Israeli soldiers on a tank are seen near the Israel-Gaza border.
Ilia Yefimovich | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
On Saturday, Dvir Ben-Aroya woke up expecting to go on his regular morning run. Instead, he was met with blaring alarms and missiles flying over Tel Aviv.
Ben-Aroya, co-founder of Spike, a workplace collaboration platform with clients including Fiverr, Snowflake, Spotify and Wix, was confused for over an hour — “No one really knew what was going on,” he recalled — but as time passed, social media and texts from friends began to fill him in.
That morning, Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization, had carried out terrorist attacks near the Israel-Gaza border, killing civilians and taking hostages. On Sunday, Israel declared war and began implementing a siege of Gaza, cutting off access to power, food, water and fuel. So far, more than 1,000 Israelis have been killed, according to the Israeli Embassy in Washington; in Gaza and the West Bank the death toll is nearing 850, according to two health ministries in the region.
At 3 p.m. local time Saturday, Ben-Aroya held an all-hands meeting, and he says every one of his 35 full-time, Israel-based employees joined the call. People shared their experiences, and Ben-Aroya decided everyone should work from home for the foreseeable future, adding that if anyone wanted to move away from Israel with their family, the company would support them. At least 10% decided to take him up on that offer, he told CNBC, and he believes more will do so in the coming weeks.
Israel’s tech community accounts for nearly one-fifth of the country’s annual gross domestic product, making it the sector with the largest economic output in the country, according to the Israel Innovation Authority. The tech sector also makes up about 10% of the total labor force. Even during war, much of Israel’s tech community is still finding a way to push forward, according to Ben-Aroya and a handful of other members of the tech community CNBC spoke with.
Israeli soldiers stand guard at the site of the Supernova desert music Festival, after Israeli forces managed to secure areas around Re’im.
Ilia Yefimovich | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Ben-Aroya had been planning to launch Spike’s integrated artificial intelligence tool this past Monday, and he almost immediately decided to put the project on hold — but only for a week’s time.
For Amitai Ratzon, CEO of cybersecurity firm Pentera, Saturday began with “uncertainty and lots of confusion,” but when his company had its all-hands meeting on Monday, with 350 attendees, he recalled some Israel-based workers viewing work as a good distraction. For those who feel the opposite, the company is allowing them to take the time off they need.
Pentera operates from 20 countries, with Israel having the largest employee base, and it specializes in mimicking cyberattacks for clients such as BNP Paribas, Chanel and Sephora to identify system weaknesses. Ratzon said he has had to restructure some international commitments amid the conflict — canceling the training session some employees were flying into Israel for, asking someone to cover for his planned keynote address in Monaco, and having German and U.K. team members fly to a Dubai conference that Israel-based employees had been planning on attending.
“Everyone is covering for each other,” Ratzon told CNBC.
A considerable number of tech workers have already been called on for military reserve duty — a mobilization that so far totals about 360,000 Israelis.
Ratzon said Pentera has more than 20 of its best employees currently serving, “some of them on the front lines.”
Isaac Heller, CEO of Trullion, an accounting automation startup with offices in Tel Aviv, told CNBC that the company’s finance lead just finished its 2024 financial forecast and then immediately delivered new bulletproof vests for his Israeli Defense Forces unit after raising more than $50,000 to secure them.
Of digital bank One Zero’s almost 450 employees — all based in Israel — about 10% were drafted for reserve duty, CEO Gal Bar Dea told CNBC. He was surprised to see people constantly volunteering to cover for each other in an employee WhatsApp group.
“This guy says he was drafted, all of a sudden three people jump in and cover his tasks,” Bar Dea said. “There’s a sense of business as usual, everything is moving forward. … We had some meetings today on new launches coming. Everyone is keeping moving and covering for each other.”
One Zero is working on a ChatGPT-like chatbot for customer service, and this week employees opted to join optional planning meetings and decided not to move the deadlines, Bar Dea said. The person leading the ChatGPT efforts, an Air Force pilot who has been drafted, chose to join conference calls in his military uniform in between his duties, Bar Dea said.
“Many, many members of the tech community have been called up to reserve duty,” Yaniv Sadka, an investment associate at aMoon, a health tech and life sciences-focused venture capital firm, told CNBC, adding that a large swath of the community has been called to serve in Israel’s intelligence units as their reserve duty.
“I will have, by tonight, already been to two military funerals,” Sadka said.
Some members of Israel’s tech community are working overtime on tech tools specific to the conflict, such as a bulletin board-type website for missing persons, cyberattack defense tools, a GoFundMe-like tool and even a resource for finding online psychologists, according to Bar Dea.
“It’s pretty amazing — it’s the secret sauce of Israel … startup nation,” Bar Dea told CNBC, adding, “In two days, people are raising money, volunteering, taking kids in, building new houses, walking deserted dogs. … All the high-tech companies. People are building cyber stuff, communication stuff … stuff to help civilians … websites to find hostages.”
Sadka said that he’s “never seen anything like” the mass donations and mass volunteering happening at the moment.
“It’s thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people taking care of each other. There are everyone from teenagers to senior citizens helping,” he said.
Five minutes before Bar Dea’s call with CNBC, he said he heard sirens blaring from his office, and that his wife had taken his kids inside their home to shelter in place.
“It’s interesting trying to be the CEO of a bank or high-tech company, meanwhile I’m the father of a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old,” Bar Dea said, adding, “It’s very tough. It’s something we’ve never experienced before, ever. … Everyone is trying to get our hands around how to deal with it from a business perspective and also from a personal perspective.”
Sadka added, “It’s very difficult to concentrate on work when you’re dealing with all these personal matters and on securing yourself and the country.”
U.S. artificial intelligence names were in negative territory in premarket trading on Friday, extending losses into their third day.
Oracle was 0.9% lower in premarket trading, paring earlier losses which saw it fall 1.3%. Nvidia shed 0.7%, Micron fell 0.9%, and CoreWeave was down 1.3% at 5:16 a.m. ET.
The share price of cloud computing and database software maker Oracle plummeted on Thursday, ending the session around 11% lighter after revenue earnings missed analyst expectations on Wednesday.
It dragged other AI-related names down with it despite a record-breaking rally elsewhere on Wall Street, suggesting investors are rotating out of tech into other parts of the market.
Despite booming demand for Oracle’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, it posted mixed results this week. Revenue came in at $16.06 billion, compared with $16.21 billion expected by analysts, according to data compiled by LSEG.
It followed widespread speculation around the long-term health of the company, with investors cautious about its reliance on debt to execute its AI infrastructure build-out. The broader industry’s circular dealmaking has also raised eyebrows.
“We think recent investor scrutiny on artificial intelligence’s potential and circular GPU deals can be overly punitive to key AI suppliers like Oracle,” said Morningstar Equity Analyst Luke Yang. “Oracle remains a respectable cloud provider that enjoys strong switching costs across its database, application, and infrastructure lineup.”
That said, the firm reduced its fair value estimate for wide-moat Oracle to $286 per share, down from $340. Morningstar’s moat rating refers to its assessment of a company’s durable competitive advantage.
“We lowered our long-term earnings outlook as delivering Oracle’s planned capacity on time now proved to be a harder task. However, we continue to view shares as undervalued,” Yang added.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 11, 2025, in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced on Thursday, with both hitting fresh closing records. The Russell 2000 index also ended the session at a new high, following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quarter-point cut on Wednesday.
But if investors analyze Thursday’s individual stock movements, they will see not all is well with the AI play yet. Oracle shares plunged nearly 11%, a day after it reported weak quarterly revenue, higher capital expenditure and long-term lease commitments. Oracle’s slide dragged down AI-related names such as Nvidia and Micron.
In extended trading, Broadcom shares fell 4.5%. The chipmaker beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and revenue, but CEO Hock Tan appeared to have failed to address worries that their largest customer, Google, might eventually make more of its chips in-house. Rising memory prices would also pressure margins, while the company’s chip deal with OpenAI might not be binding.
That’s why the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.26% despite other major U.S. indexes hitting records. Putting the two together, that means investors are rotating out of tech into other parts of the market. The S&P 500 financials sector, for instance, closed at a fresh record, buoyed by jumps in Visa and Mastercard.
Even though the AI theme seems to be under scrutiny, other sectors are performing well on the back of a resilient U.S. economy — as signaled by Fed officials on Wednesday — and buoyed by interest-rate cut. So long as nothing throws a spanner in the works, looks like we’re all set for a happy holiday season.
— CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed to this report.
Disney to invest $1 billion in OpenAI. The media giant will also allow Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, to use its copyrighted characters, under a $1 billion licensing agreement. “We think this is a good investment for the company,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC.
Reddit launches legal challenge in Australia. The county introduced a ban on social media for teens under 16, which came into effect on Wednesday. Reddit argues that the law is “invalid on the basis of the implied freedom of political communication.”
[PRO] Where will Oracle go from here? Analysts are re-looking their price targets for Oracle stock after the firm released a disappointing and confusing earnings report on Wednesday.
And finally…
Gen. David Petraeus, Former CIA Director, Fmr. Central Commander and American commander in Iraq.
White House’s new national security strategy gave Europe a scare last week as it warned the region faced “civilizational erasure” and questioned whether it could remain a geopolitical partner for America.
The strategy was, “in a way, going after the Europeans but, frankly, some of the Europeans needed to be gotten after because I watched as four different presidents tried to exhort the Europeans to do more for their own defense and now that’s actually happening,” David Petraeus, former CIA director and four-star U.S. Army general, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Reddit, the popular community-focused forum, has launched a legal challenge against Australia’s social media ban for teens under 16, arguing that the newly enacted law is ineffective and goes too far by restricting political discussion online.
In its application to Australia’s High Court, the social news and aggregation platform said the law is “invalid on the basis of the implied freedom of political communication”, saying that it burdens political communication.
Canberra’s ban came into effect on Wednesday and targeted 10 major services, including Alphabet‘s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and Elon Musk’s X. All targeted platforms had agreed to comply with the policy to varying degrees.
Australia’s Prime Minister’s office, Attorney-General’s Department and other social media platforms did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Under the law, the targeted platforms will have to take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage access, using age–verification methods such as inference from online activity, facial estimation via selfies, uploaded IDs, or linked bank details.
Reddit’s application to the courts seeks to either declare the law invalid or exclude the platform from the provisions of the law.
In a statement to CNBC, Reddit said that while it agrees with the importance of protecting persons under 16, the law could isolate teens “from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions).”
It also said in its application that the law “burdens political communication,” saying “the political views of children inform the electoral choices of many current electors, including their parents and their teachers, as well as others interested in the views of those soon to reach the age of maturity.”
The platform also argued that it should not be subject to the law, saying it operates more as a forum for adults facilitating “knowledge sharing” between users than as a traditional social network, saying that it does not import contact lists or address books.
“Reddit is significantly different from other sites that allow for users to become “friends” with one another, or to post photos about themselves, or to organise events,” the platform said in its application.
Reddit further said in its court filing that most content on its platform is accessible without an account, and pointed out a person under the age of 16 “can be more easily protected from online harm if they have an account, being the very thing that is prohibited.”
“That is because the account can be subject to settings that limit their access to particular kinds of content that may be harmful to them,” it adds.
Despite its objections, Reddit said that the challenge was not an attempt to avoid complying with the law, nor was it an effort to retain young users for business reasons.
“There are more targeted, privacy-preserving measures to protect young people online without resorting to blanket bans,” the platform said.
