I have argued for months that Israel needs a resilient technological backbone that can adapt, evolve, and outlast shocks. That is the promise of deep tech. So when I read Alon Stopel, chair of the Israel Innovation Authority, outline a clear triad for the country’s future – artificial intelligence, bio-convergence, and quantum computing – I felt both recognition and relief. Recognition because the direction matches what many of us have been urging. Relief, because when vision comes from those steering the nation’s innovation levers, it has the power to move capital, talent, and policy in ways no solitary op-ed ever could.
I write this in a spirit of resilience and renewal. Israelis have lived through years where the headlines bent towards grief, anxiety and uncertainty. Yet beneath the noise, founders kept building; researchers kept publishing; engineers kept shipping. Dr. Stopel’s message meets that stubborn optimism where it lives: in labs and workshops, on GPU [Graphics Processing Unit] queues and clean benches, in long nights of debugging and longer days of grant-writing. To say that Israel is early in a revolution is not hype; it is humility. The curve has only just begun to bend.
Artificial intelligence is the first arc of this revolution. Much of today’s attention goes to headline-grabbing models and agents, but the deeper Israeli story is more grounded. It is the story of methodical infrastructure and applied use cases that change decisions in business, medicine, finance, logistics, and national security. Compute access matters. Shared, affordable capacity for startups and researchers matters even more. When the Innovation Authority backs common resources instead of scattering subsidies, it democratizes experimentation. Small teams can test ideas without mortgaging their future on cloud bills. Universities can run bold research without reserving half a paper to explain why they could not scale their experiments. If Israel gets this right, AI will be less about dazzling demos and more about systems that improve everyday choices – from triage to traffic, from crop yields to credit risk.
But artificial intelligence becomes truly transformative when it fuses with biology and engineering, what Stopel and the Authority frame as bio-convergence. I have seen the spark in young teams who bring microfluidics together with machine learning, who design organ-on-chip platforms to compress clinical hypotheses from years to months, who dream of diagnostics that move gracefully from centralized labs into clinics and homes. The beauty of bio-convergence is that it multiplies Israeli strengths. Israel’s software instincts marry its biomedical depth. Its improvisational culture becomes a disciplined pipeline when regulators, hospitals, and industry convene early to shape standards, privacy, and validation. The most moving stories are already here: an alert on a physician’s phone that pulls a patient back to the hospital in time; a model that filters noise from imaging; a chip that identifies antibiotic resistance before the infection can win the race. None of these tools ends the world’s pain, but each of them shortens it.
Still, Israel should be honest about what it takes to translate convergent science into social good. Biology is not an app store. To manufacture, certify, and deploy bio-devices or synthetic biology platforms at scale, you need patience, capital with a long fuse, and companies that can live beyond the Series B announcement. That is why I welcome Dr. Stopel’s plainspoken call for Israel to grow large companies. Startups are precious, but scale is sovereignty. A nation that can design, validate, manufacture, and distribute life-critical technology at home is a nation that can anchor its future rather than rent it. The goal is not to replace Israel’s vibrant acquisition market; it is to add a parallel track where teams can choose to grow into global incumbents rooted in Israel.
Quantum computing is the third vector, and it demands exactly that kind of scale. Quantum is not a spectator sport. It is tooling, talent, and testbeds; it is cryogenics and lasers, firmware and fault-tolerance; it is the unglamorous slog of compilers, benchmarks, and error mitigation. Yes, quantum threatens today’s encryption and will require post-quantum security across the public and private sectors. But the deeper promise lies in chemistry, materials, optimization, and biology, where quantum-class accelerators could revolutionize Israel’s scientific discovery. To harness that promise, Israel needs more than research excellence. It needs enterprises capable of taking quantum out of the lab and into industry workflows, with service contracts, reliability guarantees, and export pathways. Without bigger balance sheets and deeper manufacturing capacity, Israel risks becoming a brilliant node in someone else’s platform.
There is a way to move from risk to readiness. First, build shared infrastructure where it matters most. Co-locate compute with clinical and biological data lakes under rigorous governance. Expand national testbeds for bio-chips, bio-devices, and quantum networking so young companies can validate performance to international standards at home. Create clear, fast, ethical regulatory sandboxes that allow limited, well-designed pilots in hospitals and municipalities, coupled with transparent outcomes reporting. When regulators learn alongside innovators, safety improves and adoption accelerates. That is what resilience and renewal looks like in policy form.
Second, strengthen the bridges between defense-grade urgency and civilian deployment. Israel’s hard lessons on the battlefield have historically spun off civilian breakthroughs in cybersecurity, sensors, communications, and autonomy. The emerging defense-tech ecosystem will do the same for dual-use AI, robotics, and materials. The right safeguards are non-negotiable, but the collaboration itself is a flywheel. What is proven under pressure often performs beautifully in peacetime.
Third, bring patient capital to deep tech without turning it into a dependency. Government should prime the pump, not replace it. Targeted co-investment, outcome-based procurement, and pre-competitive consortia can lower risk for private investors while aligning everyone towards national capacity. The metric is not how many grants Israel approves, but how many enduring companies, good jobs, and export engines it creates across the periphery as well as the center. Scale should be inclusive by design.
Fourth, go outwards with confidence and humility. Deep tech is a team sport across borders. Israel should actively partner with like-minded countries on post-quantum standards, data-sharing for rare diseases, climate resilience with bio-convergent tools, and trusted supply chains for chips, sensors, and therapeutics. Israel’s allies want solutions that work. Offering those solutions – securely, ethically, and reliably – earns respect more than any press conference ever will.
I can already hear the skeptics. Funding cycles are fickle. Talent is scarce. Global politics can turn cooperative markets into contested terrain overnight. All true, and yet the arc still bends towards builders. Even through the worst seasons, founders kept raising, hiring, and shipping. Even as some doors closed, others opened wider for those who could deliver. The surest way to navigate volatility is to become a place that makes indispensable things. Countries still buy what keeps their citizens safer, healthier, and more prosperous. If Israel consistently offers the world that caliber of technology – battle-tested where appropriate, evidence-based always – the world will keep knocking.
I keep returning, in quiet moments, to the faces of young scientists and soldiers, to the mentors who stayed late with them in labs, to the physicians who pressed “call now” when an app raised the alarm, to the engineers who shipped a firmware patch at three in the morning because a hospital needed it by dawn. This is what it means to innovate the future of Israel. Not speeches. Not slogans. A thousand small acts of competence, courage, and care that compound into national capacity.
Dr. Alon Stopel, Chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority, leading Israel’s next tech revolution across AI, bio-convergence, and quantum computing. (Photo credit: Israel Innovation Authority)
Dr. Stopel is right to say Israel is at the beginning. Beginnings are precious because they remain malleable. Israel can choose to be a nation of exits or a nation of enterprises. It can choose to rent compute or build capacity. It can treat bio-convergence as a buzzword or embrace it as the backbone of a healthier society. It can admire quantum from afar or invest, relentlessly, in the hard work that makes it useful. Above all, Israel can let resilience and renewal guide not only its rhetoric, but its resource allocation.
If Israel does, the next decade will read differently. Its startups will remain fearless, but more will keep their independence long enough to employ thousands across Haifa, Beersheba, the Galilee, and the Negev. Its universities will continue to shine, but more of their breakthroughs will take root in factories and clinics at home. And its alliances will deepen, as Israel brings irreplaceable capabilities to the table – and keeps its promises when the world is watching.
Israel’s next tech revolution is no mystery. It is a roadmap with three bold routes and a single destination: a nation that turns ideas into infrastructure, discoveries into companies, and companies into shared prosperity. The direction is clear. Now is the moment for Israel to build a backbone worthy of its talent and its hope.