Drawing back the Sand Curtain, building Silicon Beach

We want to broaden everyone’s horizons, including our own. We see Israel and the UAE not as destinations, but as gateways.

The creation of Silicon Beach, a Middle East high-tech ecosystem stretching from the shores of Tel Aviv to the Persian Gulf, took a giant step forward this week with the licensing of OurCrowd Arabia by the Abu Dhabi Global Market, the UAE’s financial regulator.

Bounded on the East and West by two emerging entrepreneurial, financial and high-tech superpowers – the UAE and Israel – the Middle East is fast developing into the world’s third major business hub alongside the US and China.

Political divisions and conflict have prevented the region from uniting its vast population, cultures and talent. Until now.

Just a year after the signing of the Abraham Accords, the collapse of the Sand Curtain that once divided Israel’s booming high-tech economy from its natural regional partners is already powering bilateral trade and creating new business opportunities.

We are witnessing history – and we have been given a unique opportunity help determine how that history is made.

OurCrowd Arabia, a wholly owned subsidiary of OurCrowd, headquartered in Jerusalem, Israel, is now fully regulated and approved by ADGM to operate in the UAE. It is the first Israeli VC to be licensed by the Emirati authorities. This is a development that was impossible a little more than a year ago.

A dozen of our portfolio companies are already active on the ground in the UAE, establishing operations and business opportunities with local Emirati and international partners. We are offering accredited investors on the OurCrowd platform the first opportunity to invest in a fund based in the UAE, with more opportunities set to follow shortly.

Trade between the UAE and Israel is booming. A year ago, I predicted it would reach $10 billion in a short time. My partner, Dr. Sabah al-Binali, Senior Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of OurCrowd Arabia, chastised me at the time for thinking so small, forecasting $100 billion. Recently, Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri, the UAE minister of economy, noting that annual trade had exceeded $600 million in the first year, predicted it would reach one trillion dollars over the next decade.

Whichever of us is correct, the widespread optimism about UAE-Israel relations indicates that this breakthrough – as with Bahrain and Morocco – is permanent. The Sand Curtain has fallen and, just as in Europe when the Iron Curtain fell, there is no going back.

The mood of the moment, of this era, is velocity. Innovation has never moved so fast. Digital transformation changed all of our lives during the pandemic, as we witnessed with the rapid growth of work from home, of telemedicine, of remote education, and of e-commerce. So it is little wonder that the fall of the Sand Curtain which had separated our two countries has unleashed this enormous exuberance, excitement and realization of joint interests.

OurCrowd has come to the UAE for good – in both senses of the word. We are here for the long term, and we have come to help develop the kinds of tech-based businesses that will not only create prosperity for their founders and good returns for investors, but will also tackle global challenges in health, water, food security, climate and agriculture.

We admire Emirati entrepreneurship and expertise in so many critical areas, from smart cities, to clean energy, to smart transportation, to agriculture and logistics.

We want to create partnerships that help all of us to develop more expertise and build better businesses in those areas, as well as encouraging our Emirati colleagues to help us expand and diversify the offerings at which Israel excels, from cybersecurity, to medical technology, to semiconductors and artificial intelligence. We want to share the benefits of Israelis’ appetite to take risks, to improvise, to move fast and solve critical challenges, to invest in far-sighted startups and encourage them to grow.

We are starting to set up an incubator in the UAE. We are looking at doing research and development in the UAE, especially around the critical area of artificial intelligence.

We want to broaden everyone’s horizons, including our own. We see Israel and the UAE not as destinations, but as gateways. Through the UAE, Israeli startups can expand into the wider Middle East, Asia and Africa. Through Israel, we can help Emirati startups gain traction in the US and Europe. Together, we can help each other grow across the globe.

We intend to be good long-term partners with our friends in the Gulf, working in unison to create great things for our countries, for the region, and for humanity. ?

The sky’s the limit.