognize that Israeli technology professionals abroad are not people Israel has lost. They are one of Israel’s greatest strategic assets.

The message should be direct: Israel has a cutting-edge technology ecosystem, a renewed surge of startup creation, companies working at the frontier of global innovation, an urgent need for AI and hi-tech talent, capital, research, customers, multinational activity, and government backing.

For decades, Israelis have helped build some of the world’s most important technology companies abroad.

Over the next five months, they have an opportunity to bring that experience home – not to join yesterday’s story, but to help build Israel’s next wave of technology companies. And for non-Israeli founders, engineers, researchers, and operators looking for the next place to build, Israel’s message is also clear: this is a moment to be here.