Israeli Trailblazers Show
Every episode leaves you smarter, genuinely amazed, and seeing your own personal world differently. Strangers you've never met are making your life easier, safer, and healthier right now — and you're about to meet them. Wildfires stopped before the fire trucks leave the station. Cancer caught in five minutes, from your couch. Seizures predicted hours ahead. All from a country the size of New Jersey — the one the world can't stop arguing about. Elon Musk calls Israel #1 in innovation per capita. In under 20 minutes, host Jennifer Weissmann introduces you to the innovators and thinkers behind the breakthroughs you personally rely on.
Israeli Trailblazers Show
Israeli Tech Roundup: Self-Charging Roads, AI Surgeons & Drought-Proof Seeds | Gerson Panitch
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Gerson Panitch, host of "What's Next in Israel Tech," walks through the most jaw-dropping Israeli innovations coming next: highways that charge your car as you drive, robot surgeons with AI precision, saliva-based pregnancy tests, and drought-proof seeds that could help end world hunger. The untold story of what the startup nation is building.
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So you can drive along a highway, and the highway has embedded in it the charging mechanism that will charge your vehicle so you don't have to stop. They've got a dispenser that's like a coffee machine in your house and it makes you a customized vitamin drink every morning based on all the feedback it gets from you from your smartwatch.
SPEAKER_00Did you know that your phone, your car, and even your computer are probably powered by some component of an Israeli technology? The media forgets to mention this. So that is the purpose of our Israeli cheerleader and our guests today. I am Jennifer Weisman and welcome to the Israeli Trailblazers Show, where we introduce you to the fearless innovators who are quietly making your life better. Today we're going to talk to Gerson Panic, a nice Jewish lawyer from the middle of America who decided to leave Washington and move to Israel. And he made Alia a few years ago talk about a dramatic timing. After October 7th, when the headlines about Israel turned dark and misleading, Gerson and his team at the Finnegan IP law firm flipped the script and they launched what is called What's Next in Israel Tech, a Hollywood-style 92nd weekly spotlight on unbelievable startups based in Israel. Slick, smart, creative, and it's a massive hit. So welcome, Gerson. How are you?
SPEAKER_01Great. It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_00All right, let's just get right into it. The Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th totally shook Israel, and it really hurt the startup community in Israel and investments slowed. Why did you see that as the right moment to launch what's next in Israel tech?
SPEAKER_01Well, there were two things that were happening simultaneously. One was that, you know, I'm an IP lawyer. I do patenting for a lot of Israeli startups. And I was seeing that my startup clients were having difficulty with their funding. Simultaneously, we're seeing these horrific news reports from the United States and from around the world that are completely distorting what's going on. And I found myself very much interested in helping Israel's narrative in the world so that it would be accurate.
SPEAKER_00Strange to understand the reality that Israeli tech is really invisible to most people in the world. I mean, they don't yet that inside of this iPhone, there's an Israeli component or in their car or in their medicine.
SPEAKER_01There is just a never-ending stream of really cool Israeli technology, like smart, smart technology that's changing the world from small things like a surfboard that goes up in the air and sort of flies above the water, to software companies like Monday.com that are shaping workflows in the workplace, medical devices and automobiles. It's amazing the technology we have coming out of Israel. I mean, most cars in Israel, most cars around the world, are using mobile eye technology for navigation. The driver assist systems around the world, 70%, I believe, are mobile I and Inavis, is you're doing LIDAR, and there's just so much really interesting technology in every sector that's really exciting, and the world needs to see what Israel contributes.
SPEAKER_00Give me three really cool Israeli tech companies that have come across your desk in the last, say, 30, 60, 90 days. Cool stuff that's gonna really help the world.
SPEAKER_01This week we did Electrion. What does Electrion do? Just like your cell phone, when you can put it down on a smart surface and it will charge the phone, they're doing that with vehicles. So you can drive along a highway, and the highway has embedded in it the charging mechanism that will charge your vehicle so you don't have to stop. So they're starting right now with fleet vehicles like buses, municipal vehicles, and the buses have a regular route and they come and they stop at the same stops over and over again. And every time they stop, they're getting a charge. And so it used to be that if you had an electric bus in your fleet, you can only use it half the day because it would have to sit and charge for the other half. Now you can use the bus all day long and never have to take it out of service. That's one.
SPEAKER_00That is crazy, crazy tech. What's next in Israel? Just throw it out there.
SPEAKER_01Here's a drone company, I think it's called Tree Top, you know, to stop wildfires like in California that spread like crazy through the trees. They have a drone that has a laser on it and cuts the branches off, then it stops the fire from spreading. It's a breast pump.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I love that. I read about you with this. Did you see that? Yes, it mimics the baby's phone. It mimics the tongue. That's a brilliant, brilliant product. Incredible. Okay, so we have breast pumps. We have drive under the highway and charge your vehicle. We have navigation.
SPEAKER_01One of the problems when you're operating in the brain is that there can be subtle movements of the head. And an Israeli tech company that has figured out using AI how to model the brain so that in real time you can map how the head is moving and get the surgeon to the right place.
SPEAKER_00That is incredible. Okay, so we have surgical devices.
SPEAKER_01I'm filming one called Expand. They want to revolutionize the shopping experience. Like if you're in a city and you just want to go and grab something, you walk in, and there's these full-size screens that are like the size of a human being, and they just line the walls, and that's all there is in the store. And you can just swipe across them and just pick your products. When you're finished and you pay, they just come out pre-bag free robotically, can change our in-city shopping experience.
SPEAKER_00There's so much incredible stuff coming out of this tiny little country called Israel. And the takeaway that the world sees is negative, dark, misleading. Not talking about the breast pump, not talking about the new FDA-approved drops where you no longer need to use reading glasses. This is Israeli tech that is affecting everyone in the globe. Give me a rapid fire of the cool, hot, interesting tech coming out of Israel in the what's next in Israel tech segments. Go.
SPEAKER_01Dreap AI, customized vitamins. It monitors your whole schedule of your life. It knows that you haven't slept. So it gives you certain vitamins that are going to help you there. It knows that you've worked out. So it's going to give you vitamins. They've got a dispenser that's like a coffee machine in your house and it makes you a customized vitamin drink every morning.
SPEAKER_00Based on what?
SPEAKER_01Based on all the feedback it gets from you from your smartwatch.
SPEAKER_00This technology reads your smartphone, figures out what you're missing based on your data on your smartphone, and then customizes some kind of vitamin cocktail for you to drink in the morning. Yes. All right. That's one very cool company. Give me another one.
SPEAKER_01QDSO, crazy company. Just like you have a solar panel and it's a woman-run company. They have something that looks like a solar panel, but that produces hydrogen fuel without any energy. It just uses the sun and water, and it basically produces hydrogen. And with a number of panels, you'll be able to basically run your whole house for the year.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievable. Okay, so that's two. Give me another one.
SPEAKER_01Olive Farms. I think they're the only company in the world now that's approved to make steaks that are grown in the lab.
SPEAKER_00They take a cell from a cow and they make like millions of pounds of ground beef with it, lab grown meat. Or steaks. They can grow a steak. Okay. All right. That's three. Give me four.
SPEAKER_01Pick Commerce, which is a robot that basically can pick up anything and it works in a warehouse. Right now, Amazon fulfills orders. A lot of it is done manually. You got people picking things. And the problem is that robots haven't been good at dexterity and like how to pick up all different sized products. So they have a robot that can pick up different size products and pack packages.
SPEAKER_00What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01Pre-Cure Medical. It's an Israeli biotech startup that uses a patient on a chip technology to personalize cancer treatments. It grows 3D tumor models on microfluidic chips. And then it tests how each patient's cancer responds to different therapies. And they can then deliver the therapy that's going to work for your cancer.
SPEAKER_00So completely customized cancer therapy.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Better juice. Better juice has found a way to cut the natural sugars out of juice by 80%. So you're intaking less sugar. They can run their juice through a bioreactor. It removes much of the sugars, but the flavor is still quite good and much healthier than just drinking regular juice.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Amazing. Okay. What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01Salagnostics. This is a pregnancy test done with saliva. So you just put it in your mouth and you get your results on what looks like a traditional pregnancy test, but without the inconvenience. And it's already on sale in the market in Europe.
SPEAKER_00What's next in Israel Tac?
SPEAKER_01Binery Foods, bioengineers, potatoes to give your potato all of the nutrients that you would get from cow milk. What? It's crazy. It transforms dairy by growing real cow milk casein protein in genetically engineered potatoes. No cows are required.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01So basically, you could grow a potato that gives you like the effect of drinking a glass of milk.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01Atopia. Atopia, you can drive vehicles remotely. I sat in an office in Tel Aviv and drove a Kia car that was 20 miles away on a road. There are obviously military applications, but there are also applications if you have to have drivers driving down highways, transporting goods across the country. You know, a driver can only drive for so many hours. You can swap out drivers with this technology.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01A fun one is level hydrofoils. They make an electric hydrofoil. It looks like a surfboard, but it's got a fin that comes off the bottom. And when it powers up, the surfboard rises off the water and lets you glide effortlessly across the water.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. What's next in Israel Tack?
SPEAKER_01Extreme simulations. This is a crazy story. This guy needed to figure out how he was going to train medics in the army to deal with combat situations and injuries. And so he made these dummies that are realistic. The organs are realistic, the skin is realistic, so that you can train the medics before they have to face it in real life. And the irony of the situation is after October 7th, the founder of the company got called into Gaza and he was injured. And the medics who saved his life trained on the technology that he developed.
SPEAKER_00Wow. That's incredible. What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01Tree tube. You know, the reason that there aren't a lot of trees in cities is because the roots of the trees break the power lines and the pipes. And so you've got a limitation of what you can do in terms of planting trees in cities. Tree tube builds this like ecosystem. It's like a big tube, a huge tube that goes along a sidewalk, and the trees get planted into openings in the tube. So the roots can't get beyond the tube. And now you can make your urban environments green.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Okay, what's next in Israel tech that is like the coolest of the coolest, most amazing, shocking tech coming out of tiny little Israel?
SPEAKER_01Here's a really cool one. It's called mycelium. And they make a biomaterial that's a substitute for plastic. It's actually made from mushrooms. And it can revolutionize our waste stream because no longer will plastics hang around forever, but they will naturally degenerate. And we save our planet.
SPEAKER_00That's absolutely incredible. Have you done anything with ocean?
SPEAKER_01There's a company called Nakai Robotics. They make a robot that suctions itself to the hull of ships and cleans and it moves along the ship and cleans all the barnacles, everything that attaches to the hull of the ship. It cleans it off robotically. It saves time because this can work while the ship is in motion. You don't have to take the ship out of service to clean the hull. And it saves an enormous amount of fuel because all of those things that stick to the hull, they end up slowing down the ship and creating more drag and wasting millions and millions of dollars in fuel every year.
SPEAKER_00That is really interesting. I love that. The out-of-the-box ones that we don't think about. What's next in Israel Tech?
SPEAKER_01Battery that will go around the parking garages and swap out the batteries of the cars and put new batteries in. So instead of having to wait for your car to charge, you can just replace the batteries and it can find your car by the license plate number, go down, get the battery out, move on to the next car.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing. All right, give me one more because I'm addicted to this. Sally crop.
SPEAKER_01Sally crop is revolutionizing agriculture by pre-treating seeds to withstand drought, heat, and soil and salinity. There's no GMOs, there's no chemicals that are involved, and no extra water is needed, but you can still boost your production by 10 to 32% across crops like tomatoes and onions and rice and alfalfa.
SPEAKER_00Incredible. You know, to have this kind of famine-resistant seed, that's unbelievable. Every week, a 90-second blitz on the most amazing tech for that week in what's next in Israel tech. And everyone listening here needs to tune in to Gerson's show. Israelis are helping your world every single day. Gerson reminded us that when the world gets noisy and forgets about how much Israelis contribute, Israel needs a cheerleader. And that cheerleader is What's Next in Israel Tac by Gerson? And I want to thank you for watching this episode of the Israeli Trailblazer Show, where we share the stories of the amazing Israelis that are making your life better every single day. If this episode inspired you, please share it with a friend and post it on all of your socials. Until next time, I'm Jennifer Weissman.
