Israeli serial chip entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz’s latest startup Element Labs has raised $50 million at an estimated company valuation of $500 million, “Globes” has learned. The sources added that the financing round was led by US insurance company Fidelity, which invests in privately-held tech companies, with participation from investment firm Atreides, which has previously invested in other companies founded by Willenz. This is the first institutional investment round raised by Element Labs, which is developing AI processors for inference, the stage in which AI models are activated after they have already been trained.
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Element Labs offices are in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Towers and it has over 100 employees, many of them former employees of Habana Labs. Element Labs executives decline to talk to the media and employees do not mention on social media sites like LinkedIn that they work for the company.
Willenz founded and sold Habana Labs to Intel for $2 billion, having previously sold Annapurna Labs to Amazon for $380 million and Galileo to Marvell Technologies for $2 billion. Two years ago Willenz told “Globes” that he had moved to Switzerland and reduced his activities in Israel in response to the government’s judicial reform but it now seems that with Element Labs he is again involved in a major Israeli startup.
Element Labs declined to respond to this report.
Serial entrepreneur who sold companies for billions
Element Labs was founded by a highly respected team in the investment world: Willenz and the founders of Habana Labs – David Dahan and Ran Halutz. Willenz was also a partner in the investment in Havana Labs and the new startup brought in one of his former colleagues, Manuel Alba-Marquez, his former partner in Galileo, as an early investor. The association with Willenz and the founders of Habana Labs opens doors for Element Labs in every major chip factory and every electronics company. Willenz’s former partner in Israeli investments, Lip-Bu Tan was appointed Intel CEO last month.
This is the company’s Series A financing round, after previously raising capital mainly from its founders, serial entrepreneurs who have previously sold companies for billions of dollars. Element Labs is already at an advanced stage. The funding is intended to bring it to complete the first series of chips and to begin production tests (type-out) at TSMC factories, the permanent chip factory of Wilenz’s startup companies, which has already produced the chips for Annapurna Labs and Habana Labs in the past.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on April 14, 2025.
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