Israeli tech giant Mellanox to expand Yokne’am campus
New construction will make Yokne’am — already home to Intel and others — one of the largest industrial centers in the country
Luke Tress is a JTA reporter and a former editor and reporter in New York for The Times of Israel.
Mellanox, one of the world’s largest makers of networking equipment, laid the cornerstone last week for a new building in Yokne’am, in northern Israel. The project is a $10 million investment from the company and a commitment to the community it is based in.
The building, which is being constructed by the Israeli commercial real estate company Melisron Ltd., will join Mellanox’s four existing buildings in Yokne’am. Mellanox expects it to be finished by the end of 2018.
Mellanox is a growing company and employs about 2,400 workers in Israel and abroad.
“The new building will allow Mellanox to prepare for further expected growth in manpower in the company, which increased by 26% in 2015 and is expected to grow by another 10% by the end of 2016,” Eyal Waldman, co-founder and CEO of Mellanox, said at a ceremony on May 4.
Yokne’am’s mayor, Simon Alfassi, also attended the event.
“Most of Mellanox’s workers in Israel live in the country’s north, and the choice to lay the foundation of another building in Yokne’am represents more proof of Mellanox’s commitment to strengthening Israel’s north,” Waldman said.
Yokne’am, with about 22,000 residents, is in the lower Galilee, about 50 miles north of Tel Aviv. The community brands itself as the “Start-up Village” and is reportedly home to over 100 high-tech companies, including Intel and Galil Medical, which export about $5 billion annually. Mellanox, along with Teva and Checkpoint, is one of the few Israeli companies to make it as a major corporation abroad while remaining in Israeli hands.
Last year, Mellanox bought chip-maker EZChip Semiconductor Ltd. for $811 million in the largest acquisition in the company’s history.
Many of the world’s largest data companies use Mellanox products — including switches, adapters and gateways. Microsoft, for example, uses Mellanox equipment and software to power Bing Maps, and Oracle uses the company’s equipment almost exclusively in its data centers, according to Mellanox.
The company also makes branded equipment for a host of companies, including IBM, HP, and Dell.
