Author: Techtime

NVIDIA invests in Coherent and Lumentum

Posted on by Techtime

By Yohai Schweiger

Chip giant NVIDIA announced this week a strategic $4 billion investment in two U.S.-based photonics companies — Coherent Corp. and Lumentum Holdings — in a move designed to support the accelerated expansion of its connectivity division and ensure the availability of critical components for next-generation AI switches and advanced optical interconnect solutions.

NVIDIA will invest $2 billion in each company through direct equity stakes, alongside multi-year supply agreements that include significant purchasing commitments and preferential access to future manufacturing capacity. The structure combines capital investment with long-term supply chain guarantees, deepening collaboration on next-generation optical connectivity components. Beyond the capital infusion, the partnerships are designed to secure steady access to critical optical and laser components for AI data centers, while expanding advanced manufacturing capabilities in the United States and increasing domestic industrial output.

Critical Links in the Optical Value Chain

Coherent, headquartered in Pennsylvania, is one of the long-standing players in the global laser and photonic materials industry. The company develops and manufactures III-V laser sources, silicon photonics components, advanced optical engines and high-precision chip packaging technologies. In data centers, lasers are far from a peripheral component — they are the heart of the optical system. Integrated into optical transceiver modules installed in network interface cards and InfiniBand and Ethernet switches, they generate the light that enables high-speed data transmission between servers, racks and large-scale GPU clusters at speeds reaching 800 gigabits per second today and advancing toward 1.6 and 3.2 terabits.

Coherent operates advanced manufacturing facilities in the U.S., and their expansion under the agreement aligns with broader American efforts to strengthen domestic production of critical infrastructure technologies. The company supplies laser and optical components to networking equipment manufacturers, semiconductor firms, hyperscale cloud providers, and to industrial, defense and aerospace customers.

Lumentum, which became an independent company in 2015 following its spin-off from JDSU — once one of the world’s largest optical communications component suppliers in the 1990s and 2000s — focuses on optical communication modules and laser components for data centers and high-speed networks. It develops high-speed transceivers, VCSEL lasers and modulation components integrated into network cards and data center switches, enabling optical connectivity between servers, racks and entire computing clusters.

If Coherent provides the light source and foundational photonic layer, Lumentum delivers the modules that transform that light into a functioning data network. As AI infrastructure scales and bottlenecks shift from compute to bandwidth, the optical layer becomes just as critical as the GPU itself.

The Fastest-Growing Division

In recent years, NVIDIA has introduced silicon photonics solutions in its InfiniBand and Ethernet switches and has been advancing co-packaged optics technologies. Yet even when optical integration occurs inside the switch, laser sources, raw materials and large-scale manufacturing of optical components are handled by specialized suppliers. The new investments secure preferred capacity access, influence over the technology roadmap and deeper control of the supply chain — a critical advantage as AI data centers expand at exponential scale.

The strategic context of the move lies in NVIDIA’s connectivity division, built on the 2019 acquisition of Mellanox and headquartered in Israel. This division now oversees InfiniBand, Spectrum Ethernet, BlueField DPUs and advanced fabric systems that connect tens of thousands of GPUs into a single computing cluster. In its latest fiscal 2026 results, the networking segment reached approximately $31 billion in annual revenue — a dramatic expansion that has turned it into one of NVIDIA’s primary growth engines and roughly a tenfold increase in scale since the Mellanox acquisition.

As data centers grow from 10,000 GPUs to 100,000 and beyond, demand for bandwidth, low latency and energy efficiency surges. Copper links are no longer sufficient, and the transition to advanced optics becomes unavoidable. The investments in Coherent and Lumentum allow NVIDIA to avoid manufacturing bottlenecks as AI infrastructure demand accelerates, while enabling faster transitions to next-generation optical connectivity. At the same time, deeper control over the optical layer strengthens NVIDIA’s competitive differentiation in networking and supports high margins in full-stack AI systems.

From an Israeli perspective, the move further reinforces NVIDIA’s connectivity arm. Future generations of InfiniBand and Ethernet switches developed in Israel are expected to rely increasingly on integrated photonics solutions. Expanded optical manufacturing capacity and closer collaboration with laser and module suppliers directly support the division’s ability to sustain its growth trajectory, meet rising demand and deliver increasingly advanced products.

Whoever controls the GPU, the memory, the switch — and the optical layer connecting them — effectively controls the architecture of next-generation data centers. NVIDIA’s investment in photonics is another step in that direction, reinforcing a growth wave that is also being driven from Israel.

Innoviz Projects Tenfold Surge in Security and Defense Revenue

Posted on by Techtime

[Photo: Omer Keilaf, CEO of Innoviz. Credit: PR]

Innoviz estimates that its activity in the security and defense markets will grow more than tenfold in 2026, according to comments made during the company’s earnings call following the release of its annual results.

While revenue from non-automotive markets remains marginal — accounting for about 1% of total revenue in 2025 — the company expects these segments to represent roughly 10% of revenue in 2026, potentially amounting to several million dollars.

CEO Omer Keilaf linked the projection to a sharp increase in inbound interest from the defense sector. Speaking on the call, he described a recent event hosted at the company’s offices in Israel, attended by around 80 security consultants from airports, seaports and railway operators. “We probably left that event, only that event, with tens of opportunities,” he said.

The following week, Innoviz participated in a defense conference and, according to Keilaf, left with “a few tens of leads.”

The expansion is supported by the launch of InnovizSMART, a LiDAR sensor derived from the company’s automotive platform but tailored for perimeter security, critical infrastructure, smart cities and robotics applications. The company says the sensor offers long range and high resolution, enabling accurate detection and classification of objects even in complex environmental conditions and partially obscured areas. Innoviz recently reported initial deployments of the system at critical infrastructure sites in Israel.

Production Set to Increase 3–4x in 2026

Alongside its push into security markets, Innoviz is preparing a significant increase in manufacturing capacity. Keilaf said the company continues to ramp production with contract manufacturer Fabrinet, and expects 2026 production volumes to be three to four times higher than last year.

This scale-up is intended to support both autonomous vehicle programs — including collaborations with carmakers and truck manufacturers — and growth in non-automotive markets. The partnership with Fabrinet enables the company to transition from limited-volume manufacturing to full-scale serial production.

Humanoids and “World Models”: Why LiDAR Still Matters in the AI Era

Another key theme of the earnings call was the company’s positioning in what it calls “Physical AI” — encompassing robots, humanoids and intelligent infrastructure. Innoviz recently published the first part of a white paper outlining its view of LiDAR as a foundational layer for building “world models,” and plans to host a dedicated webinar on the subject in the coming weeks.

During the Q&A session, an analyst asked whether LiDAR remains necessary in an era of rapid AI advancement. Keilaf responded that the next stage of AI requires accurate, real-world data.

“When your AI is trained by data that is also provided by AI, you are creating a very big error that is inflated, and you create a bias in your models,” he said. High-resolution LiDAR, he argued, can “connect those world models … to life” by feeding them with real-time, accurate information from the physical world.

Keilaf added that no new dedicated product is required for humanoid robotics applications. The company’s existing automotive-grade LiDAR systems, developed to meet stringent reliability and safety standards, already meet the requirements of industrial and security markets.

Financial Summary

Innoviz closed 2025 with record revenue of $55.1 million — more than double the prior year. Gross margin reached 23%, compared with a negative margin in 2024. Operating expenses declined to $80.6 million from $100.8 million in 2024, a reduction of about 20%.

For 2026, the company forecasts revenue growth of approximately 27%, targeting a range of $67 million to $73 million.

Gambit Security Raises $61 Million to Build Real-Time Cyber Resilience Platform

Posted on by Techtime

[Photo caption: Gambit founders. Credit: Netanel Tobias]

Gambit Security, a startup developing a cyber-focused business resilience platform, announced it has raised $61 million in funding. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital and Cyberstarts. Of the total amount, $5 million was raised earlier in a Seed round.

Founded in 2024, Gambit is building an AI-driven cyber resilience platform designed to continuously measure an organization’s preparedness against evolving threats. The company’s solution connects to enterprise environments, security tools and backup systems, autonomously mapping infrastructure and backup data to expose hidden gaps that could undermine traditional recovery plans and jeopardize business continuity.

According to the company, although most organizations maintain backups, only about 5% of systems are actually prepared to withstand ransomware attacks. Such disruptions often result in significant financial losses and operational downtime. Gambit’s platform aims to bridge the gap between theoretical recovery planning and real-world readiness by continuously assessing resilience levels, identifying vulnerabilities and validating recovery pathways in real time.

Beyond cyberattacks, the system is also designed to address critical system failures and technical disruptions. Gambit says its platform enables organizations to optimize backup management, reduce cloud storage costs by an average of 10%, lower cyber insurance premiums and cut regulatory and audit-related expenses.

The company was founded by CEO Alon Gromkov, Chief Product Officer Saar Elias and Chief Technology Officer May Kogan — all alumni of Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where they served as career officers and received the Israel Security Award during their service. After completing their military service, they were among the first employees at the cybersecurity startup Sentra.

Gambit currently employs around 60 people, including approximately 50 in Israel and 10 in the United States. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand partnerships with global enterprises and grow teams across research, engineering and sales.

The platform is already deployed by leading organizations across industries including high-tech, retail, finance and healthcare. According to the company, risk analyses conducted through the system have uncovered significant infrastructure gaps and helped prevent critical outages.

“Cyberattacks and infrastructure failures have become routine events that cause severe disruptions and financial losses,” said Alon Gromkov, Co-Founder and CEO of Gambit. “Pouring more and more budget into security and backup tools has become an unwinnable arms race. Recovery capabilities have lagged decades behind — what could be restored yesterday may fail today, leaving organizations exposed to catastrophic downtime. Gambit changes that equation. We eliminate the ‘expiration date’ of resilience strategies by providing real-time capabilities that help teams ensure their environments remain robust against evolving threats — not just on a periodic basis.”

Tower to Manufacture Photonic Quantum Chips for Xanadu 

Posted on by Techtime

Tower Semiconductor announced it will manufacture photonic chips for Canadian quantum computing company Xanadu, deepening collaboration between the two firms as they move from research and prototyping toward structured industrial production of quantum hardware components.

According to the companies, the partnership focuses on developing a dedicated fabrication process tailored to Xanadu’s chip architecture. Several tapeouts have already been completed on Tower’s silicon photonics platform. The collaboration centers on a low-loss silicon nitride (SiN) process, integration of complex photonic components on chip, and the incorporation of photodiodes and detectors within a unified architecture.

The goal is to enable precise, stable, and scalable manufacturing of photonic chips designed to serve as the hardware core of next-generation quantum computers. Transitioning quantum technologies from laboratory environments to industrial foundries remains one of the field’s most significant challenges, as many systems are still confined to research settings.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toronto, Xanadu develops quantum computers based on photons — particles of light — rather than superconducting qubits or trapped ions. In its approach, quantum information is encoded not in traditional two-state qubits, but in continuous properties of light waves such as phase and amplitude. This architecture allows operation at room temperature, without the extreme cryogenic cooling systems required by many competing platforms, and is designed to integrate into photonic chips compatible with industrial fabrication — a potential advantage on the path to scalability.

Xanadu is building a full-stack quantum platform spanning both hardware and software, including PennyLane, its open-source framework for developing and running quantum algorithms in conjunction with AI workloads. Since its founding, the company has raised approximately $275 million from private investors and international venture capital funds. In 2025, it announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger in a deal valuing the company at several billion dollars. Among its technological milestones are increasingly large-scale photonic quantum system demonstrations and commercial cloud access enabling customers to run algorithms on its hardware.

For Tower, the agreement builds on its expertise in silicon photonics platforms and analog/mixed-signal chip manufacturing for optical communications and sensing applications. As an independent foundry, Tower specializes in customized fabrication processes for customers, and is now expanding into the quantum computing sector — where the ability to manufacture high-quality photonic chips at scale could become a decisive factor in commercialization.

[Photo credit: Xanadu]

Speedata’s APU to Be Deployed in Nebul’s European Sovereign Cloud

Posted on by Techtime

Israeli chip startup Speedata has announced a strategic collaboration with European cloud provider Nebul, under which Speedata’s Analytics Processing Unit (APU) will be deployed for the first time within a sovereign cloud infrastructure in the European Union.

The move will allow European organizations to run large-scale big data and artificial intelligence workloads in the cloud without relinquishing full control over their data within EU borders.

Under the agreement, Nebul will become the first cloud provider to offer Speedata’s APU as part of its private NeoCloud platform. The infrastructure is designed for organizations with strict regulatory requirements, emphasizing not only compliance with GDPR and the EU AI Act, but also European ownership structures, operational control, and restricted external access to data.

At the core of the partnership is the integration of Speedata’s accelerator card into Nebul’s data centers across Europe. In practical terms, this means cloud customers will be able to run heavy data-processing workloads — most notably Apache Spark — on specialized hardware built specifically for analytics.

Spark has become a de facto standard engine in enterprise big data environments. It powers massive SQL queries, joins across billions of records, aggregations, and distributed processing at scale. It sits behind many data warehouses, analytics platforms, and AI pipelines.

Beyond Spark, the platform will support ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes — pulling data from multiple sources, cleaning and structuring it, and loading it into centralized repositories. This stage is critical before any advanced analytics or model training can begin.

The system is also designed to accelerate data preparation for AI training, as well as real-time RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) queries, where large language models access structured enterprise data to generate context-aware responses.

In many such scenarios, the bottleneck is not GPU compute power but the data-processing stage itself. That is where Speedata’s APU comes in. The chip is designed to execute complex analytical operations — such as joins and aggregations — directly in hardware, reducing latency and significantly lowering the number of servers required.

The AI Data Bottleneck

Founded in 2019, Speedata develops a purpose-built chip known as the Analytics Processing Unit. Unlike general-purpose CPUs or GPUs, the APU was architected from the ground up for analytics and big data workloads, with a particular focus on accelerating Apache Spark SQL.

Rather than routing query execution through multiple layers of software, memory transfers, and inter-server communication, the APU performs much of the computation directly in silicon. According to the company, this architecture enables significant performance gains while dramatically reducing server count and energy consumption. In one reported deployment, an APU-based system replaced dozens of servers with just a handful, sharply cutting operating costs.

Speedata positions itself as addressing a critical challenge in modern AI infrastructure: the data layer that feeds model training and inference — a layer that often determines overall cost and time-to-value.

Nebul is a European sovereign cloud provider focused on private cloud environments for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The company primarily serves large enterprises and public-sector organizations seeking to avoid reliance on U.S. hyperscalers while maintaining full legal and operational control over infrastructure and data.

Nebul’s cloud infrastructure is built on European data centers, with an emphasis on regulatory compliance, cybersecurity, and strict adherence to EU standards. It already offers advanced GPU infrastructure for AI training and inference, and now adds a dedicated analytics acceleration layer to its stack — expanding its capabilities from compute to data processing.

The European Context: Sovereignty as Strategy

The partnership comes amid a sharp rise in AI computing demand across Europe over the past year. Organizations are scaling infrastructure to process growing volumes of data, while simultaneously navigating complex jurisdictional questions around data ownership, operational control, and exposure to non-EU legislation.

In Europe, data sovereignty extends beyond the physical location of servers. It encompasses ownership structures, operational governance, and who ultimately has legal access to information. Against this backdrop, combining a purpose-built analytics chip with a European sovereign cloud infrastructure offers a dual value proposition: higher performance for big data and AI workloads, alongside regulatory clarity and control.

On its face, this appears to be one of the first public deployments of Speedata’s technology within a commercial European sovereign cloud. If expanded, it could mark a transition for the company from technology validation toward deeper market penetration through strategic partnerships.

For Nebul, integrating a dedicated analytics accelerator may serve as a differentiator in a competitive European cloud market where performance increasingly matters as much as sovereignty.

SolarEdge Rebounds: “We are shifting to offense”

Posted on by Techtime

photo above: The new SolarEdge Nexis platform for the residential market. Sales will begin in 2026.

By Roni Lifshitz

The sales of SolarEdge grew in Q4 2025 by 70% compared with the corresponding quarter of 2024, reaching approximately $335.4 million. This marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth and the fifth consecutive quarter of improvement in profitability. “In 2025 we restored discipline, generated strong free cash flow, and rebuilt margins,” said Shuki Nir, CEO of SolarEdge.

“In 2026 we are shifting decisively to offense, focused on moving toward profitable growth and capturing global market share through the rollout of the SolarEdge Nexis platform. By leveraging our DC expertise, investing in high-growth adjacencies like AI data center power, and maintaining our rigorous cost discipline, we believe we are positioning 2026 to be a transformational year for SolarEdge.”

The new SolarEdge Nexis was first unveiled in September 2025. It is a residential platform for solar energy generation and storage with a capacity of up to 20 kilowatts, suitable for backing up all household needs for several days. The platform is based on a modular design using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries with a lifespan of 10-15 years, an enhanced DC architecture to increases backup capacity, and an installation process that can be completed in less than 15 minutes. The company announced that the new systems would reach the market later in 2026.

The stock surged — and then plunged sharply

During the last quarter, the company delivered 98.8 thousand inverters, 2.87 million power optimizers, and solar energy storage batteries with a total capacity of 280 MWh. Total sales in 2025 grew by 31% compared with 2024, reaching approximately $1.18 billion. The most notable development was the turnaround in profitability: gross margin in 2025 stood at about 16.6%, compared with a negative gross margin of 97.3% in 2024.

The company’s Nasdaq-listed stock reacted unusually to the report: within just one hour, it surged from $38 per share to more than $42, and then quickly fell to just under $35. The company is now valued at a market capitalization of about $2.1 billion.

What happened during the call? It is possible that analysts were disappointed that the new growth engines would take longer than expected to materialize. In response to requests for further details on entry into the AI market, CEO Nir explained that this market has multi-billion-dollar potential for the company.

“The new GPUs from NVIDIA, expected to reach the market in 2027, require an 800-volt DC power architecture. We are in discussions with companies in the AI sector and are receiving positive feedback on our technology. We expect to conduct initial trials of new products for this field soon, but no revenues are expected before 2027. In our assessment, mass production will begin in 2028.”

Manufacturing shifted to the United States

Revenue from the new residential system will also not be felt immediately. During the earnings call, Nir explained that the Nexis platform would be launched only in March 2026, with large-scale shipments expected to begin in the third quarter of the year. This means that the new growth engine will be felt only in the second half of 2026, or later.

It is worth noting that during 2026, SolarEdge completed a major transformation of its manufacturing infrastructure, shifting most of its production to the United States. The company closed its manufacturing plants in China, Mexico, and Hungary. It still maintains some manufacturing capacity in Asia, mainly through a contractor in Vietnam. In Israel, the Sela-1 manufacturing facility (in the Tziporit industrial zone) produces short production runs and performs manufacturing optimization due to its proximity to the company’s R&D center.

The Texas plant manufactures single-phase inverters, the Utah plant focuses on residential batteries, and the Florida plant produces three-phase inverters and solar panel optimizers. The scope of this move was revealed during the investor conference call in September 2025, immediately after the quarterly report was released.

Shuki Nir disclosed during the call that the company intends to base most of its production in the United States—not only for the domestic market, but also for customers worldwide. “We intend to manufacture in the United States and distribute U.S.-made products both domestically and globally for many years to come.”

T3 Defense Takes Controlling Stake in ITS Through Debt Conversion

Posted on by Techtime

T3 Defense, traded on Nasdaq under the ticker DFNS and formerly known as Nukkleus, announced it has taken control of Israeli company Industrial Techno-Logic Solutions (ITS). Under the agreement, T3 received 51% of the company by converting an existing loan of approximately NIS 10 million into equity, with no additional cash consideration and no new share issuance. The company also holds an option to purchase the remaining 49% within three years at a price ranging from roughly NIS 25 million to NIS 35 million, depending on the timing of exercise. Following the transaction, T3 estimates combined annual revenue of about $24–26 million.

The structure reflects a formalization of ownership in a company previously financed by T3 rather than a conventional cash acquisition. The deal joins a series of purchases executed as part of the firm’s strategy to assemble a defense-industrial platform.

ITS, based in Kfar Saba, operates as a turnkey engineering and manufacturing contractor, guiding products from development to serial production. The company designs and manufactures electro-mechanical systems, production lines and custom machinery, while managing supply chains and integration for clients across defense, space, medical equipment and robotics. Its core focus is the transition from prototype to scalable production — widely regarded as a bottleneck in defense and industrial programs.

ITS wholly owns Positech, founded in Haifa in 2001, which develops precision motion-control and stabilization systems integrated into radars, sensors and mission payloads across land, air and naval platforms. The activity represents a clear defense subsystem layer, providing mechanical-electronic accuracy within sensing and weapon systems.

T3 Defense itself is undergoing a rapid strategic shift. The U.S.-founded holding company rebranded from Nukkleus in February 2026 to sharpen its focus on acquiring and operating defense companies embedded in national-security supply chains. As part of this transition, it secured an equity financing framework of up to $250 million to support further acquisitions.

Earlier moves included acquiring control of Star 26 Capital, which owns Rimon — a supplier of energy systems and components integrated into advanced defense platforms — and purchasing Israeli company Teletan, which develops simulation, synthetic data and GPS-denied navigation solutions for defense industries.

Taken together, the acquisitions form an emerging industrial puzzle: Teletan provides algorithmic and simulation capabilities, Rimon contributes energy infrastructure, Positech supplies precision subsystems, and ITS enables the transition to mass production. Rather than developing a single weapons platform, the company is assembling an industrial base positioned beneath prime contractors — companies that enable defense systems to be manufactured at scale.

The ITS acquisition adds the production-readiness layer, a stage where many defense programs stall due to certification, quality and delivery constraints. T3 Defense is thus advancing a model of consolidating deep-tier defense suppliers under one group to create a continuous engineering-industrial capability chain.

CEO Mani Shalom said the transaction “strengthens our strategy to expand manufacturing capacity at critical bottlenecks in the defense industry. ITS operates at the intersection of advanced engineering and scaled production — an area where execution accuracy and supply discipline directly affect long-term defense programs.”