Mobileye Shares Plunge 15% After Founder Amnon Shashua Resigns as CEO

Mobileye's stock fell sharply by 15% on Thursday following the announcement that its founder and CEO, Professor Amnon Shashua, would step down from his CEO role but remain on the board. The news coincided with the release of the company's second-quarter 2026 financial results and a broader sell-off in U.S. markets. Shashua, 66, who co-founded Mobileye in 1999 with Ziv Aviram and led its development of computer vision and autonomous driving technologies, will continue as a board member and was offered the chairman position. The board plans to hire an executive search firm, in collaboration with controlling shareholder Intel, to find his successor. Shashua recently also resigned from AI21, a company he founded, after it laid off about 60% of its staff.

Mobileye’s technology is currently installed in over 250 million vehicles worldwide and the company is expanding into robotics. Despite the stock drop, Mobileye reported improved profitability in Q2, with revenues of $508 million, slightly up from $506 million a year earlier. Operating losses narrowed to $30 million from $74 million, and net losses decreased to $21 million (3 cents per share) compared to $67 million previously. Adjusted operating profit rose to $155 million. Following these results, Mobileye raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $1.97 billion and $2.02 billion. The company’s market value, which peaked at $39 billion in 2023, currently stands at about $7.5 billion.

The stock decline occurred amid a broadly negative trading day in U.S. markets, with the Nasdaq dropping 2.6% below 25,000 points for the first time since May, the S&P 500 down 1.4%, and the Dow Jones falling 1.1%. The sell-off was driven by tech giants Alphabet and Tesla increasing spending on AI and infrastructure, reigniting investor concerns about return on investment in these areas. Additionally, macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures weighed on markets, including oil prices surpassing $100 per barrel due to Middle East tensions and Houthi attacks on Red Sea tankers. Rising energy costs stoked inflation fears and pushed U.S. 10-year Treasury yields to a 1.5-year high, reducing expectations for imminent Federal Reserve rate cuts despite record-low initial jobless claims since 1969.