Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua lightly hurt after helicopter overturns on ground
Aircraft, reportedly piloted by tech entrepreneur during flight training, tips over; two others uninjured
Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua was lightly hurt on Sunday when a helicopter he was reportedly piloting crashed onto its side while on the ground.
The incident occurred close to Kibbutz Yakum, south of the coastal city of Netanya.
According to the Walla news site, the helicopter was forced to land due to strong winds. Once it was on the ground, the aircraft toppled onto its side.
But the Ynet news site said that Shashua, piloting the helicopter on his second solo flight as part of his training at a flight school, practiced landing at Yakum and then tried to take off again. He reportedly lost control of the rudders and the helicopter crashed.
Shashua was lightly injured and was taken to nearby Herzliya for medical treatment. Two other people with Shashua, apparently trainers from the flight school, were not hurt and remained at the scene.
Shashua is the co-founder of Mobileye, a developer of self-driving vehicle technologies that was acquired in 2017 by US tech giant Intel for $15.3 billion.
Shashua also founded Israel’s first new bank in more than 40 years, the First Digital Bank (FDB), which last week announced it raised a $120 million Series A funding round led by a group of prominent investors such as Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, Japanese financial company SBI Holdings (formerly part of Softbank), and Swiss wealth management firm Julius Baer, one of Switzerland’s oldest banking institutions.
Shashua is additionally a co-founder of OrCam, a maker of devices to assist the blind and visually impaired.
