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Jerusalem — Israel’s government agreed to give Intel a $3.2 billion grant for a new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel, both sides said on Tuesday, in what is the largest investment ever by a company in Israel. 

The news comes as Israel remains locked in a war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. It also is a big show of support by a major U.S. company and a substantial offer by Israel’s government at a time when Washington has increased pressure on Israel to take further steps to minimize civilian harm in Gaza. 

Shares of Intel, which has a bit less than 10% of its global workforce in Israel, opened up 2.73% at $49.28 on the Nasdaq stock exchange.  

The expansion plan for its Kiryat Gat site, where it has an existing chip plant 42 kilometers (26 miles) from Hamas-controlled Gaza, is an “important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain, alongside the company’s ongoing and planned manufacturing investments in Europe and the United States,” Intel said in a statement. 

Under CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel has invested billions in building factories across three continents to restore its dominance in chip-making and better compete with rivals AMD, Nvidia and Samsung. The new Israeli plant is the latest investment by the U.S. chipmaker in recent years. 

“Support from the Israel government will … ensure that Israel remains a global center of semiconductor technology and talent,” Intel vice president Daniel Benatar said. 

Intel had previously received around $2 billion over the past 50 years in Israeli grants in other facilities there. 

Ofir Yosefi, deputy director general of Israel’s Investments Authority, said Intel chose a higher grant and tax rate over an offer for a lower grant and lower tax rate. 

He told Reuters the process took months since a grant of such magnitude needed a review and independent analysis that it was economically viable. It was determined Israel would reap much higher fiscal and economic benefits, he added. 

“This investment, at a time when Israel wages war against utter wickedness, a war in which good must defeat evil, is an investment in the right and righteous values that spell progress for humanity,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said. 

Intel, whose investment will be over five years, will pay a corporate tax rate of 7.5% instead of 5% previously. The normal tax rate is 23%, but under Israel’s law to encourage investment in development areas, companies receive large benefits. 

In Germany, Intel plans to spend more than $33 billion to develop two chip-making plants in Magdeburg, as part of a multibillion-dollar investment drive across Europe to build chip capacity. Berlin has pledged big subsidies to attract Germany’s biggest-ever foreign investment.  

In 2022, Intel said it would invest up to $100 billion to build potentially the world’s largest chip-making complex in the U.S. state of Ohio, and rivals Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, also have announced big investment plans in the U.S. 

In addition to the grant that amounts to 12.8% of the total investment, the chipmaker also committed to buy $16.6 billion worth of goods and services from Israeli suppliers over the next decade, while the new facility is expected to create several thousand jobs. 

Intel, one of around 500 multinationals in Israel, established a presence there in 1974 and now operates four development and production sites, including its manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat called Fab 28 that produces Intel 7 technology, or 10 nanometer chips, and employs nearly 12,000 people in the country while indirectly employing 42,000 more. 

At some $9 billion, Intel’s exports account for 5.5% of total high-tech exports. The Centrino chip, which enables the use of WiFi, and its Core processors were developed in Israel. 

Intel, which bought Israeli self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017, declined to say what technology will be produced at the new Fab 38 plant. Intel says construction has already begun.  

In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Intel would build a new $25 billion chip plant in Israel, but Intel until now had declined to confirm the investment. 

The Fab 38 plant is due to open in 2028 and operate through 2035. 
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Washington — A U.S. import ban on certain Apple smartwatch models came into effect Tuesday, after the Biden administration opted not to veto a ruling on patent infringements.

The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) decided in October to ban Apple Watch models over a patented technology for detecting blood-oxygen levels.

Apple contends that the ITC finding was in error and should be reversed, but last week paused its US sales of Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.

The order stemmed from a complaint made to the commission in mid-2021 accusing Apple of infringing on medical device maker company Masimo Corp’s “light-based oximetry functionality.”

“After careful consultations, Ambassador (Katherine) Tai decided not to reverse the… determination and the ITC’s decision became final on December 26, 2023,” the president’s executive office said in a statement on Tuesday.

Apple has been steadily ramping up fitness and health features with each generation of its Apple Watch, which dominates the smartwatch category.

In September, Apple released its Apple Watch Series 9, touting increased performance along with features such as the ability to access and log health data.

“Our teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness and safety features,” Apple said when the ITC ban was issued.

“Masimo has wrongly attempted to use the ITC to keep a potentially lifesaving product from millions of US consumers while making way for their own watch that copies Apple.”

In May, a trial of Masimo’s allegations ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

Late last year, Apple filed two patent infringement lawsuits accusing Masimo of copying Apple Watch technology.
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For water managers in drought-stricken regions, accurate forecasts of water availability are critically important. Matt Dibble shows how remote sensing technology is helping in the Rocky Mountains in this edition of LogOn.
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Paris — Even as human-caused climate change threatens the environment, nature continues to inspire our technological advancement.

“The solutions that are provided by nature have evolved for billions of years and tested repeatedly every day since the beginning of time,” said Evripidis Gkanias, a University of Edinburgh researcher. 

Gkanias has a special interest in how nature can educate artificial intelligence.

“Human creativity might be fascinating, but it cannot reach nature’s robustness — and engineers know that,” he told AFP.

From compasses mimicking insect eyes to forest fire-fighting robots that behave like vines, here’s a selection of this year’s nature-based technology.

Insect compass

Some insects — such as ants and bees — navigate visually based on the intensity and polarisation of sunlight, thus using the sun’s position as a reference point. 

Researchers replicated their eye structure to construct a compass capable of estimating the sun’s location in the sky, even on cloudy days.

Common compasses rely on Earth’s weak magnetic field to navigate, which is easily disturbed by noise from electronics.

A prototype of the light-detecting compass is “already working great,” said Gkanias, who led the study published in Communications Engineering. 

“With the appropriate funding, this could easily be transformed into a more compact and lightweight product” freely available, he added. 

And with a little further tweaking, the insect compass could work on any planet where a big celestial light source is visible.

Water-collecting webs

Fabric inspired by the silky threads of a spider web and capable of collecting drinking water from morning mist could soon play an important role in regions suffering water scarcity.

The artificial threads draw from the feather-legged spider, whose intricate “spindle-knots” allow large water droplets to move and collect on its web.

Once the material can be mass produced, the water harvested could reach a “considerable scale for real application”, Yongmei Zheng, a co-author of the study published in Advanced Functional Materials, told AFP.

Fire-fighting vines 

Animals aren’t the only source of inspiration from nature.

Scientists have created an inflatable robot that “grows” in the direction of light or heat, in the same way vines creep up a wall or across a forest floor. 

The roughly two-meter-long tubular robot can steer itself using fluid-filled pouches rather than costly electronics.  

In time, these robots could find hot spots and deliver fire suppression agents, say researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara.   

“These robots are slow, but that is OK for fighting smoldering fires, such as peat fires, which can be a major source of carbon emissions,” co-author Charles Xiao told AFP. 

But before the robots can climb the terrain, they need to be more heat-resistant and agile.

Kombucha circuits

Scientists at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at the University of the West of England in Bristol have found a way to use slimy kombucha mats — produced by yeast and bacteria during the fermenting of the popular tea-based drink — to create “kombucha electronics.”

The scientists printed electrical circuits onto dried mats that were capable of illuminating small LED lights.   

Dry kombucha mats share properties of textiles or even leather. But they are sustainable and biodegradable, and can even be immersed in water for days without being destroyed, said the authors.

“Kombucha wearables could potentially incorporate sensors and electronics within the material itself, providing a seamless and unobtrusive integration of technology with the human body,” such as for heart monitors or step-trackers, lead author Andrew Adamatzky and the laboratory’s director, told AFP.

The mats are lighter, cheaper and more flexible than plastic, but the authors caution that durability and mass production remain significant obstacles.

Scaly robots

Pangolins resemble a cross between a pine cone and an anteater. The soft-bodied mammals, covered in reptilian scales, are known to curl up in a ball to protect themselves against predators. 

Now, a tiny robot might adapt that same design for potentially life-saving work, according to a study published in Nature Communications.

It is intended to roll through our digestive tracts before unfurling and delivering medicine or stopping internal bleeding in hard-to-reach parts of the human body. 

Lead author Ren Hao Soon of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems was watching a YouTube video when he “stumbled across the animal and saw it was a good fit.”

Soon needed a soft material that wouldn’t cause harm inside the human body, with the advantages of a hard material that could, for example, conduct electricity. The Pangolin’s unique structure was perfect.

The tiny robots are still in their initial stages, but they could be made for as little as 10 euros each. 

“Looking to nature to solve these kinds of problems is natural,” said Soon. 

“Every single design part of an animal serves a particular function. It’s very elegant.”

 
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NEW YORK — Artists under siege by artificial intelligence that studies their work and then replicates their styles, have teamed with university researchers to stymie such copycat activity.

U.S. illustrator Paloma McClain went into defense mode after learning that several AI models had been trained using her art, with no credit or compensation sent her way.

“It bothered me,” McClain told AFP.

“I believe truly meaningful technological advancement is done ethically and elevates all people instead of functioning at the expense of others,” she said.

The artist turned to free software called Glaze created by researchers at the University of Chicago.

Glaze essentially outthinks AI models when it comes to how they train, tweaking pixels in ways that are indiscernible to human viewers but which make a digitized piece of art appear dramatically different to AI.

“We’re basically providing technical tools to help protect human creators against invasive and abusive AI models,” said Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science on the Glaze team.

Created in just four months, Glaze spun off technology used to disrupt facial recognition systems.

“We were working at super-fast speed because we knew the problem was serious,” Zhao said of rushing to defend artists from software imitators. “A lot of people were in pain.”

Generative AI giants have agreements to use data for training in some cases, but the majority of digital images, audio, and text used to shape the way supersmart software thinks has been scraped from the internet without explicit consent.

Since its release in March, Glaze has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times, according to Zhao.

Zhao’s team is working on a Glaze enhancement called Nightshade that notches up defenses by confusing AI, say by getting it to interpret a dog as a cat.

“I believe Nightshade will have a noticeable effect if enough artists use it and put enough poisoned images into the wild,” McClain said, meaning they would be easily available online.

“According to Nightshade’s research, it wouldn’t take as many poisoned images as one might think,” she said.

Zhao’s team has been approached by several companies that want to use Nightshade, according to the Chicago academic.

“The goal is for people to be able to protect their content, whether it’s individual artists or companies with a lot of intellectual property,” Zhao said.

Viva Voce

A startup called Spawning has developed Kudurru software that detects attempts to harvest large numbers of images from an online venue.

An artist can then block access or send images that don’t match what is being requested, tainting the pool of data being used to teach AI what is what, according to Spawning co-founder Jordan Meyer.

More than 1,000 websites have been integrated into the Kudurru network.

Spawning has also launched haveibeentrained.com, a website that features an online tool for finding out whether digitized works have been fed into an AI model and allow artists to opt out of such use in the future.

As defenses ramp up for images, researchers at Washington University in Missouri have developed AntiFake software to thwart AI copying voices.

AntiFake enriches digital recordings of people speaking, adding noises inaudible to people but which make it “impossible to synthesize a human voice,” said Zhiyuan Yu, the Ph.D. student behind the project.

The program aims to go beyond just stopping unauthorized training of AI to preventing the creation of “deepfakes” — bogus soundtracks or videos of celebrities, politicians, relatives, or others showing them doing or saying something they didn’t.

A popular podcast recently reached out to the AntiFake team for help stopping its productions from being hijacked, according to Zhiyuan Yu.

The freely available software has so far been used for recordings of people speaking, but could also be applied to songs, the researcher said.

“The best solution would be a world in which all data used for AI is subject to consent and payment,” Meyer contended. “We hope to push developers in this direction.”
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HERZLIYA, Israel — Nearly 7,000 miles away in Portland, Oregon, venture capitalist George Djuric said he was compelled to visit Israel during the country’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas and to pledge support for the high-tech sector.

Djuric, chief technology officer at yVentures who arrived in the United States as a 3-year-old refugee from Bosnia during the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s, this week joined some 70 other U.S. tech executives and investors on a trip to Israel.

“Coming here is a chance to stand in solidarity with Israel and also support the tech ecosystem, which is the world’s second largest after Silicon Valley,” he said. “As a technology fund, it makes sense for us to be here.”

Although not Jewish, Djuric said he was drawn to Israel by the state’s resiliency and as someone whose family’s views were shaped by war.

“I was horrified by what happened on October 7 and I was equally horrified the next day when I saw people demonstrating in support of what happened,” he said, referring to the October 7 attack on Israel launched by Hamas.

Investors and analysts had predicted the conflict with the Palestinians would derail a fragile recovery in high-tech, which accounts for more than half of Israel’s exports and nearly a fifth of its overall economic output.

Funding had already dropped sharply amid a global slowdown and a divisive government judicial overhaul when the war took its toll on the economy. Growth, on pace for a 3.4% clip this year, has fallen to an expected 2% with the outlook at least as grim.

At least 15% of the tech workforce has been called up for military reserve duty.

Yet, even as the war rages, tech funding deals are still getting done, albeit at a slower pace. Startups have raised more than $6 billion in 2023 compared with $16 billion in 2022.

On Tuesday, ScaleOps, a startup specializing in cloud resource management, announced a $21.5 million funding round. Last week, cyber startup Zero Networks, which prevents attackers from spreading in corporate networks, raised $20 million.

‘Long-term bullish on Israel’

Ron Miasnik, of Bain Capital Ventures who co-organized the delegation, said he had expected Israeli startups to go on drawing large sums. He said he believed the country’s economy would ultimately bounce back.

“It doesn’t matter to us whether the economic rebound takes three months, six months, nine months or 12 months,” he said. “We’re long-term bullish on Israel.”

Miasnik said the idea of the trip emerged from watching other solidarity groups, such as religious ones. “We felt the (U.S.) tech and the venture capital community, which is so heavily integrated within Israel, was missing,” he said.

Initially, it was supposed to be just 15 people but, he said, hundreds of people showed interest. They included CEOs and senior executives of U.S.-based tech and VC funds from Meetup.com, Apollo, TPG, Susquehanna Growth Equity, Mastercard, John Deere and Harvard University’s endowment investment fund.

In addition to meeting local investors and startups, they met Israeli leaders and families of hostages still held captive in Gaza and toured border towns hit by the October 7 attack.

Bain has a number of investments in Israel, including Redis Labs, in which the fund has invested more than $100 million, and cybersecurity firm Armis, and Miasnik said he was seeking to add more Israeli cybersecurity startups to its portfolio.

Similarly, Danny Schultz, managing director of New York-based Gotham Ventures said he was looking to invest in 10 to 20 Israeli growth stage startups, mainly in fintech, in the next three to five years.

“At the point that Israeli CEOs need more capital, they also need relationships across the ocean in the U.S. and Europe to really help build their companies,” he said.

Joy Marcus co-founded a new VC fund called The 98 and only invests in “women-led technology businesses that are disrupting industry.”

“I am tortured by the war. … So I am here to support Israel first and foremost,” she said. “And I am also very interested in investing in some Israeli women.”
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