Opinion
Turning ideas into impact: Fifteen years of UK-Israel Tech
Since 2011, the UK-Israel Tech Hub has helped broker more than 335 high-impact UK-Israel partnerships, connecting hundreds of British organisations with Israeli innovators.
When a UK National Health Service occupational therapist uses an Israeli app to support my nephew, or when Israeli technology quietly shields my ageing parents from online fraud (sorry, mum), I'm reminded that the UK-Israel tech relationship isn't an abstraction. It shows up in people's lives.
The UK-Israel Tech Hub, part of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, was founded in 2011 as the UK government's first international tech hub. Its mission was simple: connect UK organisations with Israeli innovators to solve real-world challenges and create opportunities for growth in both countries. Fifteen years later, that mission remains as relevant as ever.
For Israeli innovators, the UK offers a uniquely powerful platform for growth. It combines world-class universities, deep pools of capital, a sophisticated customer base, global networks and institutions such as the NHS that enable transformative technologies to scale. Our VC Club alone brings together 53 investment funds with approximately $441 billion in assets under management. Combined with Britain's strengths in research, regulation and international market access, it is a partnership uniquely equipped to turn innovation into impact.
Since 2011, the Hub has helped broker more than 335 high-impact UK-Israel partnerships, connecting hundreds of British organisations with Israeli innovators across sectors ranging from water and mobility to fintech, cyber security, digital health, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.
The results speak for themselves. Companies that have worked with the Hub are today worth more than $25 billion combined. Over the past decade, Israeli technology companies have contributed more than £1 billion in gross value added to the UK economy, while independent analysis found that the Hub generates roughly £70 in value for every £1 of public funding invested.
What excites me most is how these partnerships bring together complementary strengths. Israeli entrepreneurship, creativity and agility pair naturally with British scale, research excellence, global reach and trusted institutions. The result is practical solutions to shared challenges, whether in healthcare, financial services, climate technologies or digital resilience.
Even during a period marked by uncertainty, the appetite for collaboration remains strong. In the past year alone, we helped broker 16 new partnerships, delivered 12 innovation challenges with seven UK corporates, and welcomed more than 1,000 participants to Hub events. Those numbers reflect something deeper: a shared belief that innovation can build bridges between people, institutions and economies.
That belief is especially important as we look towards the technologies that will shape the next fifteen years. Artificial intelligence and AI infrastructure, quantum technologies, engineering biology, advanced materials, energy and healthcare are precisely the fields where Israeli breakthroughs and British strengths fit together. Through initiatives such as the Dangoor HealthTech Academy and the G7 Tech Policy Forum, alongside new programmes focused on semiconductors, regenerative agriculture and quantum adoption, we are helping build those connections.
Ahead of our anniversary celebrations, we asked founders, investors and partners what this relationship means to them. The words that came back most often were ‘partnership’, ‘opportunity’ and ‘bridge’. My personal favourite was ‘home’.
As a British olah, I have the privilege of sitting at the intersection of two countries I care deeply about. What gives me confidence about the future is seeing the people behind these partnerships continue to choose collaboration, even when the world feels uncertain.
Fifteen years on, the story of UK-Israel tech is only just beginning.
Keren Shurkin is the Director of the UK-Israel Tech Hub.
