Latest / Israel Tech Daily / Nice cuts 500 jobs, Windward buys Azimut, and Irregular's CEO blames human error for AI test escapes

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Nice cuts 500 jobs, Windward buys Azimut, and Irregular's CEO blames human error for AI test escapes · Israel Tech Daily

• 0:00
  Noa: Nice, one of Israel's biggest software companies, is cutting about 500 jobs worldwide, a day before it reports its results. On Tuesday, its shares fell about seven percent in Tel Aviv.
• 0:18
  Noa: Good morning, it's Wednesday, the fourth of November. I'm Noa.
• 0:21
  Eli: And I'm Eli.
• 0:23
  Noa: Today, the job cuts at Nice, the maritime intelligence company Windward buys a ship-spotting camera business, and the head of Irregular says human error let AI models out of his company's tests.
• 0:35
  Noa: Globes reports that Nice will lay off about 500 employees around the world, about five percent of its workforce. The company says it is changing how it organizes and invests, to serve customers deploying customer experience AI at enterprise scale. It calls these difficult decisions involving valued colleagues.
• 0:54
  Eli: For scale, Globes says Nice's last annual report counted 9,626 employees at the end of last year. CTech puts the total at about ten thousand, with about a thousand in Israel, and says it's not yet clear whether the Israeli staff will be hit at the same rate.
• 1:10
  Noa: And about three months ago, chief executive Scott Russell told Calcalist there were no plans to cut jobs in Israel, where the work is mostly research and development.
• 1:20
  Eli: Investors didn't cheer. Globes says the stock fell about seven percent in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, the biggest drop on the TA-35 index. CTech says it fell about five percent on Nasdaq.
• 1:33
  Noa: CTech's reading is that investors may want much deeper changes. Nice sells software that helps customer service teams do more with fewer people, and the fear is that customers will swap it for simpler AI tools they build themselves. At the height of the pandemic, Nice was worth close to $20 billion. Today, CTech says, it's worth about $6 billion.
• 1:54
  Eli: A little over a year ago, it bought the German company Cognigy, which makes AI agents for customer service, for $1 billion. CTech also says Nice is looking for a buyer for its Actimize financial crime division, valued at about $2 billion, though no deal is final.
• 2:10
  Noa: Nice is on track for more than $3 billion in revenue this year, a first, but CTech expects earnings per share to fall by nearly a dollar, to about $11.
• 2:20
  Noa: When a big employer cuts jobs, hiring managers elsewhere suddenly face far more applications. That's where our sponsor, SkillSim, comes in. Each candidate works through a short AI scenario, and you get the full transcript plus an AI score, so the first screen depends less on gut feeling and takes less time to review. Try it free at skillsim.co.
• 2:42
  Eli: Back to the news. Windward, an Israeli-registered maritime intelligence company, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Azimut.ai, which identifies ships using cameras on the coast and on board vessels. No price was given.
• 2:56
  Noa: Windward says it's its first step into sensors of its own. Cameras at ports and chokepoints will identify and fingerprint vessels in real time, and each sighting is matched with ownership, sanctions and cargo data. Digital Ship adds that this includes ships that go dark to avoid detection. Windward says customers get vessel analytics only, no raw images or video, and the system is not used to identify people.
• 3:21
  Eli: Chief executive Ami Daniel says Azimut has been building this since 2020, and calls the deal the first step toward full visibility at sea.
• 3:30
  Noa: The deal came with a side story. Digital Ship reports that a firm called Varuna Project asked a hotel on the Danish island of Bornholm to host a camera facing Baltic shipping, for a monthly fee. According to the Danish broadcaster TV 2, the hotel said no and contacted Danish police intelligence.
• 3:48
  Eli: Windward has now confirmed to Digital Ship that Varuna was the part of Azimut that sourced and installed the equipment, so it now belongs to Windward. Its media contact says the raw footage stays with the company, as an extra data source for its own analysis. Digital Ship points out that shipowners still have no say in how sightings of their vessels are used.
• 4:10
  Noa: Now to AI safety. Dan Lahav, the chief executive of the Israeli AI security lab Irregular, says human error is behind the incidents in which AI models got out of his company's test environments. He was speaking at Bloomberg's tech conference in London on Tuesday.
• 4:27
  Eli: Some background. Over the summer, Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta each disclosed that models tested in Irregular's environments had reached the public internet, and Google told the Wall Street Journal about a similar case, according to PYMNTS. OpenAI blamed a misconfiguration by Irregular.
• 4:44
  Noa: According to Bloomberg, Lahav said security controls that should have been in place during the tests were not set up correctly, and pointed to human error and time pressure. PYMNTS quotes him saying the fix was actually very straightforward, and reports that he said the models did not get around any safeguards.
• 5:02
  Eli: RuntimeWire notes that he added few details to what Irregular said in August, when it blamed human oversight. Irregular was founded in 2023 by Lahav and Omer Nevo. In September, CTech reported it was raising more than $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Thrive Capital and Greenoaks, in a round that was not yet final.
• 5:24
  Noa: Last in our top stories, a ranking that says something about the mood in Israeli tech. The Jerusalem Post reports that Dun and Bradstreet published its list of the best tech companies to work for on Tuesday. Nvidia Israel came first, Island was second in its first year on the list, and Microsoft's Israeli research and development center was third.
• 5:44
  Eli: The big faller was monday.com, down from third place to thirty-fifth. Taboola dropped from seventeenth to thirtieth. Across the survey, satisfaction with opportunities for junior staff fell to 73 percent, from 85 percent in 2023. On the other hand, 88 percent said layoffs were handled transparently and fairly, up from 77 percent last year.
• 6:09
  Noa: There's a pay gap too. 80 percent of employees at AI startups called their pay competitive, compared with 56 percent at traditional and large companies.
• 6:18
  Noa: Now the quick round-up.
• 6:19
  Eli: On Monday we told you Israel Aerospace Industries was set to win an Indian deal to turn six Boeing 767 airliners into refueling tankers. Aerospace Global News now reports that India's Ministry of Defence says final details are being discussed, in a deal worth about $900 million, with first deliveries targeted for 2030.
• 6:41
  Noa: Israel's job market is getting more crowded. A Jobnet and Civi AI index, reported by the Jerusalem Post, shows recruiter activity up about 21 percent in October from September, while the number of CVs sent rose about 27 percent.
• 6:56
  Eli: Globes, citing the Australian broadcaster SBS, reports that Australia is weighing Iron Dome interceptors alongside Patriot systems. These would be the American-built versions, made by R2S, the joint company of Raytheon and Rafael.
• 7:12
  Noa: And Lemonade, the Israeli digital insurance company, reports third-quarter results on Thursday. Globes says the stock is at its lowest in more than a year and has lost more than half its value since January.
• 7:25
  Eli: What to watch: Nice reports its quarterly results today. Look for whether it says how many of the 500 cuts fall in Israel, and for any news on the sale of Actimize, which would change the shape of the company.
• 7:37
  Noa: This episode was brought to you by SkillSim. Running a company of twelve and making every hire yourself? Let applicants show you, in their own words and against the clock, how they'd tackle a problem your business faces. Check them out at skillsim.co.
• 7:52
  Eli: Follow Israel Tech Daily in your podcast app, and read more at startuptofollow.com.
• 7:58
  Noa: See you tomorrow morning.