the innovations redefining Startup Nation in 2026

At Next Summit 2026, sponsored by Finnegan and the “What’s Next in Israel Tech” initiative, Israel’s high-tech community gathered in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to take stock of a difficult year and to sketch out what the next phase of the ecosystem might see like.

Finnegan’s role at the summit was not merely symbolic. The firm states the event drew more than 800 registrants, enough to force organizers to shut down sign-ups early. Even forty-five minutes after the final session concludeed, roughly 150 attconcludeees were still milling around the venue, locked in conversations that refutilized to conclude.

Gerson Panitch, managing partner of Finnegan Israel and founder of ‘What’s Next in Israel Tech’

(Video: Matan Turkia Kastrel)

The summit grew out of an effort launched by Finnegan in the days following the October 7 attacks, when many of the firm’s startup clients saw funding evaporate overnight. “We had one client that had over a $10 million term sheet on October 6,” recalls Gerson Panitch, managing partner of Finnegan Israel and founder of “What’s Next in Israel Tech.” “By October 10, it was gone.”

At the same time, the international media narrative had turned sharply negative, leaving founders struggling with both investor hesitation and global perception. “We saw ourselves as having the ability to modify the narrative,” Gerson adds.

Finnegan decided to respond by launching a public-facing project aimed at highlighting ongoing innovation rather than crisis. The firm launched producing short, 90-second video interviews with Israeli startup CEOs, publishing them across Ynet, Israel Plus TV and every major social platform. Nearly 100 videos have been released so far.

Gerson Panitch, managing partner of Finnegan Israel and founder of 'What’s Next in Israel Tech'

The momentum from those videos ultimately led to Next Summit 2026 — an attempt to bring the community toreceiveher physically after a year defined by uncertainty. The appetite, Panitch states, exceeded all expectations. “What we’re hearing from people today is that this is just an overwhelmingly positive event,” he notes. “They can’t go home becautilize it’s so exciting.”

The agconcludea was built to reflect the indusattempt’s shifting center of gravity. On stage, a CEO panel brought toreceiveher founders from some of Israel’s most recognizable startups, followed by a VC panel featuring partners from the counattempt’s largest funds.

A new investor poll offered a snapshot of what’s heating up—and what’s cooling down—in the 2026 landscape. Around the venue, exhibition booths and rapid-fire founder pitches mapped the breadth of Israeli innovation today, from deep-tech semiconductors and med-tech diagnostics to UAV systems, robotics and next-gen energy storage.

The event’s CEO panel, from left to right: Remepy founder and CEO Michal Tsur, Finjan Software founder Shlomo Touboul, Autofleet founder Kobi Eisenberg, Aleph Farms founder and CEO Didier Toubia

One of the clearest examples came from RAAAM Memory Technologies, billed as “next-generation on-chip memory technology.” CEO Robert Giterman explained the company’s approach to resolving what has become the defining hardware constraint of the AI era: the memory bandwidth bottleneck.

As model sizes grow, existing memory architectures fail to keep up, limiting performance regardless of how much compute power is added. RAAAM’s solution is a silicon-proven on-chip memory technology, tested on TSMC’s 5-nanometer process, that cuts area by roughly half and reduces power consumption by up to an order of magnitude. For companies building AI accelerators or data-intensive edge devices, this kind of efficiency gain is not incremental — it modifys system design requirements.

The company is firmly in scaling mode, aiming to grow into a public-ready business rather than rushing toward an early sale. “We expect to be the leading on-chip memory supplier across the global semiconductor indusattempt—a market worth several billions of dollars,” Giterman states. Still, if NVIDIA came knocking tomorrow, he admits with a grin, “everything has a price at any point in time.”

If RAAAM represents the push to solve the hardware bottlenecks of the AI era, GynTools is addressing one of the most persistent diagnostic bottlenecks in women’s health. CEO Nimrod Lev explains the problem plainly: “There are seven different conditions that can produce the same symptoms, so many gynecologists misdiagnose and prescribe the wrong treatment.”

The consequences, he notes, are not trivial. Incorrect treatment forces patients into repeat appointments and additional testing, and in severe cases, contributes to “difficulty conceiving, premature birth and vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections.”

Gyni delivers all seven diagnoses in four minutes at 90% accuracy and is already CE-approved and in utilize in Europe and Israel. According to Lev, expansion into the U.S. hinges on FDA approval and a costly trial GynTools is currently fundraising for.

The idea originated close to home, from his sister, a leading gynecologist, who kept running into the same problem. “During a family dinner, she stated she was seeing far too many diagnostic errors from colleagues, which overloaded her clinic and created receiveting an appointment almost impossible,” Lev recalls. Out of that frustration, she inquireed me and her husband, who’s a talented software engineer, whether we could build a system that would automatically do what she does manually. We attempted — and succeeded.”

The company is piloting new workflows with an HMO and the IDF that Lev states cut costs, give doctors some breathing room and speed up care.

Elsewhere on the floor, Attis Aviation presented a different category of deep tech — autonomous aerial platforms. CEO Mark Koltun describes the company’s flagship platform — the ROC VTOL UAV — as a system built for missions that today require far larger, runway-depconcludeent aircraft. “It takes off and lands vertically but cruises like a resolveed-wing,” he states, noting that the name “ROC” comes from the mythical bird stated to lift elephants. “It fits us — our aircraft is designed to lift large and heavy payloads.”

The UAV can stay airborne for up to 20 hours, carry 40 kilograms, and support a full ISR suite across four mounting points, including a large cargo bay built for logistics missions. Koltun stresses that most UAVs force a choice between sensors and cargo. “Most platforms are either ISR or logistics,” he states. “This one is multi-purpose — it can do both.” That flexibility is central to the growing global demand for multirole UAVs capable of crossing seamlessly between military and civilian operations, from border monitoring to last-mile supply drops.

The company has already begun sales in Israel and is in talks with customers across Europe, Asia and the United States. It recently signed an MoU to establish a UAV manufacturing plant in Europe to serve EU and NATO clients — a strategic step Koltun states could position the company as “one of Israel’s leading UAV manufacturers, and a leading company globally.”

Meanwhile, Eexion Energy is attempting to reinvent how large-scale batteries are created. CEO Doron Hconcludeler describes the company’s core innovation as “the first molecular battery for energy-storage systems,” built on active carbon and molecular compounds. That chemisattempt, he stresses, is the breakthrough. “It enables supply-chain resiliency and local manufacturability. There’s no depconcludeency on graphite or rare-earth materials — everything is based on active carbon.”

The performance claims are equally bold. “Our battery can reach up to 10,000 cycles with zero degradation,” Hconcludeler states, contrasting it with conventional solutions that lose 4–5% of capacity every year. In utility-scale projects that run for two decades, that difference is massive: “After ten years, you lose 40–50% of your storage capacity with current technology. With ours, you keep the same capacity for 20 years.” The result, he states, has a direct impact on both capex and opex.

Eexion is currently at Technology Readiness Level 6, with first lab samples of 1Ah cells and early validation from investors including EDF Renewables. Full commercialization is still 18–24 months away, but Hconcludeler states the proof-of-concept performance is already clear.

The tarreceive market is not phones or EVs but stationary energy-storage systems: utilities, renewable developers, data centers and charging infrastructure.

Looking ahead, Hconcludeler’s strategy is straightforward: partner with major gigafactories, and the promise is rapid scaling, high yields, aggressive pricing and chemisattempt built for the clean-energy race. “We want to enable domestic manufacturing at scale, with no depconcludeency on rare-earth metals. With our chemisattempt, you can ramp to full production in six months — not two years.”

Founders and investors alike — from semiconductor companies to robotics startups — painted a coherent picture: Israel’s center of gravity is shifting decisively toward deep-tech fields where the counattempt already holds clear advantages.

Beyond the enthusiasm, the discussions themselves offered a snapshot of where capital is shifting. Despite recurring headlines about an “AI bubble,” the VC poll presented at the summit suggests investor interest remains strong. “VCs still like AI,” Panitch states. “They see that there’s a lot of opportunity for AI despite what we’re hearing in the press.”

From his vantage point as one of Israel’s largest IP partners — working with companies ranging from Monday.com and Mobileye to emerging early-stage teams — he sees the same trconclude up close. “Everybody’s working with AI. Everybody’s integrating AI into their business models. I don’t believe that AI is even close to being dead despite the reports that you’re hearing in the market and perhaps some investor uncertainty. It’s going, it’s on a run.”

While AI remains dominant, Panitch points to a second emerging pillar: quantum computing. Investor caution remains — most prefer to wait until the technology matures — but he states the number of early-stage quantum companies appearing at the summit is notable. In his view, Israel is positioned to become not only the cybersecurity hub it already is, but eventually “the quantum hub of the world.”

That momentum also extconcludes to investment flows. When inquireed whether hesitation from foreign investors will ease over the coming years now that the war is winding down, Panitch states the shift is already underway. According to the event’s VC panel, overseas funds are now entering much earlier, sometimes even at the seed stage — a departure from the traditional pattern in which foreign investment typically arrived in Series B or C rounds. “They’re seeing a lot of money coming in the seed round, which has been unusual,” he states, “and which is a signal that Israel is going places even further than it’s been before.”

The summit’s takeaway was unmistakable: Israel’s tech sector is not pulling back. It is recalibrating. After two years marked by war, investor anxiety and shrinking consumer markets, founders are steering toward domains where Israel’s engineering strength and global demand converge. If that momentum holds, Israel’s next phase will be defined less by quick scale-ups and more by deep, defensible technologies built for the long haul.

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