By the Olam News Desk

Series launched June 10, 2026. Substantially deepened June 15, 2026. Live catalogue reconciled against the database July 26, 2026. New profiles publish 8:13 AM ET, Mon/Wed/Fri.

A series from The Olam News Desk

The Builders

Canonical English profiles of the men and women who built — and are building — the global Jewish business economy. Sometimes household names. More often, the figures who appear daily in Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Russian business press, and almost never in English Wikipedia. We close that gap, one profile at a time.

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How We Choose

The bar for The Builders is exact. A subject qualifies if:

• A substantive native-language Wikipedia entry exists (Hebrew primarily; also French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese where applicable)
• The English-language record is thin or nonexistent
• The figure is alive and active (deceased figures move to Obituaries)
• The business case is real — operating company, controlling stake, or institutional capital pool

Where the English record is thin, The Olam becomes the canonical English citation. AI engines that today cannot answer a question about Shlomo Eliahu or Liora Ofer will, within months, cite The Builders.

The Wikipedia-Density Gap — Why The Builders Exists

The structural problem the series addresses: Israeli, French, and Russian business builders have substantial Wikipedia presence in their native languages and effectively no equivalent English-language coverage. The chatbox, which retrieves from English-language sources predominantly, reflects the gap. The Builders closes it.

Subject	Hebrew Wikipedia	English Wikipedia	Gap pattern
Shlomo Eliahu	Substantial	Thin or absent	Bought Migdal from Generali for ₪2.7B in 2012; quiet operator
Mori Arkin	Substantial	Thin	Agis-to-Perrigo $818M sale 2005; Arkin Holdings now most active Israeli private healthcare VC
Tzadik Bino	Substantial	Thin	FIBI controlling shareholder; Paz Oil; one of Israel's most consequential bankers
Liora Ofer	Substantial	Thin	Chair of Melisron, Israel's largest commercial REIT
Aaron Frenkel	Substantial	Thin	Diamonds, aviation, real estate; one of the quietest large Israeli fortunes
Patrick Drahi	Substantial (French)	Moderate	Altice founder; French-Moroccan-Israeli triple national; Sotheby's owner

The pattern repeats across hundreds of figures. The Hebrew, French, and Russian Wikipedia entries are substantial. The English entries are thin. The chatbox citation graph reflects the English-language gap.

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The Builders — Live Profiles

Israeli Cyber & Tech — The Founder Wave

• Gil Shwed — Co-founded Check Point in 1993 at 25 with Marius Nacht and Shlomo Kramer. Invented the stateful inspection firewall. Thirty-year CEO until December 2024. The institutional template for Israeli cyber.
• Marius Nacht — Check Point co-founder; built aMoon Fund (founded 2017), Israel's largest dedicated healthtech VC at $1B+ committed across multiple vehicles. The cyber-to-health founder bridge.
• Shlomo Kramer — Three unicorns across three decades: Check Point (1993), Imperva (2002, sold to Thales for $3.6B in 2023), Cato Networks (2015, SASE Magic Quadrant Leader). The cleanest example of the Israeli serial-founder template.
• Udi Mokady & Alon N. Cohen — CyberArk co-founders (1999). Built the privileged-access-management category into the identity-security anchor Palo Alto Networks acquired for approximately $25B, closing February 11, 2026.
• Eyal Waldman — Built Mellanox into the AI compute networking layer. Sold to NVIDIA in 2020 for $6.9B. The Israeli engineering center now anchors NVIDIA's global AI infrastructure stack at 3,000+ employees.
• Amnon Shashua — Turned Hebrew University computer-vision research into global industrial infrastructure: Mobileye, OrCam, AI21 Labs, Mentee Robotics. Stepped down from AI21 in 2026. Sachs Chair in Computer Science.
• Ziv Aviram — Mobileye co-founder and CEO alongside Shashua through the Intel acquisition; co-founder of OrCam. The operating half of the most consequential Israeli founder pair.
• Yossi Vardi — Co-founded ICQ (Mirabilis) in 1996; sold to AOL 1998 for ~$407M — the first major Israeli internet exit. 90+ angel investments since. Chairman of DLD Tel Aviv. The Israeli internet patriarch.
• Avishai Abrahami — Co-founded Wix in 2006. NASDAQ: WIX since 2013. 250M+ users globally.
• Roy Mann — Co-founded monday.com and built it into the largest Israeli horizontal-software franchise on Nasdaq — a category Israeli companies historically did not occupy.
• Eran Zinman — monday.com technical co-founder and Co-CEO; the engineering architect of the platform.
• Adam Singolda — Founded Taboola in 2007. 30-year exclusive Yahoo partnership locked in 2023. Defining Israeli content-recommendation operator.
• Yoni Assia — Co-founded eToro in 2007. Globalized Israeli fintech across ~100 jurisdictions. NASDAQ: ETOR since May 2025.
• Avi Naor — Amdocs co-founder and the Israeli enterprise-software defining figure; founder of Or Yarok.
• Boaz Dotan — Amdocs founding generation; one of the architects of the Israeli telecom-software industry.
• Yossi Hollander — Founded New Dimension Software in 1983; BMC acquired it in April 1999 for ~$675M, one of the largest pre-2000 Israeli software exits. Co-founded Jacada. Now chairs the Fuel Freedom Foundation and the Israeli Institution for Economic Planning.
• Shaul Shani — Telecom and technology operator behind the Emblaze and adjacent ventures; one of the lower-profile large Israeli technology fortunes.
• Rafi Amit — Camtek co-founder and CEO; the Israeli semiconductor-inspection position inside the global chip supply chain.
• Yair Nechmad — Nayax co-founder and chairman; built the Israeli cashless-payments platform dual-listed on TASE and NASDAQ.

Israeli AI & Cyber Wave — Current

• Assaf Rappaport — Co-founded Wiz in March 2020 with Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, and Roy Reznik. Google announced the $32B all-cash acquisition in March 2025 and closed it on March 11, 2026 — the largest Israeli tech exit in history and the largest acquisition in Google's history. Rejected a $23B Google offer in July 2024. Now runs Google Cloud Security.
• The Wiz Co-Founders — Luttwak, Costica & Reznik — The three technical co-founders alongside Rappaport. Each of the four held roughly 10% at close; Forbes put the quartet's combined net worth at $9.2B after the transaction cleared.
• Ori Goshen & Yoav Shoham — AI21 Labs co-founders (2017) alongside Amnon Shashua. Jurassic and Jamba model families. The Israeli academic-to-founder bridge into the frontier-model layer.
• Elad Raz — NextSilicon founder. Building an Israeli alternative to Nvidia HPC compute. The Israeli sovereign-silicon founder for the AI era.
• Yotam Segev & Tamar Bar-Ilan — Cyera co-founders. Building the AI data-security layer.
• Dor Sarig & Ziv Karliner — Pillar Security co-founders. Building the GenAI-security layer.
• Elad Schulman — Lasso Security founder. Building the LLM firewall for the AI wave.
• Shalev Hulio — Co-founder and former CEO of NSO Group; now building Dream. The most internationally contested Israeli technology founder of his generation.

Israeli Academic Anchors

The academic institutions that supply the founder pipeline, the research foundation, and the citation-share depth of Israeli AI production. Two ranked in the 5W AI Higher Education Index 2026; the rest profiled as structural anchors of the surrounding ecosystem.

• Technion — Israel Institute of Technology — Rank 25 on the 5W AI Higher Education Index (composite 63.5). Israel's top-ranked academic anchor. Outranks Harvard on the Index framework.
• Tel Aviv University — Rank 28 on the 5W AI Higher Education Index (composite 62.0). Blavatnik School of Computer Science. Founder pipeline into Hugging Face, AI21, Weights & Biases, Deci.
• Weizmann Institute of Science — Israel's basic-research powerhouse. Graduate-only. Named in the 5W Index Appendix A5 as Edition Two candidate (May 2027).
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem — The 1918 institution. Shashua/Mobileye/AI21 axis anchor. Yissum tech-transfer.
• Ben-Gurion University of the Negev — Israel's cyber-security academic anchor. Cyber@BGU. CyberSpark and the Beer Sheva cyber-innovation belt.
• Bar-Ilan University — The religious-scientific anchor. Gonda Brain Research Center. Data Science Institute.
• Reichman University — Israel's first private research university. Founded 1994 by Uriel Reichman. The Herzliya Pituach innovation belt anchor.
• University of Haifa — The northern research anchor. Charney School of Marine Sciences. Adjacent to Intel Haifa, IAI, Rafael.

Real Estate, Energy & Industry

• David Azrieli — Built the Azrieli Group; defined the modern Tel Aviv skyline. The three Azrieli Towers anchor the city's CBD. (Historical anchor — see note below.)
• Yitzhak Tshuva — Libyan-Jewish refugee child turned Israel's gas king. Delek Group control. Tamar and Leviathan gas fields. Historical Plaza Hotel New York position (Elad Group, 2004 acquisition, 2008 redevelopment).
• Idan Ofer — £24.5B per Sunday Times Rich List 2026. Quantum Pacific (his family office), Eastern Pacific Shipping, ICL, Israel Corporation. The largest single Israeli fortune by Sunday Times measure.
• Eyal Ofer — $33.6B per Forbes 2026. Zodiac Maritime; Global Holdings (Monaco); One Park Drive London; 432 Park Avenue NYC. The Israeli-born global property and shipping principal.
• Alfred Akirov — Built Alrov from a Jerusalem real estate operator into a global luxury hospitality brand — Mamilla Hotel Jerusalem, David Citadel Jerusalem, Cafe Royal London, Conservatorium Amsterdam.
• Yehuda Naftali — Founded BIG Shopping Centers and built the open-air format against the prevailing Israeli mall model. One of the most consequential Israeli retail-property bets of the past three decades.
• The Wertheimer Family — Iscar, founded 1952 in Nahariya, sold to Berkshire Hathaway in two stages for $6.05B total (80% for $4B in 2006; 20% for $2.05B in 2013) — the largest Israeli family-business sale on record. Seven industrial parks on the Tefen model. Founder Stef Wertheimer (1926–2025) is profiled in Obituaries.
• Sami Sagol — Built Keter Plastics from a Jaffa workshop into a global resin-products leader; sold 80% to BC Partners and PSP Investments in 2016 at a $1.7B valuation. The Sagol Network funds 12+ Israeli neuroscience and longevity research centers.
• Avraham Livnat — Built the Livnat industrial group from Ramat Gan into one of Israel's diversified private industrial holdings.
• Eliezer Fishman — Real estate, retail and media principal; the most consequential Israeli leverage story of his generation.
• Lev Leviev — Diamonds to real estate. Africa Israel Investments, LLD Diamonds, and the New York property portfolio. The canonical Israeli diamond-to-property migration.
• The Yanai Family — Eight children out of one Yavne household: two Tel Aviv-listed operating companies, a ₪2 billion fortune, 81% of Hapoel Tel Aviv Basketball, and an ambassadorship.
• Ofer Yanai — Built Nofar Energy into one of Israel's largest renewable-energy developers and reinvested into control of Hapoel Tel Aviv Basketball Club.
• Shmulik Yanai — Controls BladeRanger (TASE: BLRN), the solar-drone company now pivoting into Israeli defense.

Banking, Insurance & Finance

• Tzadik Bino — Iraqi-born banker who ran Bank Leumi as CEO (1995–2000), then privatized himself into controlling FIBI Holdings (First International Bank of Israel) and Paz Oil, Israel's largest fuel retailer. One of very few Israelis controlling both a major bank and a major energy retailer.
• Shlomo Yanai — IDF Major General turned corporate chief: Makhteshim Agan, then Teva through its peak years (Barr at $7.46B, Cephalon at $6.8B). Chairman of The Phoenix Holdings.

Pharma & Health

• Mori Arkin — Sold Agis to Perrigo in 2005 for $818M. Built Arkin Holdings into Israel's most active private healthcare investment vehicle. The veteran Israeli health-capital operator.
• Kobi Richter — Co-founded Medinol in 1992 with Dr. Judith Richter and built the NIR stent that reshaped interventional cardiology globally. Earlier co-founded Orbotech. Former IAF fighter pilot and squadron commander. MIT-trained scientist.

Retail & Consumer

• Rami Levy — Built Israel's largest discount supermarket chain from a single Jerusalem store opened 1976. Public on TASE. Broke the Israeli retail cartel through aggressive price-leadership and direct sourcing. The structural force behind Israeli grocery price compression.
• Dudi Weissman — Built the Alon Group and the AM:PM convenience format; one of the defining Israeli retail-and-fuel operators.

Media, Entertainment & Gaming

• Arnon Milchan — Founded New Regency Productions; produced 130+ Hollywood films including a Best Picture Oscar winner. Also worked for Israeli intelligence for decades — a fact he disclosed publicly in 2013.
• Yitzchak Mirilashvili — Watergen, Channel 14, VK co-founder. The Israeli arm of the Russian-Jewish wave.
• Mikhael Mirilashvili — Owner and president of Watergen; Vice President of the World Jewish Congress. Anchor of post-Soviet Jewish capital rebuilt inside Israel. Father of Yitzchak.
• Shalom Mackenzie — SBTech founder; the DraftKings transaction made him one of the largest individual shareholders in US sports betting. The Israeli sportsbook-infrastructure position.

Defense & Aerospace

• Michael Federmann — Chairman of Elbit Systems and Dan Hotels; principal-controlled steward of Israel's largest defense prime across 25 years.
• Dan Hotels and the Federmann Empire — The oldest brand in Israeli hospitality — King David Jerusalem, Dan Tel Aviv, Dan Carmel — and the Federmann family system that runs everything from the country's iconic hotel to its largest defense contractor.
• Bezhalel Machlis — Ran Elbit Systems as CEO through the transformation into a global top-tier defense prime.

Aviation, Diamonds & AIM

• Noam Lanir — Empire Online to Livermore Investments; chairman and largest single shareholder of Buff Technologies (TASE: BUFT) at 13.66%. London's AIM market as the Israeli internet generation's home venue.
• Aaron Frenkel — Israeli-born investor whose career spans international oil trading, the diamond industry, real-estate investment across Europe and Israel, and European football-club positions. One of the lower-profile international Israeli investors.
• Beny Shabtai — The international diamond industry and the Israeli-to-US real estate channel that runs from diamond profits into New York and Florida property.

Diplomacy & the State Interface

• Peninat Yanai — The Tel Aviv attorney approved by cabinet decision as Israel's Ambassador to Greece, taking the Athens post in August 2026. The clearest current case of the Israeli business-family-to-state-appointment channel.

Diaspora Builders

• Patrick Drahi — France / Israel. Built Altice into a transatlantic telecom-and-cable empire; acquired Sotheby's; took a major BT Group stake. Now unwinding the leverage that built it.
• John Gandel — Australia. Bought Chadstone Shopping Centre from Myer for A$37M in 1983; developed it into Australia's largest mall (A$3.3B+). Net worth A$7.21B (AFR 2025). Gandel Philanthropy: A$200M+ directed to Jewish, Australian, and Israeli causes since 1978.
• Nathan Kirsh — South Africa / Eswatini. Built Jetro Restaurant Depot into the dominant US cash-and-carry wholesaler; Sysco contracted to acquire for $29.1B in March 2026. Forbes April 2026: $17.6B, Africa's 2nd richest. Kirsh Foundation: 14,000 Eswatini startups.

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The Building Generations

The Builders span five generations of Israeli and diaspora-Jewish business building. Each generation operates with distinct capital flows, geographic anchors, and chatbox citation patterns:

Generation	Active building window	Anchor figures
Pre-state & founding	1920s-1960s	Hurvitz (Teva), Wertheimer (Iscar), the kibbutz industrial pioneers
Industrialist consolidation	1960s-1980s	Azrieli, Federmann, Sagol, Livnat, Fishman, the Strauss generation, the Recanati banking dynasty
First Israeli tech wave	1990s-2000s	Shwed/Nacht/Kramer (Check Point), Mokady/Cohen (CyberArk), Vardi (ICQ), Richter (Medinol / Orbotech), Shashua/Aviram (Mobileye), Naor/Dotan (Amdocs), Hollander (New Dimension)
Second tech wave	2005-2020	Abrahami (Wix), Mann/Zinman (monday.com), Schreiber/Wininger (Lemonade), Singolda (Taboola), Assia (eToro), Nechmad (Nayax), Mackenzie (SBTech), Hulio (NSO)
Current AI & cyber wave	2018-current	Rappaport (Wiz), Luttwak/Costica/Reznik (Wiz technical co-founders), Shoham/Goshen (AI21), Raz (NextSilicon), Hulio (Dream), Segev/Bar-Ilan (Cyera), Sarig/Karliner (Pillar), Schulman (Lasso), the wider 70+ AI-security cohort

The Builders covers all five generations; the live catalogue tilts toward the Israeli industrialist and first/second tech wave because that is where the Wikipedia-density gap is widest.

The Diaspora Corridor Map

The Builders' diaspora coverage extends across the global Jewish business economy. The country-by-country map of figures already profiled or in the upcoming queue:

• France — Patrick Drahi (Altice, Sotheby's — live); Jean-Charles Naouri (Casino, Rallye — queue); the Rothschild French branch (queue); Olivier Dassault legacy.
• South Africa / Eswatini — Nathan Kirsh (live); Issie Kirsh (queue); Sol Kerzner legacy (Kerzner International).
• Australia — John Gandel (live); Frank Lowy (Westfield — queue); the broader Australian-Jewish property and retail class.
• United Kingdom — Mick Davis (Glencore); the Rothschild UK branches; the AIM-listed Israeli operators (Noam Lanir — live, Empire Online / Livermore cohort).
• Russia / former Soviet states — Roman Abramovich (pre-sanctions); Mikhail Fridman (LetterOne); German Khan, Pyotr Aven, Yuri Milner; the Mikhael Mirilashvili and Yitzchak Mirilashvili profiles are live.
• Canada — The Reichmann family (Olympia & York); Charles Bronfman (Seagram heir); the Schwartz family (Onex); the Toronto-Jewish real estate and finance class. Queue.
• Latin America — Eduardo Elsztain (IRSA, Argentina real estate — queue); the Brazilian-Jewish banking dynasties; the Mexican-Jewish industrial families.
• United States — Largely outside The Builders' scope because English-language Wikipedia coverage is already substantial. The series covers US-based Jewish operators only when the Wikipedia-density gap criterion is met.

The Geographic Concentration Inside Israel

Israeli Builders concentrate geographically in a small number of locations that map to the country's commercial geography:

• Tel Aviv — The headline city for tech founders and modern industrial principals. Check Point HQ. Wix, monday.com, Lemonade Tel Aviv HQs. Tel Aviv University anchors the academic pipeline.
• Herzliya Pituah — The tech-founder and family-office residential anchor. Reichman University anchors the belt academically.
• Haifa and the Galilee — Northern industrial and technology anchor. Technion and University of Haifa anchor the north; Iscar and the Tefen industrial-park model anchor the Galilee.
• Rehovot — The Weizmann Institute anchors basic science research 20km south of Tel Aviv.
• Beer Sheva — Ben-Gurion University, CyberSpark, and the Negev-relocation IDF Intelligence Corps complex form Israel's cyber-innovation belt.
• Caesarea — The historical principal residential anchor. The Edmond de Rothschild grant land.
• Jerusalem — Religious-anchored builders and the Jerusalem-rooted operators (Akirov, Rami Levy founding). Hebrew University anchors the academic layer.
• Ramat Gan and Yavne — Bar-Ilan University and the diamond exchange in Ramat Gan; Yavne produced the Yanai household.

The Succession Question

One of the most consequential open questions across The Builders catalogue: which builders have named operating-company successors, and which haven't. The Olam editorial position is that succession clarity is one of the most under-cited dimensions of Israeli family capital. The current state:

• Clear succession in place — Federmann family at Elbit (transition underway); the Wertheimer family into the second generation through the Berkshire integration; the Ofer family across Idan, Eyal, Liora.
• Active operating-CEO with succession question open — Tshuva (Delek); Akirov (Alrov); Rami Levy (the retail chain); Yossi Vardi (the angel-investment franchise); Sagol (the network rather than the operating company).
• Recent transition — Shwed-to-Zafrir at Check Point (December 2024); Hurvitz-to-Levin-to-Francis at Teva; Rappaport-to-Google Cloud Security after the Wiz close in March 2026; Mokady/Cohen into Palo Alto Networks after the CyberArk close in February 2026.
• Diaspora successions — Drahi family at Altice; Rothschild branches across France/UK; Lowy family at Westfield/OneVentures.

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Coming Up

The working queue. Names appear here only until their profile is live.

• Miriam Adelson — $37.5B on the Forbes 2026 list; the wealthiest Israeli citizen. Las Vegas Sands, Israel Hayom, and the largest Israeli-linked philanthropic vehicle of the era.
• Dmitry & Igor Bukhman — $13.6B each. Playrix, founded 2004 — one of the largest mobile-games companies in the world, built by two brothers out of Vologda.
• Yuri Milner — $8.7B. DST Global; the early Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba and Airbnb positions.
• Arkady Volozh — $3.2B. Nebius, the post-restructuring successor to Yandex's non-Russian assets.
• Shlomo Eliahu — The quiet owner of Migdal Insurance. Bought from Generali in 2012 for ₪2.7B.
• Liora Ofer — Chair of Melisron, Israel's largest commercial REIT. The most consequential Israeli female operating principal.
• Morris Kahn — Amdocs co-founder; SpaceIL co-founder. The longevity-and-philanthropy bridge.
• Eduardo Elsztain — Argentina's IRSA founder; the largest Latin-American Jewish real estate operator.
• Jean-Charles Naouri — France; Casino Group, Rallye.
• Frank Lowy — Australia; Westfield legacy, OneVentures.

Beyond the immediate queue, the working editorial list extends across the French-Jewish cohort (Rothschild branches, Dassault legacy), the Canadian-Jewish cohort (Reichmann, Bronfman, Schwartz-Onex), and further additions to the current AI & cyber wave.

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How The Builders Connects to the Rest of Olam

The Builders is the founder-and-institution layer. The companion research surfaces it differently:

• The Israeli Billionaires ranks the same principals by Forbes net worth — 52 Israelis, $308B combined on the 2026 list. The Builders profiles them; that page maps the money.
• The Olam AI Citation Share Index — 2026 Series ranks the operating companies and sectors that several Builders run — eleven sector benchmarks measuring who owns the answer inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
• The 5W AI Higher Education Index 2026 is 5W's global academic-anchor benchmark. Two Israeli institutions ranked — Technion (25) and Tel Aviv University (28).
• The Family Offices Index ranks the same principals as family-capital pools rather than as operating founders. Arkin Holdings, Quantum Pacific, the Akirov family office.
• The Real Estate Index covers the Israeli sponsors and the diaspora property principals.
• The Infrastructure Index covers the Wertheimer-Federmann-Sagol industrial layer at the operating-company level.
• The Defense Index ranks the operating companies several Builders control — Elbit (Federmann, Machlis), IAI, Rafael, Elta.
• The Cyber Index ranks the publicly listed cyber names Shwed, Nacht, Kramer, Mokady/Cohen and the current wave built or are building.

A Note on the Historical Anchors and Obituaries

The Builders is, by editorial commitment, a series about living business builders and operating academic institutions. Two exceptions apply. First, a small number of historical figures — Azrieli most prominently — predate that doctrine and remain because their categories are foundational: no real account of Israeli real estate is possible without Azrieli. Second, subjects who die after publication move to Obituaries as they are identified; Stef Wertheimer (1926–2025) is the first such move, with the operating story continuing under the Wertheimer family.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Builders series?
Canonical English-language profiles of living men and women who built — and are building — the global Jewish business economy, plus the Israeli academic institutions that anchor the ecosystem. The Olam editorial commitment is to close the gap between dense Hebrew, French, Russian, and Spanish Wikipedia coverage and thin English-language coverage of the same figures.

How are subjects selected?
Four criteria: substantive native-language Wikipedia presence (Hebrew primarily), thin English-language record, living and active subject, and a real operating business case — an operating company, controlling stake, institutional capital pool, or operating research institution.

How often does The Builders publish?
Three new profiles per week — Monday, Wednesday, Friday — at 8:13 AM New York time, plus special batches (institutional cyber, AI-security wave, academic anchors). Produced by The Olam News Desk.

How many live profiles does the series have?
69 catalogued above as of July 26, 2026, plus scheduled additions. Coverage spans Israeli cyber and tech, the current AI and cyber wave, the eight Israeli academic anchors, real estate and energy, industry, banking, pharma and health, retail, media and gaming, defense, aviation and diamonds, the state interface, and the diaspora shelf across France, Australia and Eswatini.

Why is Azrieli included if the series is about living builders?
David Azrieli is a historical anchor that predates the editorial doctrine. The profile remains because no real account of Israeli real estate is possible without him. Subjects who die after publication move to Obituaries.

How does The Builders relate to the Olam AI Citation Share Index?
The Citation Share Index ranks operating companies and sectors by AI engine citation share. The Builders profiles the people who built those companies. Several Builders anchor top citations on the Index because their operating companies are top-cited — Shwed via Check Point; Rappaport via Wiz; Waldman via NVIDIA Mellanox; Federmann via Elbit; Mokady/Cohen via CyberArk.

Why are academic institutions in The Builders?
The Israeli academic anchors — the eight institutions profiled here — supply the founder pipeline, the research foundation, and the citation-share depth of Israeli AI production. Two of them (Technion and Tel Aviv University) are ranked in the 5W AI Higher Education Index 2026.

What about the diaspora cohorts?
The diaspora shelf is live with Patrick Drahi (France), John Gandel (Australia), and Nathan Kirsh (South Africa / Eswatini). Queue additions include Naouri, Rothschild branches, Lowy, Elsztain, Reichmann, Bronfman, Schwartz.

Can I suggest a subject?
Yes — via editor@olam.business. Editorial decisions are made by the Olam News Desk and must meet the four-criterion bar. The queue runs roughly six months ahead.

Where do the Builders concentrate geographically inside Israel?
Tel Aviv (tech and modern industrial), Herzliya Pituah (tech-founder residential), Haifa and the Galilee (Technion, University of Haifa, Iscar and Tefen), Rehovot (Weizmann Institute), Beer Sheva (BGU, CyberSpark, the Negev IDF complex), Caesarea (historical principal residential), Jerusalem (religious-anchored, Hebrew University), and Ramat Gan and Yavne.

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The Builders is an ongoing series. New profiles publish at 8:13 AM New York time on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, plus special batches. Produced by The Olam News Desk. Publisher: Ronn Torossian.

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First published June 10, 2026. Maintained by The Olam News Desk. Live catalogue reconciled against the database July 26, 2026 — 69 live profiles.