Israel’s largest server operator SDS debuts $300m supercomputer

Shonfeld Data Services (SDS), Israel’s largest server farm operator, has completed a new supercomputer, SDS-AI, after investing about US$300 million.

The supercomputer will begin operating in September and is intended for use by Israeli businesses and academic researchers.

SDS is owned by Yossi Schonfeld and Danny Bilicki, leading players in the country’s server farm sector.

SDS-AI features 2,032 of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell B200 AI processors, making it different from Nvidia’s Israel-1 system, which uses older Hopper H100 chips.

SDS-AI is expected to deliver much higher performance than Israel-1, which currently ranks 44th on the global Top500 list.

SDS plans to expand the system with more processors in 2026.

Before this launch, Israeli startups and researchers often relied on overseas supercomputers for AI projects due to limited local resources.

🔗 Source: Calcalist

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Israel’s computing journey reflects the global shift from academic to private AI infrastructure

Israel’s supercomputing evolution spans seven decades, from WEIZAC in the 1950s to today’s billion-dollar private AI facilities.

WEIZAC, built at the Weizmann Institute, cost $50,000 in the 1950s (equivalent to about $500,000 today) and consumed nearly 20% of the institute’s annual budget1. It was one of only a handful of computers globally at the time, primarily located in major research institutes.

Today’s landscape shows a dramatic shift. While Israel’s government is investing NIS 500 million in a national AI supercomputer through Nebius2, SDS has privately invested NIS 1 billion in their commercial facility.

This reflects global trends where private ownership of AI supercomputers increased from 40% in 2019 to 80% in 20253. The computational performance of AI supercomputers has doubled every nine months, while hardware costs and power requirements have both doubled annually.

SDS’s decision to make their system available to the broader Israeli ecosystem represents a middle path, with private investment creating public access that historically came only from government-funded research institutions.