Israeli investment firm NetZero Tech Ventures has launched Labs4Minerals, an international competition for early-stage startups and academic researchers developing technologies for critical minerals and metals. Its corporate partners include Chevron Technology Ventures, German chemicals manufacturer Evonik and Tenova Advanced Technologies, which specializes in technologies for the mining and metals industries.

The competition aims to advance technologies across the critical minerals value chain, from exploration and mining through separation, refining and metals processing to recycling, alternative materials and solutions that reduce reliance on rare minerals. Eligible technologies include AI and advanced sensors for mineral exploration, new methods for recovering metals from industrial waste, and solutions that improve extraction and processing efficiency.

The competition has two tracks: one for academic researchers and another for entrepreneurs and early-stage companies. It targets technologies ranging from a well-developed concept to proof of concept in a laboratory or relevant operating environment. Existing companies are eligible if they have raised no more than $250,000 in equity funding, excluding grants.

Participants will gain access to experts and executives at the corporate partners, who will help assess technical and commercial viability and identify opportunities for collaboration. Each track will select three finalists and one winner. Winners may be considered for investment of up to $2 million through the Israel Innovation Authority’s incubator program, subject to its eligibility requirements and the establishment of R&D operations in Israel. The academic-track winner will also be eligible for a cash prize of up to $10,000.

Applications are open until October 25, 2026. Finalists will be announced in early November, with the final event expected to take place in November or December, bringing together corporate representatives, experts and investors.

Turning Academic Research into Technology Companies

Founded in 2021, NetZero Tech Ventures invests in energy, materials and deep tech. It follows a venture-building model, helping establish companies around early-stage research and technologies by combining funding, technical guidance and access to industrial partners. Its investors and partners include TotalEnergies, Delek US, Eren Group and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Its portfolio includes Chiral Energies and Funpressor, which develop energy and cooling solutions for AI infrastructure and the semiconductor industry, alongside materials companies such as Timna Elements. NetZero also operates development laboratories on the Bar-Ilan University campus, where portfolio companies can develop and test prototypes.

Last year, NetZero held a similar competition, won by a technology for separating critical metals developed by Technion Professor Yuri Gendel. The technology became the foundation for Timna Elements, which has since raised more than $2 million from NetZero, the Israel Innovation Authority and private investors.

Israel Enters the Critical Minerals Race

Critical minerals, including lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements, have become strategic resources for the battery, electric vehicle, electronics, semiconductor and defense industries. Rising demand, coupled with the geographic concentration of mining and processing capacity, is heightening concerns over supply chain disruptions and dependence on a small number of countries.

NetZero’s competition is part of a broader Israeli effort to develop technologies in the field. In March, the Israel Innovation Authority and the Ministry of Energy launched the “Tnufa Challenge for Critical Minerals,” designed to encourage the creation of Israeli technology companies focused on exploration, extraction, processing and recycling. Five winners were announced in August and will share grants totaling NIS 1.8 million. First place went to Drillzy, which is developing a sensor system for analyzing geological data in real time during drilling.

These initiatives seek to position Israel as a technology provider in the global critical minerals supply chain. The focus is on developing solutions that make extraction, processing and recycling more efficient, rather than mining domestic mineral deposits.

Photo credit: Eyal Toueg

[Pictured, right to left: Prof. Ofer Firstenberg, Prof. Yoav Sagi, Dr. Guy Raz, and Prof. Nir Davidson]

“A quantum computer can work and still be a dead end,” says Dr. Guy Raz, co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Israeli startup Q-Factor. That observation captures the company’s central technological thesis: in the race to build a useful quantum computer, the number of qubits is only part of the problem. The greater challenge is ensuring that every system supporting them can scale at the same pace.

Q-Factor emerged from stealth in April, announcing $24 million in seed funding and plans to develop a neutral-atom quantum computer with more than one million qubits. As TechTime reported at the time, Raz founded the company with Prof. Nir Davidson and Prof. Ofer Firstenberg of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Prof. Yoav Sagi of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. The founders said they had identified an architectural bottleneck that makes it difficult to scale existing neutral-atom computers beyond thousands of qubits.

The company is now beginning to reveal some of the principles behind its proposed solution. In recent months, its researchers have focused on two issues that become increasingly important as a quantum computer grows: the cumulative heating of atoms during quantum operations, and the ability to read their states quickly and accurately.

“A control scheme that looks elegant at 1,000 qubits can become impractical at 100,000; readout can remain accurate but become too slow,” Raz says. “Error correction can suppress noise yet require so many physical qubits and operations that the system never reaches a useful computational capacity.”

Neutral Atoms Move Beyond the Lab

Q-Factor has chosen one of the fastest-growing approaches to quantum computing: neutral atoms. In this architecture, individual atoms serve as qubits. Focused laser beams, known as optical tweezers, trap the atoms and allow them to be moved and arranged in different configurations. To perform operations between qubits, the atoms can be excited into Rydberg states, in which they interact strongly with one another.

Unlike artificial qubits fabricated on chips, atoms of the same isotope are inherently identical. Optical control also allows them to be moved and their connectivity reconfigured without separate electrical wiring for each qubit.

“Atoms are a natural implementation of quantum bits,” Raz says. “They are inherently identical, can be trapped and moved using light, and can be arranged in flexible geometries that allow different qubits to interact. In my view, these properties make neutral atoms the most promising platform for the scaling phase now beginning.”

But this approach does not, by itself, solve the scaling problem. A neutral-atom computer is a large, complex electro-optical system comprising lasers, optical components, control systems, and measurement equipment. As the number of atoms increases, the infrastructure operating them must grow without becoming too slow, complicated, or expensive.

“Most neutral-atom systems are built around a fairly conventional, microscope-like design that naturally limits the size of a single processor,” Raz says. “Q-Factor is developing a different approach, designed from the outset around a much larger atomic core.”

The goal is to scale a single core as far as possible, rather than move early to a system consisting of many smaller, interconnected quantum processors. Modularity also comes at a cost, Raz emphasizes: “Connecting many small quantum cores helps only if the links between them do not become the next bottleneck in performance or system complexity.”

Keeping the Atoms Cool

One example of how the company is approaching the scaling challenge appeared in a study published in August by Q-Factor’s four founders.

When performing quantum gates based on Rydberg states, a common practice is to briefly switch off the optical trap holding an atom, then turn it back on once the operation is complete. Each cycle releases and recaptures the atom, gradually adding motion and heat. Across many gate operations, this effect accumulates and can limit the depth of the quantum circuit—the number of sequential operations the computer can perform.

The researchers developed a technique called motional refocusing, which uses precisely timed changes in trap intensity to reverse the effects of motion and restore the atom’s motional state. According to the study, heating can be canceled in a harmonic model, while simulations of realistic optical traps showed that the technique could suppress the dominant heating mechanism.

For Q-Factor, a key feature is that the solution does not require adding a new hardware component for every qubit. Instead, it uses the trap-intensity control already present in the system—the kind of approach the company is seeking as it designs a machine intended to grow by several orders of magnitude.

For now, however, the study remains theoretical work supported by simulations, rather than a demonstration in a large quantum computer.

Accurate Readout Is Not Enough

Another bottleneck lies in reading the qubits’ states. In a fault-tolerant quantum computer, measurements are not confined to the end of a calculation. Error correction requires repeated cycles of measurement, processing, and feedback, making readout time a critical resource as the system grows.

In another study, Q-Factor researchers and collaborators proposed using auxiliary atoms to amplify the readout signal. Rather than relying solely on the signal from a single atom, the information needed for readout is transferred in a controlled way to several auxiliary atoms, which can then be measured in parallel. Here, too, the proposal has so far been assessed through analysis and simulations, rather than demonstrated in an operating system at scale.

Both studies reflect the same principle: solving each problem individually is not enough. The solution must avoid creating a new scaling bottleneck in place of the one it removes.

“Scaling costs tend to compound,” Raz says. “Faster measurement may require more hardware, additional connectivity makes control harder, and error correction increases the overall resources required. A design that works well at one scale can become impractical when the machine grows tenfold or a hundredfold.”

Q-Factor remains far from demonstrating its ambitious target. The company has not unveiled a system approaching one million qubits, and some of its proposed solutions are still at the research and simulation stage. The central question is whether these elements can be integrated into a single large system while maintaining the accuracy required for fault-tolerant computing.

For Raz, that is precisely where the next phase of the quantum race will be decided. “In the race to a million qubits, the challenge is not just getting there, but making sure the rest of the machine can grow with them.”

Pictured: Honda’s dynamic wireless charging system. Units embedded in the road transfer power to vehicles as they drive. Rendering: Honda.

Japanese automaker Honda is entering the electric road market, creating direct competition for Israel’s Electreon. On Monday, the company unveiled a dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) system that charges moving vehicles through coils embedded beneath the asphalt. Honda is initially targeting trucks and commercial transport, with testing on a public highway in Japan scheduled to begin in fiscal 2027.

The system has been under development since 2025 in partnership with Japanese infrastructure companies Taisei and Taisei Rotec. Honda is responsible for the road’s power transmission units and the vehicle-mounted receiver, Taisei for the power supply system, and Taisei Rotec for embedding the hardware in the road. The companies will subsequently participate in a project led by highway operator NEXCO East on the Tateyama Expressway in Chiba Prefecture.

Honda is developing units capable of delivering up to 150 kW of instantaneous power and aims to demonstrate that the system can operate while trucks travel at highway speeds. A test track will be built later this year to assess the infrastructure’s durability under loads equivalent to one million wheel passes, as well as electromagnetic field leakage.

Two Approaches to Charging Roads

The underlying physics is similar to Electreon’s: coils embedded in the road generate a magnetic field, and a receiver mounted beneath the vehicle converts that energy into electricity. Honda, however, has chosen a different architecture. Its ground assembly (GA) units are connected through a DC power network, with each unit incorporating both the transmission coil and the electronics needed to operate it. According to Honda, this design simplifies wiring and allows the system to rapidly activate only the units directly beneath a vehicle.

Electreon’s architecture, by contrast, uses roadside management units to supply power to sections of embedded coils. One potential advantage is that more of the active electronics remain accessible outside the pavement. Honda’s modular approach could simplify power distribution and unit replacement. It is still too early to determine which architecture will prove cheaper and more reliable over years of operation. Honda has not provided a cost estimate, and a company engineer told Reuters that the economics still need to be assessed against conventional fast-charging infrastructure.

Electreon currently has a substantial lead in deployment. On the A10 motorway south of Paris, it operates an approximately 1.5-kilometer charging section under real traffic conditions. In tests conducted with Gustave Eiffel University, the system delivered more than 200 kW on average to a truck traveling at 85–90 km/h, with instantaneous power exceeding 300 kW. The same project also supports a bus, a commercial van, and a passenger car.

Why Trucks?

Honda’s entry is particularly interesting because it targets an application where electric roads are still seen as having significant economic potential: heavy freight transport. Long-haul electric trucks require large, heavy batteries and substantial charging time. Supplying energy while they travel could enable smaller batteries, reduce weight, and cut downtime.

Heavy transport is also one of Electreon’s core markets. In recent years, however, the company has broadened its strategy beyond its original vision of electrifying roads. Alongside LINE for dynamic charging, it offers DASH for charging during slow travel or brief stops, and DOT for stationary charging. Its acquisition of InductEV earlier this year further strengthened its stationary charging business for bus, truck, and industrial vehicle fleets, at power levels of 75–300 kW.

That shift also reflects the market’s current state. Deploying electric roads across entire highway networks still requires major infrastructure investment, standardization, and cooperation among governments, road operators, and automakers. Progress is therefore concentrated in demonstration projects and transport corridors regularly used by heavy vehicles.

Against this backdrop, Honda’s entry sends a meaningful signal. It does not establish the business case for electrifying thousands of kilometers of roads, but it shows that a major automaker continues to see value in the technology and is investing in a system of its own. For Electreon, Honda represents both a new competitor and support for the technological premise on which the company was built: in some applications, the road itself can become part of the charging infrastructure.

Israel’s PCB Technologies has signed an agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of Silicon Valley manufacturer Gorilla Circuits at an enterprise value of $120 million, subject to purchase price adjustments. Based in San Jose, California, Gorilla manufactures printed circuit boards and provides electronics assembly services. The acquisition will give PCB Technologies a U.S. manufacturing base, broaden its access to defense and semiconductor customers, and create opportunities to offer the advanced substrates and miniaturization solutions it has developed in Israel.

The transaction will be carried out through a wholly owned subsidiary and financed with loans from two Israeli banks. Financing terms are being finalized, with PCB Technologies expected to release further details once arrangements are complete. Closing is subject to regulatory approvals, including clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. The agreement sets a five-month deadline for completion, extendable to eight months if CFIUS approval remains pending. PCB Technologies expects Gorilla to be well positioned for further growth without requiring significant immediate capital investment.

Gorilla enters the deal following substantial revenue growth and a sharp improvement in profitability. Revenue rose from approximately $69.4 million in 2024 to $91.9 million in 2025, an increase of about 32.5%. Operating profit jumped from approximately $572,000 to $10.7 million, while EBITDA, excluding the effects of the IFRS 16 lease accounting standard, increased from $1.8 million to $12.1 million. In the first half of 2026, revenue reached approximately $54.9 million, operating profit totaled $7.4 million, and EBITDA was $8.1 million.

Order intake also points to continued expansion. Gorilla received approximately $88 million in orders during the first eight months of 2026, compared with roughly $100 million for all of 2025. Its order backlog stood at approximately $38 million at the end of August. The financial figures disclosed by PCB Technologies include adjustments made by its management to present the acquired company’s performance.

Gorilla serves more than 700 active customers across multiple industries. Aerospace and defense accounted for approximately 40% of sales in the first half of 2026, with around 200 active customers, while semiconductors represented approximately 35%, with around 135 customers. Its remaining business spans medical devices, energy, robotics, and industrial equipment. This mix will broaden PCB Technologies’ exposure to the U.S. technology market while expanding its defense business.

Founded in 2002, Gorilla employs more than 320 people across several San Jose facilities. Founder and CEO Hershel Patty has more than five decades of experience in the printed circuit board industry and previously founded and sold Silicon Valley Printed Circuits. Gorilla’s integrated model combines design, board fabrication, component assembly, and testing with component procurement and inventory management. Keeping these services in-house allows customers to work with a single supplier and reduces handoffs between subcontractors.

The company specializes in high-mix, low-volume production with short turnaround times, a model well suited to engineering teams that need prototypes and frequent board revisions. It offers standard assembly turnaround times of three to five days, with expedited service available in as little as 24 hours for suitable projects. Its proximity to Silicon Valley engineering teams supports direct collaboration as designs move into production.

In the semiconductor market, Gorilla specializes in boards for automated test equipment, or ATE, and boards used to test chips during manufacturing and after production. These applications require complex multilayer boards and dense interconnections. In defense, the company supplies circuit boards for Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 missile program. It is also registered under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, and holds quality certifications for aerospace and defense manufacturing.

For PCB Technologies, U.S. production could unlock opportunities where domestic manufacturing is either an advantage or a requirement. Acquiring an established business also brings experienced teams, engineering relationships, and an existing sales organization. The company plans to expand the range of solutions offered to Gorilla’s customers by introducing advanced circuit board and substrate capabilities, followed by electronic system miniaturization.

The acquisition fits PCB Technologies’ strategy of providing an integrated offering, from circuit boards and substrates to advanced packaging and final product assembly. Gorilla could become the U.S. base for extending that model, combining its local customer relationships with the group’s technological capabilities. The deal’s success will depend on increasing sales to existing customers, preserving Gorilla’s responsiveness and profitability, and turning the U.S. presence into growth that justifies the investment.

Around 100 Israeli companies are developing technologies that could help address desertification and the effects of climate change, including sensing systems, artificial intelligence, environmental data analytics, water technologies and precision agriculture. The figure comes from a new report by the Israel Innovation Authority and Israel C4IR, the Israeli Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, examining how advanced technologies can be deployed to tackle land degradation and water scarcity in arid regions.

The Climate Resilience, Desertification and Applied Innovation Report defines desertification not as the expansion of existing deserts, but as the degradation of land in arid and semi-arid regions caused by a combination of climate change and human activity. According to figures cited in the report, desertification directly affects around 250 million people and roughly one-third of the world’s land surface, while threatening the livelihoods of approximately one billion people. More than 170 countries are affected by desertification.

Water scarcity is expected to intensify the problem. According to the report, between 1.7 billion and 2.4 billion people are projected to live in urban areas facing water scarcity by 2050. Agriculture alone currently accounts for more than 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, with the share potentially even higher in arid countries.

From Sensors and Satellites to Drought-Resistant Seeds

The report identifies five key technology areas for addressing desertification: water systems for arid environments, climate-resilient agriculture, soil monitoring and restoration, environmental intelligence, and renewable and distributed energy.

One of its central arguments is that these should not be treated as separate technology markets, but rather integrated into broader resilience systems. Reclaimed water, for example, can support agriculture; solar power can operate water treatment and irrigation systems; and sensors and AI can detect soil degradation before significant damage occurs.

The mapping conducted for the report identified a significant concentration of Israeli companies operating in these fields. Examples include TaKaDu, which uses data analytics to detect leaks and failures in water networks; CropX, which combines soil sensor, weather and satellite data to optimize irrigation and agricultural inputs; SupPlant, which monitors plant conditions to support irrigation decisions; and Netafim and N-Drip, both active in precision and water-efficient irrigation.

Another example is Israeli company SaliCrop, which has developed a non-GMO seed enhancement platform designed to activate plants’ natural stress-response mechanisms before planting. According to the report, the technology has been tested in more than 250 field and commercial projects across 12 countries. The company has reported typical yield improvements of 10% to 25% under stress conditions, with higher gains recorded under severe stress.

In the water sector, the report also highlights Laguna Innovation, which develops a modular, solar-powered system that treats wastewater onsite so it can be reused for irrigation. EZPack develops modular systems for water purification, storage and distribution in areas without permanent infrastructure, including reverse-osmosis and irrigation-water salinity treatment solutions.

Using AI to Manage Soil

One of the technological shifts identified in the report is a move from treating soil after degradation has already occurred toward data-driven management aimed at detecting deterioration earlier.

Combining satellite observations, soil and water sensors, IoT systems and artificial intelligence makes it possible to monitor moisture, salinity, vegetation health and other environmental variables, and to use that information to guide irrigation and land-restoration efforts.

AI, sensing and robotics are also becoming part of the broader response in agriculture. The report divides these applications into three categories: systems that monitor and forecast drought, heat and land degradation; technologies that help farmers adapt production to changing water and soil conditions; and technologies designed to restore soil and ecosystems that have already been damaged.

Israel as a Living Lab

The report presents Israel as a case study in how resource scarcity can drive technological development. In the water sector, for example, approximately 90% of Israel’s treated wastewater is reused for agriculture, alongside extensive use of desalination and precision irrigation. According to the report’s authors, this combination of technologies and infrastructure has largely decoupled Israel’s water supply from fluctuations in natural freshwater availability.

The Negev is presented as a “living lab” for testing technologies under conditions of extreme heat, low rainfall, salinity and water scarcity. Research institutions, companies, farmers, and pilot and demonstration sites operate across the region, allowing solutions to be tested under conditions similar to those that other parts of the world may increasingly face as climate change intensifies.

The Challenge: Moving Technology From Pilots to the Field

Alongside technological advances, the report identifies several barriers preventing some solutions from reaching widespread adoption. In agriculture, for example, the authors point to a shortage of high-quality data for training and validating AI models, limited access to agricultural testing environments, high development costs and difficulties demonstrating a clear return on investment for farmers.

Smallholder farmers may struggle to finance equipment, software, data services and training, while investors can be reluctant to finance companies operating in markets where the path to large-scale commercial deployment is long.

One of the report’s main recommendations, therefore, is to go beyond funding research and development. The authors call for the expansion of “living labs,” demonstration sites and regulatory sandboxes, as well as a continuous financing framework that supports technologies from the laboratory through field trials and demonstration to their first commercial deployment.

“Climate change and desertification present the world with challenges that cannot be solved by a single technology or a single country,” said Israel Innovation Authority CEO Dror Bin. The challenge now, he added, is to connect existing solutions and enable them to move from research and pilot projects “to implementation at meaningful scale.”