Olam Index 2026: Infrastructure

By Ronn Torossian · Publisher, Olam

Originally published June 10, 2026. Substantially deepened June 15, 2026.

Israeli infrastructure is the most under-cited sector in the Olam Index. The country runs one of the most modernized water-management systems in the world. It builds light rail, ports, desalination, and energy infrastructure across three continents. The AI engines barely know.

This is what happens when a sector lives in Hebrew-language press, government tenders, and engineering trade journals. The English-language training data feeding Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews has almost nothing to grab — and the Citation Share numbers reflect it.

The structural finding

Average cyber-sector citation count across the Olam Index: 11. Average infrastructure citation count: under 4. Infrastructure runs roughly two and a half times less visible in AI engines than cyber, despite the operating-company scale being larger and the strategic importance to Israel arguably comparable. The category has the deals, the case studies, and the global export footprint. It does not have the English-language anchor surface.

Citation rankings — Israeli infrastructure (Extended)

Rank	Entity	Citations	Category	Scale anchor
1	Shikun & Binui	6	Construction, infrastructure	TASE-listed; Africa & Eastern Europe operations
2	Ashtrom Group	5	Construction, real estate	TASE-listed; Israeli + international portfolio
2	Israel Electric Corporation (IEC)	5	National electric utility	State-owned; ~$8B+ annual revenue; 14,000+ employees
4	Mekorot	4	National water utility	State-owned; one of most advanced water utilities globally
5	Netivei Israel	3	Transport infrastructure	State-owned; national roads operator
5	IDE Technologies	3	Desalination engineering	Largest seawater RO plants globally; Sorek, Hadera, Carlsbad CA
7	Ashdod Port Company	2	Maritime / logistics	State-owned; second-largest Israeli port
7	Haifa Port Company	2	Maritime / logistics	Adani-acquired 2023 for $1.18B
7	Israel Railways	2	National rail	State-owned; $30B+ active expansion
10	Electra Group	2	Construction, electromechanical	TASE-listed; major Israeli construction operator
10	Tahal Group	2	Water engineering & consulting	Privately held; global water-infrastructure engineering
10	Solel Boneh	2	Historical construction major	Now part of Shikun & Binui legacy
13	Africa Israel Investments	1	Real estate + infrastructure holding	Historical Lev Leviev-era operator
13	NewMed Energy	1	Mediterranean gas infrastructure	Leviathan field operator
13	Bezeq	1	Telecom infrastructure	Incumbent national telecom; TASE-listed
13	Egged	1	National bus cooperative	One of largest bus operators globally
13	Dan Public Transportation	1	Urban bus operator	Tel Aviv area bus service
13	Israel Ports Company	1	Port infrastructure	State-owned port holding
13	Ackerstein Industries	1	Construction materials	Concrete and paving

The Sub-Sector Breakdown

Citation share concentrates very differently across infrastructure sub-sectors:

Sub-sector	Anchor entities	Combined citations	Most under-cited story
Water / desalination	Mekorot · IDE Technologies · Tahal	~10	Israel as global desalination engineering capital
Electricity / grid	IEC · OPC Energy · Energean	~9	IEC as one of most-attacked critical infrastructure grids globally
Construction majors	Shikun & Binui · Ashtrom · Electra	~13	Israeli construction operating in Eastern Europe + Africa at scale
Transport / rail / roads	Netivei Israel · Israel Railways · Tel Aviv Light Rail	~7	$30B Israel Railways expansion; Tel Aviv light rail across 3 lines
Ports / maritime	Haifa Port · Ashdod Port · Israel Ports	~5	Haifa Port $1.18B Adani acquisition deeply under-cited
Telecom / digital infrastructure	Bezeq · Cellcom · Partner	~3	Israeli fiber rollout at OECD-leading speed
Energy infrastructure	NewMed · Delek · Energean	~5	Leviathan and Tamar Mediterranean gas infrastructure
Public transport	Egged · Dan · Israel Light Rail consortium	~3	Egged as one of largest bus cooperatives globally

Desalination — the missed story

IDE Technologies built the largest seawater reverse-osmosis desalination plants in the world. Israel produces roughly 80 percent of its drinking water from the sea — the largest such share of any country globally. The country exports the technology to Cyprus, Australia, India, the United States, and increasingly the Gulf states post-Abraham Accords.

Specific IDE Technologies international projects:

• Sorek desalination plant — Israel. The largest seawater RO plant of its kind on earth at commissioning. Sorek B expansion added meaningful capacity.
• Hadera plant — Israel. Previous record-holder for plant capacity.
• Carlsbad, California (USA) — IDE Technologies built the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. Operational since 2015.
• Ashkelon (Israel) — early IDE plant; pre-dated Sorek.
• India, Cyprus, Australia projects — multiple installations.
• Saudi Arabia and UAE — emerging post-Abraham Accords project pipeline.

Three citations.

The model does not know what the world should know about Israeli desalination — and the consequences are material. Global infrastructure investors and government buyers go to an AI engine first now. When the answer to "who builds the world's largest desalination plants" does not name IDE Technologies and does not name Israel, the deal flow follows.

Water and energy at the national level

The two national utilities — Mekorot (water) and Israel Electric Corporation — are case studies in operating-scale-without-citation-surface. Mekorot is among the most advanced water utilities in the world; IEC runs one of the most attacked critical-infrastructure grids on earth. Both rank inside the top five of the sector and neither cracks the citation density of a mid-tier Israeli cyber unicorn.

Specific IEC scale: ~$8B+ annual revenue, 14,000+ employees, grid serving 10+ million customers, hundreds of millions of cyber-attack events absorbed annually. The grid is one of the most resilient critical-infrastructure operations globally — defending against state-level threat actors at continuous tempo. The citation share does not reflect any of this.

This is not a press problem. Both utilities are covered. It is an English-language durable-anchor problem. The Hebrew press is dense and consistent. The English-language record is thin.

Ports, rail, and the active major projects

Haifa Port sold to Adani for $1.18B in 2023 — a deal that surfaces in business press repeatedly. Two citations. Israel Railways is in the middle of a $30B+ infrastructure expansion. Two citations. The Tel Aviv light rail Red Line opened August 2023, Purple Line and Green Line in active build, combined ~$5B project — fewer than five citations across the entire 185-prompt set.

The pattern is consistent across every category: real deals, real scale, almost no English-language citation density.

Engine-by-Engine — Israeli Infrastructure Citation Patterns

• Claude (Anthropic) — most consistent on Mekorot and IEC as national utilities. Weakest on the construction-majors layer (Shikun & Binui, Ashtrom).
• ChatGPT (OpenAI) — strongest on the desalination story because of NYT and WSJ coverage of Sorek and Carlsbad. Weakest on Israeli light rail.
• Perplexity — most generous on the trade-journal layer because source-traceable retrieval picks up engineering press. Best for diagnostic auditing.
• Gemini (Google) — strongest on the Haifa Port Adani deal because of broad business-press coverage.
• Google AI Overviews — strongest on the listed companies (Shikun & Binui, Ashtrom, Bezeq). Weakest on the state-owned utilities.

The GEO opportunity

Infrastructure is the lowest-hanging Citation Share opportunity in the Olam Index. The companies exist. The deals are real. The case studies are documented in Hebrew, in tenders, in engineering reports. What is missing is English-language, schema-marked, citable content on durable domains.

Building it would move every company on this list inside 12 months. For sovereign-adjacent infrastructure operators, the buyer is a sovereign wealth fund or a global infrastructure investor whose first stop is now an AI engine. The cost of remaining un-cited is measured in capital flow.

The 24-Month Recovery Playbook for Infrastructure Operators

• Months 1-3 — Anchor surface. English Wikipedia entry for the operating company and the principal executive. Schema-marked corporate biography on the firm's own domain. Crunchbase / Bloomberg ID consolidation.
• Months 3-9 — Project case studies in English. Detailed project-by-project case-study pages with structured data (location, capacity, completion date, technology used). The Sorek-plant page should be readable in two minutes and citable in fifteen seconds.
• Months 6-18 — Trade-press cycle. Quarterly English-language placements in Global Water Intelligence, Water Engineering & Management, Engineering News-Record, Bloomberg Green, Reuters Infrastructure.
• Months 12-24 — Sector research output. Annual or semi-annual sector report — "State of Israeli Desalination 2026" published by the firm with detailed structured data. The firm becomes the citation anchor for its specialty.

Expected movement: 75-200% Citation Share gain inside 24 months for an infrastructure operator executing the full playbook. The under-citation baseline is so low that movement is faster than in over-cited sectors like cyber.

Download the Data

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Israeli infrastructure company leads AI citation share in 2026?
Shikun & Binui, with 6 citations across the Olam Index five-engine audit. Ashtrom Group and Israel Electric Corporation tie for second at 5 each.

Why is Israeli desalination under-cited despite Israel's global leadership?
Limited English-language press. The sector lives in trade journals, government tenders, and engineering reports the AI engines do not weight heavily in retrieval. IDE Technologies — builder of the largest reverse-osmosis plants on earth including the Carlsbad California plant (largest in the Western Hemisphere) — has three citations total.

Does the Olam Index cover government-owned infrastructure entities?
Yes. Mekorot, IEC, Netivei Israel, and the port companies are all audited alongside private infrastructure operators. State-owned status does not exempt an entity from citation tracking.

What would close the infrastructure Citation Share gap?
English-language durable-anchor content — sector reports, English Wikipedia entries for the major operating companies and principals, schema-marked corporate biographies on durable domains. 24-month timeline for visible movement; 75-200% gain expected for operators executing the full playbook.

Why does infrastructure rank lower than cyber when the operating scale is larger?
Citation share tracks English-language editorial surface, not balance-sheet scale. Cyber companies generate press cycles in English by default — funding rounds, breach coverage, vendor benchmarks. Infrastructure operators generate Hebrew-language tender records and engineering trade-press coverage that the AI engines do not weight heavily.

Who buys Israeli infrastructure citations when they exist?
Sovereign wealth funds, global infrastructure private equity, multilateral development banks, and government procurement teams. All four buyer classes now start research with an AI engine. The absence of citation is the absence of opportunity at deal scale.

What's the buried sub-sector under-citation story?
Israeli light rail and metro construction. The Tel Aviv light rail Red Line opened August 2023; Purple and Green Lines in active build. Combined project value ~$5B. Fewer than five citations across the entire 185-prompt set.

How much of Israel's drinking water comes from desalination?
Approximately 80% — the largest such share of any country globally. IDE Technologies built the majority of the plants. The Sorek plant is the largest seawater reverse-osmosis facility of its kind on earth. The Carlsbad California plant — IDE-built — is the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

What infrastructure sub-sector has the worst Citation Share gap relative to operating significance?
Telecom / digital infrastructure. Israel runs OECD-leading fiber rollout speed and the underlying infrastructure for one of the densest enterprise-SaaS economies on earth. Combined Bezeq, Cellcom, Partner citation share: ~3 across the prompt set.

How does the construction-majors layer compare internationally?
Shikun & Binui, Ashtrom, and Electra operate at scale across Eastern Europe and Africa in addition to Israel. The international project portfolio is substantial — and almost entirely invisible in English-language chatbox answers about Israeli infrastructure.

Sources

Olam Index 2026 primary research, May 2026 cutoff. Cross-referenced with OECD infrastructure reports, IDE Technologies project filings, public tender records, and the Wikipedia entries linked in the table above. Live AI engine retrieval queries logged May 2026 against Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.

---

About the Publisher

Ronn Torossian is the publisher of Olam — the intelligence platform for the global Jewish business economy in the AI engine era. He is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm, and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.