Opinion
The public market window is open. It is just less forgiving.
For Israeli CEOs, Nasdaq is a trust-building exercise that begins years before the first trade.
For the right Israeli company, Nasdaq has become more than a distant dream. The market has changed: access is back, and proof matters more. U.S. investors are willing to engage again with strategic technology companies when the company brings a higher standard of evidence.
Access is the starting point. The real opportunity is the chance to turn Israeli technological advantage into a market case that American investors can understand, test and follow over time. Israel has produced many companies with serious technology. The harder work is making that technology legible to a different market.
I have seen enough market cycles to know that access opens the door; trust keeps it open. A company reaches the market; building durability depends on how investors understand the story after the first trade and through cycles. A listing succeeds when it is paired with the right shareholder base, operating cadence, clear explanation and capital, whether internally generated, raised or both. It also needs a structure that can survive volatility. Public markets price the future; belief is built through customers, margins, governance, strategic partners, capital discipline and a category the market can understand.
The common thread is infrastructure: defense technology when it changes the cost curve of readiness; quantum security when it is tied to compliance and government timelines; AI infrastructure when it lowers compute, energy or utilization costs; space when it extends resilience in both the public and private sectors; and mission-critical software when it controls a workflow customers rely on. These categories sit inside budgets, procurement cycles, customer roadmaps and national priorities.
Israel is unusually good at building that kind of technology. Many of the country’s strongest companies win far from the consumer surface: inside chips, sensors, cybersecurity layers, industrial processes, medical devices, communications networks, power systems and B2B platforms that operate behind the scenes. The public-market challenge is making invisible value visible. The market needs to understand where the company sits, who depends on it, what bottleneck it removes and why the economic value compounds over time. In other words, the company must explain how these innovations become woven into the systems investors recognize and value.
In private markets, technical depth can carry a long conversation. In public markets, measurable beats magical, and understandability enhances measurability. The market pays for “more for less” when both are measurable and understandable. In AI, that means looking past the software layer to the infrastructure behind it: hardware, networking, energy and utilization. The first wave was measured by adoption. The next wave will be measured by unit economics: cost per query, utilization, energy and margins. As AI becomes more closely tied to advanced energy and infrastructure, understandability will make those economics easier for investors to value.
For public investors, the strongest story often starts with the bottleneck. If the company improves inference economics, make that clear. If it reduces energy waste, make that central. If it secures a critical system, extends battery life, improves defense readiness, makes compute more efficient or turns a hard industrial process into a repeatable product, build the story around that economic value. The strongest Israeli companies have the technology. The work is to make the economic logic of that technology visible.
This is what capital-market preparation really means: translating the same company for customers, strategic buyers, analysts and long-term institutional investors while preserving the truth. Israeli CEOs can remain Israeli while learning what American public investors are trained to hear.
The goal is to add public-market cadence to Israeli speed. Israeli companies are very good at improvisation and solving problems with fewer resources and less patience for ceremony. Those are advantages. They are part of why Israeli technology works. A U.S.-listed public company also needs precision: a finance team that can operate under public scrutiny, a board that understands the rhythm of the market, investor relations that begins before the roadshow, and internal reporting systems that can survive quarterly examination. The distance is cultural and operational as much as geographic: a difference in cadence, disclosure expectations and what investors are trained to trust.
Creativity gets a company to the edge of the market. Cadence keeps it there. For companies whose customers, partners, strategic buyers and future shareholders are in the United States, the American market should become part of the operating map years before listing. That means building relationships with investors before capital is needed, educating the market before the market is asked to buy, turning the category case into something repeatable, and deciding which metrics, shareholders and structure give the company the time to perform.
Structure should serve the market story and strengthen it. IPO, SPAC, direct listing, dual listing or another path can each work when it fits the company’s maturity, capital needs and investor base. The right structure helps a company build durable ownership and gives it time to perform after the transaction. Capital is one part of that bridge. The rest is built from customers, partners, credibility, governance, reputation and a market narrative that keeps working after the opening trade.
The winners will be the companies that arrive prepared enough to keep the window open.
Ezra Gardner is Co-Founder and CIO of Varana Capital and CEO of Gesher Acquisition Corp. II.
