Is Israel Losing Its AI Talent?

A few months ago, the British news website Tortoise Media completed the acquisition of the UK’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer. Until last year, Tortoise Media published the Tortoise Global AI Index, but following the acquisition, the index is now instead at observer.co.uk/data/global-ai. The Observer Global AI Index is advertised as being “the world’s first benchmark of countries on their level of investment, innovation and implementation of artificial intelligence” and is now in its sixth iteration.

We are, of course, interested on Israel’s stand in this popular and often-cited index. In the 2025 edition, the first positive observation is that Israel is ranked 7th out of 93 countries, after France and before Canada. This hopefully reflects a reversal from a negative to a positive trend, as Israel had been dropping in the rankings, falling to 9th place in 2024.

It is worthwhile to take a deeper look at the “pillars” and “sub-pillars” of the index to examine Israel’s strengths and weaknesses.

The index is composed of three pillars and seven sub-pillars, as follows:

• Implementation, with three sub-pillars: (1) Talent; (2) Infrastructure; and (3) Operating Environment.
• Innovation, with two sub-pillars: (1) Research; and (2) Development.
• Investment, also with two sub-pillars: (1) Government Strategy; and (2) Commercial Ecosystem.

In 2025, Israel improved dramatically in two sub-pillars. In Operating Environment, Israel’s ranking jumped from 65(!) in 2024 to 12 in 2025, reflecting “the public attitudes towards AI, the level of adoption of popular AI platforms by consumers and the overall quality of governance and institutions at the national level” (see here, page 3).

The other sub-pillar in which Israel showed much improvement is Government Strategy, which measures “the comprehensiveness, timeliness, and degree of ambition of countries’ national AI strategies. Additionally, it measures government spending commitments towards AI in the areas of infrastructure, research, training and private sector support.” In this sub-pillar, Israel’s ranking in 2025 is 14, compared with 32 in 2024.

It needs to be emphasized that ranking 14 is still low if Israel seeks to be at the forefront in AI technology. As stated on a report published in August 2025 by the National Committee for Accelerating the Field of Artificial Intelligence, chaired by Prof. Yaakov Nagel (the Nagel Report), “The State of Israel is not at the appropriate and desirable point for acceleration in the field of artificial intelligence” (see here, in Hebrew). Further improvement in this area will depend heavily on the performance of the recently established Israel Artificial Intelligence Agency.

However, despite the positive developments for Israel reflected in the 2025 index, one element should give rise to concern. In the Talent sub-pillar, Israel’s ranking dropped from 7 to 9. True, being among the ten leading countries in AI talent is an achievement – but the trend is downward. In 2020, Israel was ranked 5th in Talent.

As explained in the index methodology, “the geographical concentration of AI specialists and developers, their career level, as well as the changing supply and demand for them across industry sectors, is the focus of the ‘Talent’ sub-pillar.” It is widely recognized that Israel’s outstanding capabilities and success are based, first and foremost, on its human capital.

One possible explanation for this downward trend is that, in recent years, a significant number of experts have decided to relocate abroad. In this context, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) recently published a report on Israelis emigrating abroad (“Special Report – Israelis Emigrating Abroad; Data Review from 2010 Onward Based on a New Calculation Method”). The report confirms the troubling trend of “brain drain.” In 2023, 60.4% of those emigrating abroad held an academic degree, compared with 46.1% in 2010. As expected, most are relatively young: 81.2% of emigrants in 2024 were under the age of 50.

To achieve its national goals, Israel must retain and nurture its human talent in general and its AI talent in particular. This effort requires the participation of the education system at all levels, yet preparing such a workforce takes a very long time. Action is therefore needed now to reduce what appears to be a slow but steady outward flow of talent from Israel. The Nagel Report goes even further, recommending the establishment of a national program to attract AI talent from abroad, led by the Israel Artificial Intelligence Agency in collaboration with relevant NGOs.

It is impossible not to conclude that without a drastic improvement in the national atmosphere, it will be very difficult to halt the outward flow of talent, and certainly difficult to attract significant numbers from abroad.