The U.S. has its Silicon Valley, and Israel has its own Silicon Wadi of concentrated tech know-how. However, while the former is established, the latter is still growing, in no small part thanks to the money Western companies keep pouring into it.
The Jerusalem Post reports that Intel has finalized a deal with The Floor, a Tel Aviv-based FinTech hub, that will see a new lab built exclusively for the development of distributed ledger solutions, Internet of Things innovations and biometric applications. Sharon Puterman-Zafrir, manager of IoT at Intel Israel, touted the company’s commitment to fostering effective project development in the country.
“Through this collaboration, Intel will be able to lead, alongside The Floor, the development of this field in Israel and to widen the influence of technology on the financial field, from the user to the cloud,” Puterman-Zafrir said in a statement.
Gil Devora, a co-founder of The Floor, added that Intel’s funding and support “could help Israel become a global capital in the field of FinTech.”
The news comes at an interesting time for Intel’s future in Israel. The company announced widespread layoffs to its Jerusalem-based manufacturing base in early May, but this announcement could assuage fears that the chipmaker is preparing to pull out of the region entirely, at least not where there are innovations in FinTech to be made.
