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Monday.com celebrates its IPO at the Nasdaq, June 10, 2021.
Source: Nasdaq

In April, Insight Partners’ Jeff Horing hopped on a flight to Israel for a breakfast with tech CEOs. It was also an opportunity to pay a visit to his firm’s first international office, which had opened less than two years before.

Now, CEOs from two of those companies are visiting him in New York. They’re actually coming to ring the bell on the Nasdaq, as Israel’s high-growth companies line up to hit the public markets.

Last week, collaboration software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor Monday.com held its IPO and closed on Friday with a market cap of $8.2 billion. This week, fellow Israeli software company WalkMe, whose technology is designed to simplify enterprise software and applications, is scheduled to go public with a valuation of up to $2.6 billion

Insight is the biggest investor in both. The firm owns a 43% stake in Monday.com and controls 32% of WalkMe. Its combined ownership in the two companies is currently worth about $3.9 billion.

“For a long time, Israel has been the start-up hub, a hive of activity,” Horing wrote in an email, in response to written questions. “But these start-ups are scaling successfully at a more rapid pace.”

Money is flooding into Israeli tech. The country’s start-ups raised $5.37 billion in the first quarter, more than double the amount a year earlier and 89% above the fourth quarter, which was a record period, according to a report from IVC and law firm Meitar.

Game developer Playtika, based in Herzliya, went public in January and has a market cap of $10.6 billion, making it the fourth most-valuable publicly traded tech company in Israel, according to FactSet. Monday.com ranks fifth and WalkMe is poised to crack the top 10.

For Insight, the launch of an Israeli operation in late 2019 marked the firm’s first office opening outside the U.S. since its founding in 1995. But Insight had been investing in and around Tel Aviv for over two decades.

Horing said the firm did its first deal in Israel in 2000. He highlighted Enigma, a developer of software to manufacturers, and Shunra, a network virtualization company that was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, as two early investments.

“I’ve always loved visiting Israel and have many memories at tiny market restaurants eating incredible food, arguing for hours over different technologies and SaaS strategies,” Horing said. “My team and I spent countless hours flying back and forth to Israel, often spending weeks at a time getting to know entrepreneurs and working alongside our portfolio companies.”

Prior to Monday.com, Insight’s marquee investment had been in website creation software company Wix, which went public in 2013. Insight co-led a $40 million round in 2011 and had a 12% stake at the time of the IPO.

Wix’s stock price has since multiplied 17-fold, giving the company a $15 billion market cap, second only to Check Point Software among Israeli tech companies.

“Wix was a foundational investment for Insight in Israel,” Horing said. Wix co-founder Avishai Abrahami is also on Monday.com’s board. Along with Abrahami and Nir Zohar, Wix’s operating chief, “we’ve co-invested in many Israeli deals over the years,” Horing said.

Acquiring an Israeli firm’s portfolio

The most glaring detail on Monday.com’s cap table is the size of Insight’s stake.

Typically when a venture-backed company goes public with a multibillion-dollar valuation, the top firm would hold no more than 30% of the outstanding shares, often much less.

Insight took a unique approach to get to 43%. In February 2019, seven months before opening its Tel Aviv office, Insight purchased the majority of a fund portfolio held by an Israeli firm called Genesis Partners, whose partners were leaving for other ventures.

Within that fund, which closed in 2009, Genesis had invested in Monday.com’s seed and Series A financing rounds. Insight first came in as part of the $25 million Series B in 2017.

After acquiring the contents of the Genesis fund, Insight was able to merge the two firms’ holdings, building a stake that’s now worth $3.1 billion. Genesis was also an early investor in two other Insight-backed companies: online music learning company JoyTunes and business intelligence company Sisense.

Monday.com co-founder and co-CEO Roy Mann told CNBC that Insight was tapping into a big change happening in Israeli tech.

“They had a very strong conviction in Israel and the Israeli ecosystem,” Mann said in an interview after the IPO. “The whole industry matured to a level where entrepreneurs want to build big companies and want to hold them for a long time. Insight was early on to recognize that and really go and back a lot of amazing Israeli companies.”

Horing joined co-founders Mann and Eran Zinman in ringing the Nasdaq’s opening bell on Thursday. The company also had 250 employees come in from cities across the U.S.

Horing will have the opportunity to do it again this week for the WalkMe IPO. In 2017, Insight led a $75 million investment in WalkMe. By following on over the course of two more financing rounds, Insight built up a 32% stake that’s worth $750 million at the top end of WalkMe’s IPO range.

Horing said Insight now has 80 “operating experts” in Israel working with portfolio companies and has expanded in Tel Aviv to take over the space formerly occupied by JFrog, which went public on the Nasdaq last year.

As for what Horing finds most exciting coming out of Israel these days, he said there’s no shortage of opportunities to put money to work.

“Israel is firing on all cylinders,” he said. “Of course cyber is a strong sector but it is much broader to a wide group of SaaS, infrastructure, fintech, gaming, and ad tech.”

WATCH: JFrog CEO on the company’s public debut and outlook

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Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

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Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

Shares of Intuit popped about 9% on Friday, a day after the company reported quarterly results that beat analysts’ estimates and issued rosy guidance for the full year.

Intuit, which is best known for its TurboTax and QuickBooks software, said revenue in the fiscal third quarter increased 15% to $7.8 billion. Net income rose 18% to $2.82 billion, or $10.02 per share, from $2.39 billion, or $8.42 per share, a year earlier.

“This is the fastest organic growth that we have had in over a decade,” Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Thursday. “It’s really incredible growth across the platform.”

For its full fiscal year, Intuit said it expects to report revenue of $18.72 billion to $18.76 billion, up from the range of $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion it shared last quarter. Analysts were expecting $18.35 billion, according to LSEG.

“We’re redefining what’s possible with [artificial intelligence] by becoming a one-stop shop of AI-agents and AI-enabled human experts to fuel the success of consumers and small and mid-market businesses,” Goodarzi said in a release Thursday.

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Goldman Sachs analysts reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $860 from $750 on Thursday. The analysts said Intuit’s execution across its core growth pillars is “reinforcing confidence” in its growth profile over the long term.

The company’s AI roadmap, which includes the introduction of AI agents, will add additional upside, the analysts added.

“In our view, Intuit stands out as a rare asset straddling both consumer and business ecosystems, all while supplemented by AI-prioritization,” the Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank also reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $815 from $750.

They said the company’s results were “reassuring” after a rocky two years and that they feel more confident about its ability to grow the consumer business.

“Longer term, we continue to believe Intuit presents a unique investment opportunity and we see its platform approach powering accelerated innovation with leverage, thus enabling sustained mid-teens or better EPS growth,” the analysts wrote in a Friday note.

WATCH: Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

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Why Trump’s iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

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Why Trump's iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook escorts U.S. President Donald Trump as he tours Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant with in Austin, Texas, U.S., November 20, 2019.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

The once-solid relationship between President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook is breaking down over the idea of a U.S.-made iPhone.

Last week, Trump said he “had a little problem with Tim Cook,” and on Friday, he threatened to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones in a social media post.

Trump is upset with Apple’s plan to source the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. from its factory partners in India, instead of China. Cook officially confirmed this plan earlier this month during earnings.

Trump wants Apple to build iPhones for the U.S. market in the U.S. and has continued to pressure the company and Cook.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United  States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.

Analysts said it would probably make more sense for Apple to eat the cost rather than move production stateside.

“In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to US,” wrote Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.

UBS analyst David Vogt said that the potential 25% tariffs were a “jarring headline,” but that they would only be a “modest headwind” to Apple’s earnings, dropping annual earnings by 51 cents per share, versus a prior expectation of 34 cents per share under the current tariff landscape.

Experts have long held that a U.S.-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.

Analysts have said that made in U.S.A. iPhones would be much more expensive, CNBC previously reported, with some estimates ranging between $1,500 to $3,500 to buy one at retail. Labor costs would certainly rise.

But it would also be logistically complicated.

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Supply chains and factories take years to build out, including installing equipment and staffing up. Parts that Apple imported to the United States for assembly might be subject to tariffs as well.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 but it was only in recent years that the region was capable of building Apple’s latest devices.

“We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note on Friday.

Other analysts were wary about predicting how Trump’s threat ultimately plays out. Apple might be able to strike a deal with the administration — despite the eroding relationship — or challenge the tariffs in court.

For now, most of Apple’s most important products are exempt from tariffs after Trump gave phones and computers a tariff waiver — even from China — in April, but Apple doesn’t know how the Trump administration’s tariffs will ultimately play out beyond June.

“We’re skeptical,” that the 25% tariff will materialize, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers.

He wrote that Apple could try to preserve its roughly 41% gross margin on iPhones by raising prices in the U.S. by between $100 or $300 per phone.

It’s unclear how Trump intends to target Apple’s India-made iPhones. Rakers wrote that the administration could put specific tariffs on phone imports from India.

Apple’s operations in India continue to expand.

Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple, is building a new $1.5 billion factory in India that could do some iPhone production, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

Apple declined to comment on Trump’s post.

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp sells more than $50 million in stock

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp sells more than  million in stock

Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp speaks during the Hill & Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025.

Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has sold more than $50 million worth of shares in the artificial intelligence software company, according to securities filings.

The stock transactions occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday between $125.26 and $127.70 per share. Following the stock sales, Karp owned about 6.43 million shares of Palantir stock, worth about $787 million based on Thursday’s closing price.

The sales were connected to a series of automatic share sales to cover required tax withholding obligations tied to vesting restricted stock units, according to filings.

Other top executives at the Denver-based company also unloaded stock.

Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar sold about $21 million worth of Palantir stock, while co-founder and president Stephen Cohen dumped about $43.5 million in shares.

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Palantir shares have notched fresh highs in recent weeks as the company leapt above Salesforce in market value and into the top 10 most valuable U.S. tech firms.

The digital analytics company has benefited from bets on AI and a surge in government contracts as companies prioritize streamlining and President Donald Trump targets a federal overhaul with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

The stock has outperformed its tech peers since the start of 2025, surging nearly 62%, but investors are paying a high multiple on shares.

In its earnings report earlier this month, the company lifted its full-year guidance due to AI adoption, but shares fell on international growth concerns.

“You don’t have to buy our shares,” Karp told CNBC as shares slumped. “We’re happy. We’re going to partner with the world’s best people and we’re going to dominate. You can be along for the ride or you don’t have to be.”

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