Israel’s high‑tech miracle has been measured for years by cybersecurity exits and unicorn counts. The next yardstick is harder and more consequential: turning algorithms into engines for designing the molecules, cells, and tissues that keep people alive. Nations able to merge code and biology will redraw both industry and public health. Israel already has every core ingredient to win that race.
A talent stack built for convergence
Start with people. The Israel Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 has become a launchpad for AI founders, sending veterans into dozens of scale‑ups before they turn thirty (The Wall Street Journal). Research depth matches coding power. Israel counts about 140 scientists and technicians per 10,000 employees, one of the highest ratios reported anywhere (Wikipedia). That talent is financed at scale: the country devoted roughly 6.35 percent of GDP to R&D in 2023, outpacing every OECD peer (ssti.org).
Cross‑pollination is already visible. Biolojic Design uses machine learning to “program” antibodies that switch on only in specific micro-environments, a capability built in Rehovot labs (Biolojic Design). Immunai maps millions of single cells to forecast how each patient’s immune system will respond, enough for AstraZeneca to sign an eighteen‑million‑dollar collaboration last autumn (Reuters).
Aidoc now runs in more than 1,000 hospitals worldwide and holds thirteen FDA clearances, automatically flagging strokes and other emergencies in radiology work‑lists (Healthcare AI | Aidoc Always-on AI). Viz.ai, co-founded by Israeli researcher David Golan, cut the time from arrival to specialist contact by nearly forty minutes in a multicentre study of 14,116 patients, a delta that directly translates into lives without disability (viz.ai). These firms are not statistical outliers; they are the opening act.
Proof that deep tech can rewrite Nobel‑level science
The world learned in 2021 that an AI could outperform entire disciplines when Nature crowned protein‑structure prediction its “Method of the Year” (Nature). Two years later, AlphaFold’s architects Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for the same feat (Breakthrough Prize).
A year later, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to them (along with David Baker) for their work on protein structure prediction. Lesson: an algorithm can compress decades of wet‑lab guesswork into hours of inference. The only question is which country will commercialize that insight for full cellular systems.
From pixels to cells: Somite shows what comes next
One answer is co-led from Boston and Tel Aviv. Somite pairs a patented micro‑capsule array with a foundation model called DeltaStem. The array can multiplex millions of culture conditions inside a handful of plates, driving data‑generation costs down roughly one thousand-fold, while DeltaStem learns how signals push stem cells toward any fate.
In nine‑day sprint experiments, the platform produced forty‑two distinct cell states, including notoriously hard notochordal cells, evidence that the model generalises well beyond textbook protocols. The founding team believes this is the AlphaFold moment for cell therapy and is now aiming at beta cells for type 1 diabetes and cartilage for degenerative joints. If Israel wants a flagship in regenerative medicine, it already has a blue and white flag.
Why Israel can scale the model
Running AI for biology takes more than GPUs. You need longitudinal patient cohorts, GMP manufacturing, and regulators willing to learn fast. Israel checks each box. Four national HMOs have kept digital records for decade,s and the Ministry of Health is financing interoperability projects that give researchers secure, near‑real‑time access to anonymised data (Trade.gov).
Teva, Pluristem, and a growing network of contract manufacturers know how to scale complex biologics. Regulators have already field‑tested digital‑health sandboxes that the US FDA is only now copying. Add the fact that cyber exports stood at around ten billion dollars in 2023, ten percent of global share, and you have an ecosystem that understands security, data governance, and global sales from day one (The Times of Israel).
A realistic policy playbook
Name AI‑bio a strategic domain on par with cyber. When Israel did this for cybersecurity, the sector grew to roughly ten billion dollars in exports a year. Co‑locate compute with hospital biobanks. Moving petabytes is slower than moving algorithms.
Expand the regulatory sandbox. Allow startups to run small, well‑controlled human studies at home before scaling abroad. The United Kingdom did something similar for genomic diagnostics and built Europe’s largest precision‑medicine cohort in five years. (Nature Medicine)
The economic upside
Analysts now expect the combined cell and gene therapy market to top ninety‑three billion dollars by 2030 (GlobeNewswire). Meanwhile, McKinsey pegs generative-AI value creation in pharma and med-tech at sixty to one-hundred-ten billion dollars annually (McKinsey & Company). Capture five percent of that value chain and Israel adds another Mobileye‑scale contributor to GDP, with jobs that blend robotics, molecular biology, and deep learning.
Despite war and macro headwinds, Israeli tech companies still attracted 8.8 billion dollars in venture funding during 2023, trailing only San Francisco and New York among global hubs (Innovation Israel). The Startup Nation’s refusal to accept limits remains intact. It has already led in niches such as desert agriculture and missile defence. Leading the AI‑bio convergence is simply the next mission.
The science is ready, the entrepreneurs are proven, and the global appetite for solutions has never been higher. Israel can choose to buy the algorithms that will rewrite medicine or build them. History shows we do better when we build.
The author is the CEO and co‑founder of Somite AI, an AI‑driven cell‑therapy company.