Next Vision chairman and co-founder Chen Golan says the company never imagined the scale of its success. In an interview on Globes’ “Market Forces” podcast, he said the drone and UAV camera maker has grown from a 400 million shekel listing in 2021 into one of the 15 most valuable public companies in Tel Aviv, with a market value nearing 26 billion shekels. The shares have risen more than 5,600% since the IPO, even after a 20% drop in the past three months, and founders and early investors have already sold about 1.8 billion shekels of stock.
Next Vision, founded in 2009 by Golan, CEO Michael Grossman and CTO Boris Kipnis, makes stabilized cameras for moving platforms, mainly drones and UAVs. Its offices in Ra’anana combine an hi-tech workplace with a tightly run production line, where cameras are assembled, individually tested, packed and shipped. The company says demand is surging, with orders reaching 289 million dollars about a month ago and another 19 million dollars in contracts announced since then. Output has doubled from 1,500 cameras a month at the start of the year to 3,000, and Golan said the goal is more than 5,000 by year-end.
To support that growth, Next Vision is hiring three to five workers a week and has cut training time through an internal academy from two months to two and a half weeks. Golan said the company doubled headcount in the past year, from 100 to more than 220 employees. He said the hardest period came when the startup ran out of cash and had to meet payroll, and he acknowledged earlier takeover offers, but said the founders chose the right path. He also said the company is now focused on M&A, has hired an executive to lead it, and could buy firms worth more than 1 billion dollars if the right target appears.
Golan said the business remains only lightly exposed to the weaker dollar because shekel costs are just 10% to 15% of expenses. He added that 2025 Israeli defense exports topped 19 billion dollars, with sensors and optronics making up 22% and drones another 4%, meaning about a quarter of the sector overlaps with Next Vision’s field. The company plans production capacity in Europe by the end of the third quarter, and later possibly in the United States and India. Golan said the firm’s edge lies in staying “like Sayeret Matkal,” fast and lean, while using Israeli know-how to counter battlefield drone threats.
