At a Calcalist and Migdal Future of Finance conference panel moderated by Amir Kurtz, executives from Gong, Citi Israel, Econergy and Qubit IL discussed how AI, currency moves and new technologies are reshaping business strategy. Gong co-founder and CPO Elon Reshef said labor costs abroad are now part of expansion decisions, noting that if an engineer in Ireland costs 20% less, that inevitably affects where a company grows.
Neal Corney, CEO of Citi Israel, said Israel’s economy has shown unusual resilience over the three years since October 7. He said that if he had told global headquarters there would be war for three years, while the shekel strengthened, the stock market surged and Israel closed deals worth tens of billions of dollars, “they would have thought I was an idiot.” He said Citi has been in Israel for 25 years, operates in nearly 100 countries, and opened its largest development center outside the United States here 12 years ago, where about 300 developers now work.
Reshef argued that AI is not replacing workers broadly, but is acting as a productivity boost, especially in narrow fields like sales. He said Gong’s revenues are in dollars while much of its spending is in shekels, lifting costs by about 20%, though the company can absorb it because it is growing by more than 50% a year. He added that Gong is still expanding in Israel and is hiring more than 100 people for its local development center.
Econergy founder and CEO Eyal Podhorzer said the global demand for electricity is entering a major cycle, expected to double over the next 20 years, driven in part by AI and data centers. He said the main hurdles are power-grid infrastructure and energy storage. Qubit IL CEO Tami Mazal Shahar said quantum computing is no longer remote, with governments and companies already storing data in anticipation that future quantum computers could break current encryption. Corney also pointed to AI, digital assets and tokenization as major opportunities, saying parts of Citi’s safe AI infrastructure and global payment technology are being developed in Israel.
