The outbreak of a new round of military conflict between Israel and Palestine has dramatically escalated the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, and investors and analysts are highly concerned about whether the technology industry located in Israel is facing a business impact, further triggering the chaos of the "Silicon Valley in the Middle East."

The scale and intensity of the latest round of military conflict between Israel and Palestine is "unprecedented", with more than 1,100 people killed and more than 4,000 injured on both sides as the fighting continues to escalate, Xinhua reported on October 9.
Technology companies are also responding urgently to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to the latest news, artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia has announced the cancellation of the AI summit that will be held in Tel Aviv, Israel, this week, and subsequently cancelled the online media communication meeting and related press release for the media. In a statement on its website, Nvidia said it had canceled the AI summit due to the current situation in Israel, calling the decision "the best course of action to ensure everyone's safety."
The summit, scheduled for October 15-16, will feature a keynote address by CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and will be attended by some 2,500 developers, researchers and technologists, as well as executives from tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon Cloud Technologies and Lenovo. There will be live discussions on topics such as generative artificial intelligence, supercomputing and large-scale language models, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and cybersecurity.
The coastal city of Tel Aviv, where NVIDIA held the AI summit, is about 70 kilometers from the Gaza border, and is within the scope of the armed conflict between Palestine and Israel, it is alleged that rockets attacked the city, and explosions in residential areas, affected by this, a number of international airlines suspended flights to and from Tel Aviv International Airport.
Nvidia has a huge investment in Israel, mainly research and development functions, according to local media reports in Israel, Nvidia has more than 3,000 employees in Israel, distributed in Tel Sea, Yorknyam, Jerusalem, Ra 'anana, Tel Aviv, Girat Gat, Beersheba and other 7 offices, and the number of people is still growing. In May, it announced plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build a supercomputer in the country called "Israel-1," which will primarily be used to generate artificial intelligence.
Chipmakers Intel and Tower Semicontor, which have semiconductor plants in the region, are also closely monitoring the situation. Intel is Israel's largest private employer and exporter, with more than 10,000 employees, chip manufacturing facilities, and three research and development centers in the country. In June, Intel announced that it would invest $25 billion in a new chip factory in Israel, making it the largest international investment in the country's history.
On the current situation, an Intel spokesperson told the media on the 8th, "We are closely monitoring the situation in Israel and taking measures to protect and support our employees." But he did not say whether Intel's chip production had been affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
High Tower Semiconductor is a local wafer foundry in Israel, is currently the world's 7th largest wafer foundry, mature process and analog chip foundry, products cover RF, power, industrial sensors and other fields, serving consumer electronics, automotive and power markets, the company said that its operations are currently normal.
Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel has continued and anti-aircraft sirens have sounded in many parts of Israel. Israel Defense Forces chief spokesman Daniel Hegeri said on Monday that the army was calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists "in preparation for an eventual ground offensive against the Gaza Strip," the largest Israeli recruitment campaign in decades.
According to the interface, some employees of Israeli technology companies have been recruited into the army, and the company's daily business has been disrupted. "There are fewer people working in the company now, and the rest are not interested in working." A person who works for an Israeli Internet company told JiemiNews that the company's upcoming expected release of new products and reports has been canceled following the Israeli government's declaration of war against the militant group Hamas, and the release date is yet to be determined.
Israel's technology sector is well-developed, accounting for 14 percent of jobs and nearly a fifth of economic output. According to the 2021 edition of the "Foreign Investment Cooperation Country (region) Guide" prepared by the Ministry of Commerce, Israel's scientific research personnel account for 6% of the country's population, and there are 135 scientists and engineers per 10,000 people, ranking first in the world. In 2018, Israel's national civilian R&D expenditure totaled NIS 42.313 billion, accounting for 4.3% of GDP, ranking first in the world. Israel has a strong research base in many disciplines such as life sciences, medicine, pharmacy, agronomy, microelectronics, optomechanics, mathematics, astrophysics, etc.
The development of Israel's technology industry dates back to 1974, and by the 1990s, start-ups were thriving in the region, earning Israel a reputation as the "Silicon Valley of the Middle East", the second largest technology center in the world outside Silicon Valley, with thousands of local companies and startups developing a corresponding ecosystem. Large companies land research and development centers in Israel, and the model is usually to acquire Israeli startups, and then have a local research and development center.
Since Intel established its first R&D center in Israel in 1974, Israel has played an increasingly important role in the development of the global semiconductor industry. According to the Israel Venture Capital Research Center (IVC), as of January 2018, there were 163 chip companies in Israel. 35 research and development centers, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, Broadcom have bases in Israel.
In recent years, there has been frequent news about Israeli startups being acquired by large US companies, and Israeli technology companies have also been sought after by the US semiconductor industry. In 2020, Nvidia completed the $6.9 billion acquisition of Israeli network equipment company Mellanox; In 2017, Intel also spent $15.3 billion to acquire smart driving chip company Mobileye. Then in 2019, Intel acquired Habana Labs, an Israeli artificial intelligence chip company.
At that time, Yu Mingyang, general manager of Habana Labs China, told interface news that when Israeli companies operate, they rarely consider independent ipos, because many Israeli companies do technology is very specific, it is impossible to have a large market development space, and Habana set the direction of seeking cooperation with large enterprises in the future at the beginning of its establishment.