TLDRs;
- Nvidia is investing $500M to expand R&D and build a 30MW facility in northern Israel.
- The company’s new Be’er Sheva office will triple its presence in southern Israel and add hundreds of jobs.
- Israel now serves as Nvidia’s second-largest R&D hub, driving innovations in AI networking and data infrastructure.
- Israeli teams lead breakthroughs in Spectrum-X, BlueField-3, and Blackwell GPU systems powering global AI growth.
Nvidia is strengthening its long-term commitment to Israel with a massive $500 million expansion that underlines the country’s growing importance in global AI infrastructure.
The U.S. chipmaker is building a 30-megawatt R&D facility in northern Israel, while also expanding its southern operations in Be’er Sheva, where it plans to hire hundreds of engineers by 2026.
The move marks a strategic deepening of Nvidia’s presence in the region, as Israel becomes a critical hub for the company’s AI networking and chip development efforts. The upcoming Be’er Sheva site, a 3,000-square-meter office in the city’s high-tech park, will triple Nvidia’s footprint in the area. The park is already home to major players such as Microsoft, Elbit Systems, and several Israeli defense technology units.
With over 5,000 employees across the country, Nvidia is now one of Israel’s largest private tech employers. Its expansion further cements the nation’s status as the second-largest R&D hub for Nvidia outside the United States, where some of its most advanced networking products are designed and optimized.
Be’er Sheva to Tel Aviv
Nvidia’s growth in Be’er Sheva builds on a series of strategic expansions across Israel. After acquiring Mellanox Technologies for $7 billion in 2020, Nvidia inherited a deep base of Israeli engineering talent, expertise that has since become vital to the development of AI data center infrastructure.
The company is now evaluating proposals for a new mega-campus in northern Israel and has recently enlarged its Tel Aviv offices to support its growing workforce. The Be’er Sheva hub will focus on networking technologies and data infrastructure, areas where Israeli engineers already play a leading role.
The country’s robust cybersecurity ecosystem, combined with a strong academic and defense technology pipeline, makes Israel an ideal environment for Nvidia’s next-generation innovations in AI hardware and software.
Powering the Next Wave of AI Data Centers
A major part of Nvidia’s Israel operations revolves around AI networking innovations like the BlueField-3 SuperNICs and Spectrum-4 Ethernet switches, which power Spectrum-X, an Ethernet-based architecture optimized for AI workloads.
The Israel-1 system, one of Nvidia’s most advanced internal AI research clusters, showcases this innovation. Built in Israel, it houses 2,048 H100 GPUs, 2,560 BlueField-3 SuperNICs, and 80 Spectrum-4 switches. Together, these technologies achieved a 1.6x increase in network throughput, proving that Ethernet-based systems can effectively support large-scale AI training.
Nvidia’s forthcoming Blackwell GPU-powered R&D facility will take this further, providing the computational backbone for the next generation of AI and data-intensive workloads. The project also includes new networking and storage integration features that will push the limits of distributed AI systems.
Israel’s Strategic Value to Nvidia’s Global Vision
Beyond innovation, Nvidia’s expansion in Israel signals confidence in the country’s strategic value to global AI development.
Israeli engineers have been instrumental in refining the DOCA (Data Center on a Chip Architecture) framework, enabling it to handle up to 2,000 VirtIO-net devices per BlueField-3 DPU and deliver significant encryption and performance gains in multi-tenant data centers.
Several enterprise storage and networking firms, including DDN, VAST Data, and WEKA, have partnered with Nvidia to integrate Spectrum-X adaptive routing, achieving bandwidth increases of up to 48% for reads and 41% for writes compared to traditional setups. These breakthroughs not only highlight Israel’s contribution to Nvidia’s ecosystem but also underscore the country’s potential to shape the future of global AI infrastructure.

