How RealSense went from an Intel shutdown candidate to a $600 million sale
Independence gave the Israeli-led computer vision company room to change its sales strategy, expand rapidly and pursue the robotics market.
Fourteen months after Intel spun out its RealSense computer vision business, the company is being sold for approximately $600 million to U.S.-based Cognex. The deal marks a remarkably rapid transformation for a business that Intel had once considered shutting down and that, as recently as last year, was generating only about $8 million in quarterly sales.
RealSense will be acquired for approximately $500 million in cash, funded entirely from Cognex’s existing balance sheet. The deal also includes a three-year cash retention program for RealSense employees worth $56.5 million at target, as well as approximately $50 million in restricted stock units. The transaction, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, is the largest acquisition in Cognex’s history and its first in Israel.
For RealSense, however, the headline number is only part of the story. The more striking development is how quickly the company changed once it was removed from Intel.
RealSense began as an Intel research initiative in 2014, as the chipmaker sought to establish a position in 3D cameras, computer vision and facial recognition. Intel acquired several companies and invested in the technology, but the business struggled to find a sufficiently strong commercial role within a company whose primary business remained semiconductors.
In 2021, Intel announced that it planned to shut down RealSense, saying it was moving its computer vision talent, technology and products toward areas more closely aligned with its core businesses.
The business survived. And in January 2025, Intel announced that it would instead spin RealSense out as an independent company. The separation was completed in July 2025, when RealSense raised $50 million from investors including Intel Capital, MediaTek Innovation Fund and other strategic backers.
RealSense expanded its workforce, increased its sales and tripled its revenue after the spinout. It expects to generate between $80 million and $90 million in revenue in 2026 and has been profitable for the past two quarters. The company now has 180 employees, including 135 in Israel, compared with roughly 100 Israeli employees when it was spun out.
The transformation was not simply a matter of giving the company more time. According to CEO Nadav Orbach, independence allowed RealSense to approach sales, marketing and other parts of the business differently from the way it could have operated inside Intel.
“When we spun out, RealSense had quarterly sales of just $8 million,” Orbach told Calcalist. He said there had been a debate over whether to continue the business at all because Intel had struggled to find a sufficiently strong commercial use for the technology.
Orbach had previously sat down with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and asked him to allow the business to be spun out rather than shut down.
The result was a company that could pursue the robotics market without having to fit its strategy into Intel’s priorities.
“Operating independently allowed us to approach many aspects, including marketing and sales, in a new way,” Orbach said.
That independence also changed RealSense’s relationship with the broader technology industry.
The company began working with Nvidia, integrating its depth cameras with Nvidia’s robotics platforms. Its technology is used in fixed-arm robots, autonomous mobile robots, quadrupeds and humanoid robots, putting RealSense directly into one of the technology industry’s most closely watched emerging markets.
RealSense says it now has more than 4,500 customers worldwide. Its depth cameras allow machines to perceive their surroundings in three dimensions, identify objects, estimate distances and navigate physical environments.
That technology is becoming increasingly important as robots move from controlled industrial environments toward more complex interactions with the physical world.
Cognex has traditionally focused on industrial machine vision, developing systems and sensors for identification, measurement and process control. The acquisition will add RealSense’s 3D depth perception and robotic navigation capabilities, allowing the combined company to address applications ranging from industrial inspection and measurement to robot navigation and interaction with the physical environment.
Cognex estimates that the robotic perception market is currently worth about $600 million and expects it to grow by more than 25% annually to approximately $1.6 billion by 2030.
The deal is also a bet on the broader shift toward what the industry calls Physical AI, systems that allow machines to perceive and act in the physical world.
RealSense had positioned itself around that trend almost immediately after becoming independent. Its technology was already being used by robotics companies including Unitree Robotics and Switzerland’s ANYbotics, and the company said its cameras were embedded in a large share of autonomous mobile robots and humanoids.
But the Cognex deal suggests that the value of the business may ultimately lie not in the cameras themselves, but in the perception capabilities they enable.
There is also an important Israeli dimension to the transaction.
RealSense remains deeply rooted in Israel, where 135 of its 180 employees are based in Haifa. Following the acquisition, those employees will remain with the company, with the Israeli operation becoming Cognex’s development center. Orbach said most Israeli employees will receive at least NIS 1 million ($330,000) as part of the transaction, with many receiving more.
Intel, meanwhile, has not been completely left behind.
The chipmaker still owns 20% of RealSense and holds one seat on its five-member board. It will therefore participate in the proceeds of the acquisition alongside the investors who backed the company when it spun out.
That creates an unusual outcome for Intel.
The company that once decided that RealSense did not fit sufficiently well with its strategy will now receive value from a business that became substantially more valuable only after leaving its walls.
