Latest / Israel Tech Daily / Kiryat Gat blast costs Intel about $600 million, Cyera eyes $20 billion, Paragon's founders regroup at Ribon

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Kiryat Gat blast costs Intel about $600 million, Cyera eyes $20 billion, Paragon's founders regroup at Ribon · Israel Tech Daily

• 0:00
  Noa: Intel says the explosion at its chip plant in Kiryat Gat will cost it about $600 million in revenue. On Friday, its stock had its worst day since 1974.
• 0:16
  Noa: Good morning, it's Sunday, the first of November. I'm Noa.
• 0:19
  Eli: And I'm Eli.
• 0:21
  Noa: This weekend, what the Kiryat Gat blast means for Intel, Cyera talks to investors at a $20 billion valuation, and two of Paragon's founders regroup at a new cyber company.
• 0:32
  Noa: Intel reported its third quarter on Thursday, and the Israeli plant came up early. Data Center Dynamics reports that chief executive Lip-Bu Tan called the explosion an unfortunate and tragic accident. Two workers were killed, another was seriously injured, and the plant was shut for about two weeks.
• 0:50
  Eli: On the twentieth of October we told you about a suspected gas leak there, days after the blast. Now we have Intel's own estimate. Chief financial officer David Zinsner said the hit is about $300 million in the fourth quarter, and likely about the same in the first quarter of next year. He called it an early assessment.
• 1:08
  Noa: Geektime adds that Intel also expects costs for written-off inventory, repairs and cleaning, that the damage to production costs could run into the first half of 2027, and that Intel can't yet say how much insurance will cover.
• 1:22
  Eli: The market reacted to more than the plant. The quarter itself was strong, Ynetnews reports, with revenue up twenty-one percent to about $16.5 billion. But Intel guided the fourth quarter to $15 to $16 billion, below the roughly $17.1 billion analysts expected, and pointed to a slowing PC market and rising memory prices as well as the explosion.
• 1:47
  Noa: On Friday the stock fell almost twenty-nine percent, Geektime reports, its worst day since 1974, wiping about $140 billion off Intel's value. Geektime notes the shares had roughly doubled over the past year.
• 2:02
  Eli: Before our next story, a word from our sponsor, SkillSim. A bad hire is expensive to discover months later. SkillSim puts candidates in a timed, interactive AI scenario with pasting switched off, so you see how they really think.
• 2:17
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• 2:23
  Noa: Back to the news. Cyera, the Tel Aviv data security company, has held early talks with investors about raising money at a $20 billion valuation. CTech and Globes both cite a report by The Information.
• 2:36
  Eli: That would be close to double its last price. Its most recent round, CTech reports, was $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, later extended by $400 million from Goldman Sachs Alternatives. CTech says Cyera has raised about $1.4 billion this year alone, and more than $2 billion in total.
• 2:57
  Noa: CTech stresses that the talks are at an early stage and may not lead to a round. Globes says Cyera is already Israel's second most valuable private company, behind VAST Data at $30 billion.
• 3:09
  Eli: It has also been buying. After its summer round, Globes notes, Cyera bought Israel's Oasis Security for about $1 billion in cash and stock, to help it track AI agents and other non-human identities inside companies.
• 3:23
  Noa: Next, Paragon. At the end of September we told you that Paragon co-founder Idan Nurick was leaving to start a new cyber company. Globes now reports that his fellow co-founder Ehud Schneorson, a former commander of Unit 8200, is leaving Paragon to join him. The company is called Ribon.
• 3:42
  Eli: Globes says Ribon lined up investment commitments before it was even formally incorporated. Industry estimates cited by Globes put them across three rounds, from investors including Sequoia Capital and Omri Casspi, at valuations from $100 million up to $1.2 billion.
• 4:00
  Noa: The third founder is a lieutenant colonel identified only as D, an investor now on leave ahead of his discharge from a military technology unit. Globes says Ribon is widely expected to work on digital sovereignty, helping companies and states keep control of the cyber tools and software they rely on.
• 4:18
  Eli: Schneorson will stay on as a consultant to Paragon. The company, now merged into the American firm REDLattice, is pursuing a Nasdaq listing through a merger with Bold Eagle Acquisition Corp. Paragon says Israel will remain its hub for research and development.
• 4:34
  Noa: Now October in numbers. Geektime counts only thirteen funding rounds by Israeli startups last month, for a total of $453 million. That is the lowest monthly total since October 2023, when the figure was $495 million.
• 4:52
  Eli: And it was concentrated. Nearly half came from two companies, Capitolis with $120 million and Upwind, whose $400 million round included $100 million in October. Only three rounds were for later-stage companies. The other ten were seed or Series A.
• 5:10
  Noa: Geektime suggests the holidays and the election may have led startups to hold back their announcements, and says it wouldn't be surprised to see more rounds in November.
• 5:18
  Eli: Exits went the other way. Geektime counted ten acquisitions and mergers in October, led by Intel's $2.3 billion purchase of Classiq. They also include Salesforce buying Loops, and Freshworks buying both Torii and Robusta within two weeks.
• 5:34
  Noa: Finally, a rescue for REE Automotive. Globes reports that the Tel Aviv District Court has approved a debt arrangement for the company, which owes about fifty-one million shekels.
• 5:45
  Eli: It is a long way down. REE went public through a SPAC merger five years ago at a valuation of $3.1 billion. Its shares have since left Nasdaq for over-the-counter trading. It now employs thirty-one people in Israel, down from two hundred and seventy, and has burned through more than $1 billion since it was founded.
• 6:06
  Noa: Under the plan, two investors put in $2 million each, and about twenty million shekels of debt turns into shares. Tax authorities and employees are to be paid in full. Suppliers are expected to recover about twenty-one percent of their claims.
• 6:20
  Eli: Now the quick round-up.
• 6:21
  Noa: Geektime reports that plnty, a three-person Israeli startup building a shared workspace for teams that make visual content with AI, is out of stealth with investment from Base44 founder Maor Shlomo and Fiverr founder Micha Kaufman. Its two founders say they built it with Claude Code, without writing code themselves.
• 6:40
  Eli: Refresh Miami, citing the South Florida Business Journal, reports that Israeli biotech company Pluri will take fifty percent of Florida's Zeo ScientifiX, in exchange for rights to manufacturing technology and expertise. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
• 6:57
  Noa: And as Intel fell on Friday, Ynetnews reports that Elbit Systems was down about three and a half percent in New York trading and Check Point almost three percent, while monday.com rose about one and a half percent.
• 7:11
  Eli: What to watch: when Intel gets Kiryat Gat fully back in production. On the call, its finance chief said Intel hoped to restart by the end of the week and was checking which wafers could be used and which would be scrapped. That answer will shape how big the hit in the first quarter really is.
• 7:28
  Noa: This episode was brought to you by SkillSim. If you manage a sales or customer support team and want to hear how a candidate handles a tough customer before you make the offer, check them out at skillsim.co.
• 7:40
  Eli: Follow Israel Tech Daily wherever you get your podcasts, and read more at startuptofollow.com.
• 7:45
  Noa: See you tomorrow morning.