The business delegation led by US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia the other week and the signing of agreements with Nvidia, Amazon, Google, Boeing and AMD put the Arab kingdom on the global technology map.
In contrast to the 2020 Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which provided for the supply of US-made weapons and technology as part of normalization of ties with Israel, this time, the Startup Nation was absent. Under Israel’s nose, Saudi Arabia is becoming a new regional technology powerhouse that now overshadows it.
For years, relations have been woven between the two countries without a peace agreement. Even today, a year and a half after the October 7 massacre, business ties are ongoing, albeit on a very low back burner, and well below the media radar.
A “Globes” investigation reveals that most of the Israeli companies active in Saudi Arabia deal in cybersecurity, some also with national security and protection of installations. Some were established abroad by Israelis who opened a Saudi branch through a foreign company. Most work with companies like Spire and Bulwark, which specialize in distributing products and installing technological systems among clients in the Gulf states, Egypt, and Jordan.
From Tel Aviv and Petah Tikva to Riyadh
Among the companies with a public presence in Saudi Arabia is CyberArk, an Israeli cyber company managed from Israel with 4,000 employees, of which about 1,200 are in Petah Tikva and Beersheva.
Tom Lowndes, CyberArk’s former head of sales for the Middle East, wrote just months after the October 7 massacre about the company’s plans for expansion in the Saudi kingdom. The company, which secures user identities, reported “consistent growth of approximately 25% year-on-year since entering the region. In 2024, Saudi Arabia has become a major driver of this growth, now accounting for nearly 40% of CyberArk’s Middle East business.”
He said CyberArk served more than 50 clients in the kingdom and planned to double its operations there in the next two years. However, Lowndes left his position in February, and the company has not provided an update on its operations in Saudi Arabia.
CyberArk is not alone: Check Point is active in that country as part of its activity in the Arabian Peninsula, but its sales in Saudi Arabia are a negligible part of its revenue. Cybereason, a cyber company founded in Tel Aviv that protects endpoint devices, moved its headquarters to San Diego, and has been working in the Arabian Peninsula for several years, due in part to major shareholder SoftBank.
Another cyber company, based in New Jersey but most of whose employees are Israeli, and whose name cannot be disclosed, operates in Saudi Arabia. The company employs managers in the kingdom, including its former distribution manager who previously worked at Spire and now, according to his LinkedIn profile, manages all of sales activities in the Gulf states, Egypt, and Turkey from Riyadh.
Another company whose name cannot be disclosed, which was founded in Israel and about a year ago moved its headquarters to the US, recently advertised a position for a sales manager in Riyadh and filled the position a few months ago. The company trains cyber personnel, an area of keen interest for the kingdom, which is currently investing billions in training workers for the high-tech industry with the aim of weaning itself off investment in oil, as its production declines.
Another Israeli operating in Saudi Arabia is Continuity, a software company that was founded two decades ago in the US and moved its center of operations to Israel “for reasons of Zionism and tax advantages,” Continuity CEO Gil Hecht told “Globes.”
The company offers systems that enable enterprises to recover from technical failures and cyber incidents, and provides secure storage and backup systems to banks and large organizations. In Saudi Arabia in particular, and in the Arab world in general, it operates mainly through distributors and manufacturers of the large systems in which it is installed, such as those of Dell, for example.
Continuity arrived in Saudi Arabia shortly before the signing of the Abraham Accords, “back when there was a sense of euphoria that Israeli technology would flourish in the Middle East. However, since October 7, there has been a significant setback for Israeli companies doing business in the Arab kingdom. Not that there aren’t any talks at all, but there’s a cool wind blowing towards the companies and Israel is no longer part of the trend for doing business.
“There are good relations between Israelis and Saudis, but there’s no doubt that we are not invited to the ‘big party’ going on in the country. The Israeli activity going on is a kind of inertia of the activity that started several years ago and there is really no new growth here.” According to Hecht, revenue from Continuity’s cyber product, which has grown by 100% over the past year in worldwide sales, has almost not grown at all in the Arab world.
According to Dr. Joseph (Yossi) Mann, a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Middle East Studies at Bar Ilan University, aside from the war in Gaza and the lack of normalization, cultural gaps are another reason for the difficulty in maintaining business relations between the parties. “There is no developed startup culture in Saudi Arabia. Saudi companies are large and move slowly, not something that suits young Israeli companies that move fast. Saudi culture requires long-term, gradual trust building and a lot of ‘show’ — and that’s hard for Israeli startups.”
The Saudi corporate culture, according to Dr. Mann, is the reason that, in the foreseeable future, Saudi Arabia will not be able to establish a thriving startup scene that will push Israel out. “Saudi universities are gradually rising in the world rankings, but their military experience is in the very early stages and they do not have a culture of tolerance of failure like Israel has.”
The focus: Data security and cybersecurity
According to Dr. Mann, who specializes in the study of society and the economy in the Gulf countries, with an emphasis on Saudi Arabia, “most Israeli activity in Saudi Arabia revolves around data security and facilities that protect local infrastructure, mainly from terrorist attacks.” The customers, he says, are mostly government companies that are currently in the midst of a boom in public services development that began after the Covid-19 pandemic, or as part of the Neom project: the technological metropolis planned in the country, which is a cornerstone of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to wean the economy off its dependence on oil.
Mann adds there is also extensive academic research activity at foreign universities where Israeli and Saudi researchers work together, including grants given jointly to the Israeli and Saudi sides. In addition, there are joint drug development projects because of the two countries’ similar climate, environment, and even population characteristics.
Over $1 billion in potential annual trade
The volume of trade between Israel and Saudi Arabia cannot be accurately estimated because the authorities refrain from reporting it. However, to evaluate the investment potential Saudi Arabia has in the Israeli market, one can simply look at Israel’s trade with United Arab Emirates, which has consistently increased over the years: from $55 million before the Abraham Accords in 2020 to a peak of $1.5 billion in 2022, according to Israel’s Foreign Trade Administration data. In 2023, with the outbreak of war, there was a slight decrease in trade with the UAE to $1.3 billion.
A large component of Israel-Emirati trade is diamonds, with much of it actually coming from Saudi Arabia. In fact, a large percentage of exports to Saudi Arabia are made through the UAE by Israelis or contacts living in Abu Dhabi or Dubai who enter Saudi Arabia with a special visa or a foreign passport. “Bahrain was supposed to be Israel’s big springboard to Saudi Arabia, but unfortunately it didn’t happen,” says Mann. He estimates the potential for trade with the kingdom at up to $2 billion a year, of which $1 billion would be for security products and services, and the remainder for medicine and agriculture, including exports of fish, carrots, cucumbers, and dates, which are already exported to the Emirates in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Low investment in Israeli high-tech
As for the investment potential in Israeli high-tech, one can look at the Emirati and Qatari investments in the sector. According to IVC Research Center data, the UAE and Qatar, with which Israel also does not have a normalization agreement — and is even considered a hostile country — are investing huge sums in Israeli high-tech. According to the study, the UAE leads with a total investment of $1.03 billion in Israeli high-tech companies between 2020 and May 2025, while Qatar is second with $275 million in investments.
According to open and official data, Saudi Arabia has invested only $30 million in Israeli high-tech, and that too through foreign companies. One of these companies, it is estimated, is Doroni Aerospace, an electric aircraft company based in Florida, but managed by a group of Israelis headed by Doron Merdinger.
Saudi Arabia is one of the largest investors in Japanese fund SoftBank, with a commitment of at least $45 t, and in Blackstone, with $20 million raised from its Sovereign Wealth Fund. In addition, it is a major investor in Liberty Strategic Capital, established by of Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary in the first Trump administration, as well as in Affinity Partners, formed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Meanwhile, Israeli entrepreneurs are preserving their Saudi operations as much as possible, and trying to prevent their business from going to foreign providers. They are disappointed that Israel was left out of Trump’s presidential visit to the region. “There is no doubt that Trump is doing a phenomenal job promoting American business in the Middle East,” says Hecht. “If we were included in his trips, Israel could be a rising economic power in the Middle East, We’ve seen the kind of deals the American companies closed there. When there’s goodwill, you find ways to work together.”
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