The unicorn Hailo appoints Rakefet Russak Aminoach as Chairwoman of the Board of Directors

The unicorn Hailo, a pioneering chipmaker of edge artificial intelligence (AI) processors, has appointed Rakefet Russak Aminoach as the Chairwoman of the company’s Board of Directors. Aminoach has been serving as a director on Hailo’s board for four years and was appointed to the position of Chairwoman following the passing of Zohar Zisapel last year, who had served as the company’s Chairman since its founding.

Rakefet Russak Aminoach is one of the top businesswomen in the Israeli economy. She served as the CEO of KPMG Israel and then held a series of senior management positions at Bank Leumi for 16 years, including as the bank’s CEO from 2012 to 2019. She was ranked three times on Fortune magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women in Business” list. In 2020, she joined the venture group Team8 as a Managing Partner to build and lead the fintech field. Russak Aminoach recently joined the Board of Directors at BNY Mellon, which is the world’s largest custodian bank and security services company.

Hailo’s Board of Directors includes a series of senior businesspeople who bring extensive experience from the chip and high-tech industries, including Mooly Eden, who previously served as Senior Vice President at Intel and the President of Intel Israel; Dov Baharav, who previously served as the CEO of Amdocs and Chairman of the Israel Aerospace Industries; Jon Medved, founder and CEO of the investment platform OurCrowd; and Zohar Cohen from the RAD-Bynet Group, who previously served as a senior investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Orr Danon, CEO and co-founder of Hailo, said, “Rakefet Russak Aminoach is deeply familiar with Hailo’s challenges, and in her role as a director, she contributed significantly to formulating the company’s business strategy and penetrating into international markets. It is with great sadness that we bid farewell to the late Zohar Zisapel, who believed in us from the very beginning, invested in us, and contributed immensely to our success. We welcome Rakefet Russak Aminoach as the new Chairwoman of the company, and we are confident that her knowledge, experience, and unique abilities will help us realize Hailo’s international vision.”

Hailo was established in February 2017 by graduates of the Elite Technological Unit of the Intelligence Corps. The company, which became a unicorn two and a half years ago, announced in early April that it had raised $120 million and launched its high-performance GenAI Hailo-10 accelerators, heralding a new era in which users can own and run GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) applications locally on their devices without the need to subscribe to cloud-based creative artificial intelligence services. In total, Hailo has raised $340 million since its inception.

Hailo has offices in the USA, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, and a network of distributors throughout Asia, North America, South America, Australia, and Europe, and its products serve more than 300 customers worldwide. The company currently employs over 250 people in Tel Aviv and abroad and is recruiting additional employees to support its accelerated growth.

Hailo’s processors are the product of a rethinking of traditional computer architecture, enabling smart devices to perform sophisticated deep learning tasks such as object detection and segmentation in real-time, with minimal power consumption, size, and cost. The processors are designed to fit into a multitude of smart machines and devices, impacting a variety of sectors including compute, automotive, security, industry 4.0, and retail.