The Daily Circuit: Qatar makes a play for chips + PIF faces tough choices on Vision 2030

👋 Hello from the Middle East!

Today in the Daily Circuit, we’re looking at revisions to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, two AI product announcements out of Abu Dhabi, the PIF consolidating its big entertainment development players and Dubai-based Property Finder securing an exit for OG investor BECO Capital. But first, Qatar elbows into the chips race as the Qatar Economic Forum gets underway.  

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani opened the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha this morning with the message that the country is continuing its economic diversification efforts driven by its sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). QIA, which has over a half trillion dollars in assets under management, has made the U.S. its main market but it is eyeing emerging markets like Central Asia and Africa, he said, and the fund is accelerating investments in technology. 

His remarks at the Bloomberg-hosted forum follow an announcement from the QIA last night that it plans to be an anchor investor in Ardian Semiconductor, a fund set up by French private equity firm Ardian to invest in the semiconductor industry across Europe. 

No deal terms were disclosed but the move comes as Gulf sovereigns are jockeying for key pieces of what is powering the AI revolution, including chips, data centers and intellectual property. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund launched the $100 billion AI investment firm Alat in February and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala followed up a month later as a founding partner of MGX, a deep tech-focused fund aiming for $100 billion in assets under management. 

The three-day conference will feature Jenny Johnson, President & CEO of Franklin Templeton (who addressed the Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week yesterday), and Ken Griffin, Founder and CEO of Citadel. Also joining panels in Qatar’s capital will be Darren Woods, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil; Noor Sweid, Founder and Managing Partner of UAE-based Global Ventures; Rick Gerson, Co-Founder and Chair of Alpha Wave; and Gerry Cardinale, Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Redbird Capital Partners.

Public Investment Fund: The PIF is consolidating Saudi Entertainment Ventures (also known as SEVEN) under Qiddiya Investment Co. to create a single recreation and entertainment entity in the kingdom. SEVEN will remain part of the PIF and continue to deliver on its mandate to develop 21 entertainment projects in 14 cities across Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the PIF has invited banks to pitch for roles on the planned initial public offering of the kingdom’s largest medical procurement firm, Nupco, Bloomberg reports. Rothschild & Co. is advising on the potential IPO. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia’s Al Balad Development Co., which is backed by the PIF, is working to revitalize Jeddah’s historic district and transform it into a heritage and tourism destination. 

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority: A consortium led by private equity giant Blackstone, along with ADIA and GIC of Singapore, submitted a non-binding bid late last week to acquire a controlling stake in Haldiram Snacks Food, the combined packaged snacks and foods business owned by the Agarwal family of Delhi and Nagpur, The Economic Times reports.

Kuwait Investment Authority and Oman Investment Authority: The two sovereign wealth funds signed a preliminary agreement for joint investments and to enter into discussions about future opportunities in their respective countries. The plan also calls for assessing investments in existing funds affiliated with the OIA in asset classes such as energy, infrastructure, communications, transportation and logistics, as well as the possibility of forming a joint fund. 

Mubadala: Drama continues for the Mubadala-backed grocery delivery company Getir as the Istanbul-based startup is in a dispute with shareholders over key management positions after it shut international operations, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Indonesia will ask Mubadala Energy, a unit of the sovereign wealth fund, to speed up gas development in Indonesia’s South Andaman Block after the firm announced a second major discovery there this week, Dwi Soetjipto, chairman of upstream regulator SKK Migas said on Tuesday.

🗣 Circuit Chatter

🛢️ Positive Outlook: Oman’s economy is expected to gain momentum amid higher oil prices and accelerated reforms under Oman Vision 2040, but the sultanate faces potential risks from regional geopolitical tensions and sustained high global interest rates, the International Monetary Fund said after a staff mission to the country this week. 

🚢 Peaceful Routes: The U.S. has reportedly given an informal nod for Saudi Arabia to continue to try to revive a peace deal with the Houthis. The Yemen-based rebels’ attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since November have led to a dramatic drop in maritime trade through the route and surging insurance costs.

💰 Big Payday: May paychecks for Emirates Group employees will be a bit fatter as the Dubai airline plans to disperse a 20-week bonus to staff after it posted a record profit for its financial year ending March 31, The National reports.

🩺 Future of Medicine: Innovation in healthcare, from AI and personalized care to anti-ageing treatments, is top of the agenda at the first Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week now underway at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center.

🤖 Robot Rescue: UAE company XCath will host a live telerobotic surgery on a model in South Korea on Wednesday during Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week to demonstrate how its technology can be used to respond to remote medical emergencies.

🩸Healthy Deposits: Mubadala-backed healthcare entity M42 announced a partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health to launch a Biobank with the region’s largest hybrid cord blood bank during Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare week. The facility will support medical research and delivery of stem cell therapies.

🌍 Power Circuit

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, on Monday approved the second phase of a heritage architecture project aimed at safeguarding 35 of the city’s historic sites from the 1960s to the 1990s. 

Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Council, inaugurated the first Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week on Monday under the theme ‘Accelerating the Future of Global Healthcare.’

Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, First Deputy Ruler of Dubai, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and President of the Dubai International Financial Centre, appointed four new members to Dubai Financial Services Authority’s Board on Sunday. The appointments of Robert Ophèle, Andrew Procter, Javan Herberg KC and Sock Koong Chua will reinforce the emirate’s position as a leading financial and business center, Sheikh Maktoum said.

Sheikha Sheikha bint Saif Al Nahyan, the honorary president of the Make-A-Wish Foundation UAE, commended the selection of Abu Dhabi to host Make-A-Wish International’s annual “Global Wish” summit next June. She said the organization “embodies the spirit of compassion, generosity, tolerance, and humanity that distinguishes Abu Dhabi’s character.”

➿ On the Circuit

Jimmy Dunne, one of the architects behind the PGA Tour’s framework agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has resigned from the PGA Tour policy board effective “immediately,” citing a lack of progress on a potential deal with PIF as one of his reasons.

Lucy Frazer, UK Culture Secretary, said her country is “really keen to boost positive social change” in Saudi Arabia, in an interview with The Times, as a trade expo is underway in Riyadh touting British companies and institutions as possible investment and development partners in Saudi’s Vision 2030. 

Haitham Abdulkarim has been hired by U.S. private asset manager Blue Owl Capital Inc. to oversee the company’s institutional business in the Middle East, where he’ll focus on scaling investment and operations teams across Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Bloomberg reports. Abdulkarim was previously Head of UAE at BlackRock. 

Cristiano Ronaldo is investing in wearable tech start-up Whoop, as it expands in the Gulf. Announcing the partnership while reclining on a pool lounger, the Portuguese soccer star and Al-Nassr FC player revealed that one of his secrets to a good night’s sleep is never taking phone calls after 10pm. 

Michael Wong, Deputy Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, said his office is working with financial institutions in the Gulf on the listing of an ETF in the Middle East to track Hong Kong’s stock indices, among other developments to help Gulf sovereign wealth funds tap opportunities in China, in an interview with Zawya on the sidelines of the Capital Market Forum in Hong Kong last week.

🎶 Culture Circuit

🍺 Local brew: The first licensed microbrewery in the Gulf is busily fermenting beer in Abu Dhabi, in a sign of the steady loosening of laws around alcohol in the region, AFP reports. Chad McGehee, co-founder of Craft, said the brewery was using local ingredients including honey, dates, coffee and karak tea to produce unique flavors. He hoped the business would help make the emirate a destination people come to for beer, “like Germany, New York or San Diego.”

⚽ Teething Problems: Saudi Arabia’s billion-dollar splurge on football stars is yet to truly pay off, with the new-look Saudi Pro League failing to produce international accolades and suffering from a lop-sided season where PIF-owned Al Hilal remain unbeaten. But administrators say the league is a work in progress, AFP reports.

📷 Photo of The Day

🗓️ Circuit Calendar

May 13-15, Abu Dhabi, UAE: Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week. A conference focusing on investments, and innovation to solve the most important global health challenges. Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center and Abu Dhabi City.

May 14-15, Abu Dhabi, UAE: J.P. Morgan Asset Management: Life Sciences Innovation Summit. A gathering aimed at drawing startups and investors from the life sciences sector to Abu Dhabi. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. 

May 14-16, Doha, Qatar: Qatar Economic Forum, Powered by Bloomberg. A news-driven event dedicated to global business and investment. This year’s theme is “A World Remade: Navigating the Year of Uncertainty.” Request your invitation here. Fairmont & Raffles, Doha.

May 20-21, New York City: SALT iConnections. SALT brings together more than 1,500 asset owners, asset managers and entrepreneurs for curated capital introductions and panel discussions. The Glasshouse.

May 20-22, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Future Aviation Forum. Airline executives, investors and government ministers gather for the third annual conference on the aviation industry. King Abdulaziz International Conference Center.

May 29-31, Marrakech, Morocco: GITEX Africa. The second edition of the biggest tech and startup gathering in Africa. Place Bab Jdid. 

June 5, Hong Kong: Bloomberg Wealth Event. A gathering to bring actionable intelligence to portfolio managers and other dealmakers and analysts from asset managers and owners, family offices and hedge funds. Conrad Hong Kong. 

June 23-26, National Harbor, Maryland: SelectUSA Investment Summit. The highest profile event in the U.S. to facilitate business investment by connecting thousands of investors, companies, economic development organizations and industry experts to make deals. Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

Gulf-Israel investors can weather discord by cultivating personal ties, Aleph’s Eisenberg says

As an early investor in WeWork, Michael Eisenberg says he doesn’t let the inevitable ups and downs of a young, disruptive company shake his faith when he strongly believes in its product.

Similarly, the co-founder of Tel Aviv-based venture capital fund Aleph is confident in Israel’s budding relationship with the Arab Gulf states and excited about the prospects the ties present for the more than 40 companies in his investment portfolio. Ongoing conflict with the Palestinians and lingering hostility even in countries such as Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties, he said, are unlikely to derail the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

“The Emiratis are relationship people and they believe in long-term relationships,” said Eisenberg, 51, a native New Yorker who immigrated to Israel after college and whose fund has about $850 million under management. “It will last if we build trust.”

Aleph’s stable of startups has proven attractive to Gulf investors. Freightos, an online marketplace that helps businesses find favorable sea and air cargo shipping rates, said last week that Qatar Airways is among its investors — together with FedEx and several airlines in Europe and Latin America. The disclosure came as Freightos agreed to merge with Tel Aviv-based Gesher, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that will give it a Nasdaq listing and a pro forma enterprise value of about $435 million. Freightos is registered in the Cayman Islands. It has offices in Jerusalem; Hong Kong; Barcelona, Spain; Miami, Florida; and Ramallah, in the West Bank.

Aleph itself was one of six funds chosen by Mubadala, the $250 billion sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, to distribute $100 million in investment to Israeli startups, according to the Wall Street Journal. Eisenberg declined to confirm the report, though he said Mubadala executives recently came to visit his team at Aleph’s airy downtown Tel Aviv office, which is in a restored century-old hotel on Rothschild Boulevard.

“I’m super bullish about the Emirates serving not only as a target market, not only as a place for joint ventures, but also as a gateway to Asia,” Eisenberg said. Saudi Arabia, which has many business ties with Israeli companies but has resisted the normalization drive, will come to terms with Israel eventually, he said. President Joe Biden is mulling plans to visit both Israel and Saudi Arabia next month.

The other funds distributing Mubadala Investment Co.’s money to Israeli technology companies are Mangrove Capital Partners, Entrée Capital, Viola Ventures, Pitango and MizMaa, according to the Journal.

Eisenberg stuck with WeWork in the shared-office space business even as other investors pulled out when a planned IPO was scrapped in October 2019. That sent the company’s market valuation plummeting from $47 billion to $8 billion and forced CEO Adam Neumann to resign. Neumann, a former Israeli Navy officer who acquired U.S. citizenship, raised billions of dollars from Japan’s Softbank Vision Fund, whose primary investors were Mubadala and the $600 billion Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. WeWork finally went public through a SPAC merger in October 2021 and is currently worth roughly $4.5 billion, down 18 percent since the end of last year.

“Very few people could have transformed the real estate market the way he did and if you walk into any office now, they’re all designed like WeWork,” Eisenberg said, noting that the company sells $3 billion in services annually. “You know, it takes a little bit of crazy to be an entrepreneur and be told ‘no’ all the time and be abused by the press all the time. And you know, God bless [Neumann] and God bless [new CEO] Sandeep Mathrani for taking it over.”

Eisenberg, an Orthodox Jew and Yeshiva University graduate who covers his head with a yarmulke and lives in Jerusalem, has eight children and writes books in Hebrew applying biblical wisdom to investing. His The Tree of Life and Prosperity: 21^st Century Business Principles from the Book of Genesis was published in English last year. His latest book, Milk, Honey and Uncertainty, hasn’t yet come out in translation. He said regular visits to the Gulf has given him a better appreciation of Islam and reinforced the belief he describes in his books as “respectful tribalism.”

Besides Freightos, Aleph’s interests include Windward, a favorite of risk managers that uses online mapping and artificial intelligence to track maritime traffic around the world. It trades on the London Stock Exchange and Eisenberg says the company has benefited from the global breakdown in shipping logistics.

“Business is good because whenever there are sanctions, you want to know what’s really happening on the seas,” he said. “Not just that, but at the same time we’ve had these COVID-19 lockdowns in China and the supply chain is all snarled up. People want to know, where are my goods?”

Other standouts in Eisenberg’s portfolio include empathy.com, an online platform that helps relatives handle the details of death, such as dealing with probate court, funeral arrangements and settling finances. Healthy.io, which developed a telemedicine app that enables patients with chronic kidney failure to take a urine test at home and deliver the data to a lab by smartphone for analysis, is another Aleph investment.

For Israel, much of the value of normalization with the Gulf is its geographical position and longtime experience as a platform to reach the most dynamic nations and business centers in Southeast Asia, including India and Indonesia, Eisenberg said.

“This whole Eastern Rim opens up to Israel via the Emirates, and it’s going to be very meaningful because Asia is ascendant,” Eisenberg said. “I think you’re going to see alignment between the ascendant nations going forward. Israel and the Emirates are a big part of that.”

Meet the UAE’s unofficial business ambassador

Emirati investor Sabah al-Binali is a seasoned financial services executive, but 18 months after the Abraham Accords, he is adding another, albeit informal, role to his already impressive portfolio: business ambassador.

“People call me for advice from both sides,” al-Binali, partner and executive chairman of OurCrowd Arabia, one of the largest global venture investing platforms based in Jerusalem, told The Circuit of his work connecting Israeli and Emirati companies. Trade and investments between the two countries are already flourishing, reaching an estimated over $600-$700 million within the first year. In September, Emirati Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq Al-Marri predicted that economic activity with Israel could reach more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

“I get Emirati businessmen asking me, ‘How do I manage this guy, he’s calling three times a day?’” said al-Binali, who forged close ties with Jewish and Israeli peers as an undergraduate student at Princeton University. “I tell him, be direct, say, ‘Don’t call me three times a day, I’ll get back to you about this point.’”

And he also has a message for Israelis eyeing business opportunities in the Gulf too: slow down – and prioritize hiring those with experience working with Emiratis, who can help to navigate cultural differences.

“I know I’m generalizing here, but Israelis have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and are quick decision-makers, while in the UAE, you have good, long-term strategic thinking,” said al-Binali, adding, “If we can synergize this fast-decision-making entrepreneurial spirit with the thoughtful, strategic thinking, then it could be the best partnership in the world — it could be unbelievable.”

Finding a way to bridge these contrasting business styles is exactly what al-Binali, who took up the position of executive chairman just a few weeks after the normalization agreements were signed in September 2020, is trying to do for OurCrowd and for the Abraham Accords.

This week, foreign ministers from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt, as well as Secretary of State Tony Blinken, held a historic diplomatic summit in Israel’s Negev desert. 

Al-Binali, who is considered one of the most senior Emirati nationals operating on behalf of an Israeli venture capital firm, says the next step is creating similar interaction in the business realm.

But first, he told The Circuit, some key misconceptions and even a level of mistrust must be addressed and dispelled.  

In August 2020, when he first began talking to OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved about taking on the unprecedented role, al-Binali told him, “If you’re going to have this view that you go to the UAE to raise money, then I am the wrong person for the job, and you’ll probably not raise even one cent.”

“I think we’ve got to get away from this fantasy that the opportunity here is money coming from the UAE and technology coming from Israel,” Binali continued. “Israeli startups are drowning in money and so, you know, without being cynical, if that’s what people are looking at as the opportunity, I believe, they will be disappointed.”

Instead, he said, the countries can be mutually beneficial to one another on multiple levels. al-Binali believes that Israel and the UAE can serve as a gateway for one another. The Emiratis, who are active in Africa and Southeast Asia, can open up new markets for Israel. And Israel’s close ties with the U.S. are attractive for Emirati companies. 

On another level, the two markets can become a testing ground for new innovation. Al-Binali points out that similarities in size and scale between the two Middle Eastern states makes them ideal partners.

“Some Israeli startups are fortunate enough to start commercializing in the States, and obviously the big market is where everyone wants to go, but there are also many that just can’t make that big jump from Israel to the U.S., so it makes sense for them to use the UAE as a gateway to other countries in the Middle East, Africa and South Southeast Asia,” he said, giving the example of some medtech companies currently carrying out clinical trials in the UAE.

And as for the question of whether a slew of lucrative deals will open up markets in countries who have not yet normalized ties with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia, al-Binali is certain that it is only a matter of time.

“There’s clear curiosity,” he said, describing how businesspeople from those countries, including Saudi Arabia, are expressing an interest in meeting with their Israeli counterparts in the UAE.

“I’ve seen it in Dubai, Saudis who are visiting want to start having that discussion.”

Despite the long antipathy between Jerusalem and Riyadh, al-Binali believes that a thaw is inevitable. “Look, I think it’s going that way. I mean, let’s look at what is happening now, you have [Israeli airline] overflight rights and that means the mind is open,” he observed. “How and when we will get there is not clear to me, but I feel strongly that it is not a question of if; it depends on the Saudi leadership. They will decide based on their interests the best timing.”

Between Israelis and Emiratis, al-Binali said, “there are still personal reservations on both sides, but in general, the societal move overcomes any personal reservations, and people are just curious.”

As for his progress so far with OurCrowd, which is the first venture capital company to be licensed in the UAE, al-Binali said he has been afforded significant flexibility in developing operations in the Gulf, and that several big projects are already in the works, including a global AI innovation center and a new incubator.

“Of course, there is potential for disagreements and working together is still a challenge, but I also believe there are some great opportunities,” concluded al-Binali, pointing to global events such as changes in the U.S. equity market, growing inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war. “You’re going to see contraction, but on the flip side oil has just gone through the roof, which means the coffers of the sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf will be filled out, and there’ll be pressure on them to expand their investment programs.”

Israeli entrepreneur and investor Erel Margalit explores Bahrain’s fintech sector

This article was first published in Jewish Insider.

With an eye to Riyadh, Israeli entrepreneur and investor Erel Margalit spent four days in Bahrain last week exploring the Gulf state’s advances and aspirations in the world of financial technology, or fintech, as well as assessing the possibility of opening one of his innovation centers in the country. He believes that such developments could form a tech bridge to Bahrain’s neighbor, Saudi Arabia, which Israel has long been hoping will be the next country to join the Abraham Accords normalization agreements. 

“I was surprised by the level of entrepreneurship in Bahrain; those regulating the country are using ideas and concepts like a startup,” Margalit, founder and executive chairman of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) – one of Israel’s oldest and most established venture capital companies – told Jewish Insider in an exclusive interview on Saturday.

“They are able and modest and ready to hear new ideas,” he said of Bahraini officials and counterparts that he met with. “They want to hear about what we are doing in Israel and there is a real eagerness to cooperate with us.”

Margalit, who served as a member of Knesset for the Labor party from 2015-2017, was invited by the Bahraini government and the country’s Economic Development Board. He was also a special guest of the country’s finance and national economy minister, H. E. Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.

The first Israeli businessman to meet with the minister since the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020, Margalit also held discussions with economic-business leaders, including the heads of Bahrain’s major banks – the National Bank of Bahrain and ila Bank ­– various investment funds, communications and energy companies, and heads of leading universities, as well as leaders in the innovation industry and dozens of technology and social entrepreneurs.

Much of the discussions, Margalit told JI, focused on how to develop the country’s fintech industry, which draws innovators and investors from across the Arab world. It’s a fine fit for many Israeli companies already working in this now-growing tech field, he added.

“Fintech is about allowing financial services to reach people who don’t always have access to them,” the entrepreneur explained. “Bringing financial services to small businesses in different countries is touching, and it is a path that builds goodwill and removes barriers.”

But boosting the fintech industry in Bahrain, which is strategically located in the Persian Gulf just off the coast of Saudi Arabia, could also be a highly beneficial step for Israel, where there is hope that the Saudis may be the next Arab nation to normalize ties with the Jewish state.

“Bahrain is a bridge to Saudi Arabia, and we all realize that this might be Israel’s next big step in the Arab world,” Margalit said. “For Israel, Bahrain can serve as a gateway to a much larger chapter that will make a big difference to Israel’s economy and its diplomacy.”

Margalit said that Al Khalifa took a special interest in his Startup City model, which connects prominent tech and business players with social and cultural entrepreneurs. Margalit first developed the concept about 15 years ago in Jerusalem and has since created four more hubs, each focused on a specific aspect of the innovation and technology ecosystem, including cyber, food tech and health tech.

“They heard about what we are doing in New York [Margalit opened a hub in Soho in June 2021], Haifa, the Galilee, Jerusalem and Beersheba and invited us to have an open conversation about how Israel and Bahrain can cooperate,” Margalit said, adding he was “honored to answer the invitation of the Bahraini government to open a new economic chapter between the two countries based on high-tech and entrepreneurship.”

Israel’s ambassador to Bahrain, Eitan Na’eh, who accompanied Margalit at the meetings, called the visit a “milestone in the relations between the business sectors of the two countries.”

“Erel’s Startup City model, which was presented to senior Bahraini officials, complements our joint vision of building a tech corridor between the two countries,” Na’eh said. “Israel sees Bahrain as the gateway to the Gulf.”

The quarterback scion in Zion

To most Israelis, Nicky Montana appears to be just another ambitious American entrepreneur and investor curious about the startup nation’s vibrant innovation scene and what it might contribute to our world in the future. For Americans and NFL-knowledgeable Israelis, however, he is royalty, as the son of iconic Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana.

The younger Montana moved to Israel three months ago and takes all the labels — and his father’s legendary status — in stride, remaining singularly focused on learning as much as he can about what makes Israel’s high-tech industry tick.

“There’s so much interesting stuff that has brought my attention here,” Montana, 29, told The Circuit in an interview at a Tel Aviv cafe last week. “I was here in the past – on a trip with [New England Patriots owner and sponsor of the Israel Football League] Robert Kraft – and that was very different. We went to Jerusalem, and we toured around, the schedule was very regimented. Now I am living here and meeting real people and just kind of getting ingrained in everything, and it’s really been incredible.”

Born and raised in California, where his father won four Super Bowl championships with the San Francisco 49ers, Montana said his father tried to downplay his fame and “never really talked about any of it really.”

He said he only learned the true extent of his father’s celebrity status more recently from the new six-part documentary series, “Joe Montana: Cool Under Pressure,” produced by Peacock. 

Nicky Montana (Photo: Gili Levinson for The Circuit)

“It was all external and you know, sometimes people would be like, ‘Do you really understand?’” Montana recalled. “I mean, obviously out on the field he was incredible, but then I would hear people talking about after the game that he went to hang out with Frank Sinatra and I’m like, ‘I got to hear everything about that. Who was there? What were you guys doing? And I wonder what else was going on under the hood.”

Montana, who said as a baby he initially called his father ‘Hey Joe,’ mimicking the fans who would scream out to the legendary quarterback, also said that growing up, he and his older brother, Nate, were not pressured to pursue the game professionally. (Montana also has two older sisters.) 

“It was never like, ‘You have to play or we’re going out to the yard now for drills,’ he would never bring it up, really,” said Montana. “I would have to beg him to help with practices, but he was super sensitive because of the pressure that might be put on us from a young age.”

In the end, both brothers went on to play college football. Nicky, as quarterback like his father, first played for the University of Washington from 2009 to 2012, and later for Mt. San Antonio College. After one season with the junior college, he transferred in 2013 to Tulane, where he was the starting quarterback.

Montana said that like any teenager, he had to learn to appreciate his father’s “status and his knowledge,” but he quickly realized that he had a valuable resource if he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. “It is hard to take direction from your parents, you know, I think a lot of people struggle with it and it took me a few years to realize like, wow, he’s, you know, the best ever and if I don’t listen to him, then the joke’s on me.”

Nicky Montana with his family (Courtesy)

Eventually, however, he decided not to pursue a career in professional football. “It was always my dream, but towards the end, I kept getting hurt and taken out of the game,” Montana explained. “At a certain point, towards the end, I was just like, I’ve been doing this my whole life and I don’t know what it is, but the feeling is gone.”

Putting his football career behind him, Nicky took the skills of leadership and endurance that he learned on the field and turned his attention to the world of high-tech. He began by dabbling in fantasy sports, and eventually sold his own startup, a Y Combinator-backed company called Balto, to FuboTV, the leading sports-first live TV streaming platform in the U.S., in December 2020.

Montana then began investing as an angel investor in more than half a dozen companies across the globe. Last year, when Isaac “Yitz” Applbaum, co-founder and partner of Tel Aviv-based MizMaa Ventures, and a close friend of the Montana family (as well as a wine columnist at Jewish Insider), asked if he wanted to move to Tel Aviv and work for MizMaa, Montana hesitated only slightly.

His friends, he said, thought he was crazy. “All they knew about Israel was camels and rockets,” he quipped. “But the opportunity to come to a place like Israel, given everything that’s going on here, was super enticing – everyone is an entrepreneur here.”

Montana, whose focus at MizMaa is on Web3, cryptocurrencies and fintech, continued, “There’s so much ambition and it’s amazing being on the venture side and seeing how everyone thinks the world’s gonna look in the future.”

“The other thing, I guess, is the adventure coming over here because I’ve lived in California my whole life,” he continued. “I was curious because I grew up in Silicon Valley and a bunch of my friends are either entrepreneurs or work for the top firms there, and I wanted to know what is the difference, what’s going on here that’s not going on in San Francisco or Silicon Valley?”

Nicky Montana (Courtesy)

While Montana has been getting a glimpse into the future as envisaged by the best minds in Israeli startups, he is also enjoying the here and now of life in Tel Aviv, as well as the idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture.

“I think the whole Israeli thing called chutzpah — I’m probably butchering it — is very motivating,” he grinned. “It is incredible to see it in real life, but Israel’s success is partly because of Israelis not being afraid to fail; they just keep on going until they succeed.”

Asked if anyone in Israel has associated him with his famous father or if he’d been approached about playing for the Israel Football League, Montana laughed. “The head coach DM’d me before I got over here with a really funny message: ‘Words reach me that you’re coming to the region, do you want to come and try out?’” he said.

As for Israelis recognizing the legendary Joe Montana, his son laughed: “I don’t know why they would — they might confuse him with Daniel Craig, though.”