Tower Semiconductor, the analog chip manufacturer from Migdal HaEmek, briefly made history this week by becoming Israel’s largest company by market value, excluding Palo Alto Networks. Its valuation reached $37.7 billion as global chip stocks benefited from massive AI-related infrastructure spending, and Tower itself has exposure to that market. On Monday in New York, the stock rose about 10%, pushing Tower ahead of Bank Leumi, Elbit Systems and Teva in market cap, after a nearly 900% gain over five years.
The breakthrough did not last long. Less than 24 hours later, the global semiconductor selloff pulled Tower back below those companies again. That prompted a look at what happened to the 10 Israeli stocks that became the country’s most valuable over the past decade, and the pattern was discouraging. In most cases, the leaders lost tens of percent of their value afterward, on average about half, and for most of them the decline started within less than a year of reaching the top.
The list begins with Teva, once Israel’s iconic “people’s stock,” which peaked in the mid-2010s at more than 250 billion shekels, or over $60 billion, before nearly collapsing after its disastrous acquisition of Actavis. Teva is now in a recovery phase and has risen 250% in the past three years, though it remains far from its former peak. Check Point became Israel’s largest company in August 2017 at $17.7 billion, but has risen only 13% since then. SolarEdge, Wix, Novocure, Nice, SentinelOne and Mobileye all later took turns at the top, then suffered steep declines ranging from 70% to 94%.
More recently, Bank Leumi reached first place in February 2025 at $19.8 billion and has since gained 48%, while Elbit Systems took the lead in March at $40 billion and has since lost 12%. The article says the lesson is not necessarily to avoid Tower, but to remember that companies usually reach first place only after huge stock gains and a major improvement, or at least a convincing growth story. Roee Cohen, head of equity investments at Migdal Mutual Funds, said Tower is a key beneficiary of the AI boom because of its advanced analog chip capabilities and leadership in silicon photonics, which uses light instead of electrical signals in chip production.
