A record 92 technology companies and more than 350 players took part in the fifth straight year of Israel’s high-tech chess championship, The Tech Gambit 2026. The final was held at Intuit’s offices, co-sponsored with Zscaler, and Apple won the title for the second year in a row, finishing ahead of Matrix in second place and Nvidia in third.
The competition was founded by Alon Mindlin, an international chess master who recently made headlines after beating former world champion Magnus Carlsen in an online game. Mindlin leads TechMate, a chess initiative for the Israeli tech community that has grown in recent years into a network of thousands of people.
In a ynet studio discussion, Mindlin said he created the project after seeing a strong connection between chess and tech. “I identified a similarity between the world of chess and the world of high-tech, and set up a project that connects companies through tournaments, courses and chess events,” he said. “The idea was to get companies competing on the board in a big event.”
Participants said the appeal lies in the same skills demanded by both fields: planning, creativity, discipline and working under pressure. Nvidia hardware engineer Alon Hefner said the competition is driven first by love of the game, while SentinelOne employee Moshe Friedland said more workers are eager to compete rather than only play casually on phones or online. Ouri Greenbaum, CEO of TipRanks, said the company began sponsoring Hikaru Nakamura a year ago after moving from football sponsorship to chess and was surprised by the size of the audience around the game and its influencers.
Nakamura, the world No. 3 and a five-time U.S. champion, sent a greeting saying it was “very impressive to see the energy, the teams and the Israeli high-tech coming together.” Mindlin said he does not think Israeli success in chess comes from genetics, but from a culture that encourages critical thinking and curiosity from an early age. He added that the tournament now serves as both a networking event for the entire ecosystem and a boost for chess itself, calling it “the biggest win-win possible.”
