The $15.8 Billion Payday Nobody Headlined

Published October 30, 2026

In 2025, employees in Israel's high-tech industry received about 50 billion shekels (roughly $15.8 billion) in net cash from exercised stock options, restricted stock units and exits — an all-time high that beat even the boom year of 2021, according to data collected by Calcalist from equity-plan administrators. The figure excludes salaries and bonuses, and it does not yet include the three largest deals of the year — Wiz, CyberArk and Armis — because those transactions had not closed and the money had not been paid. Nvidia Israel employees alone realized more than 3 billion shekels in share sales, and the wave created roughly 12,000 new shekel millionaires.

In January 2026, Israel's business press reported a number that had slipped past almost everyone: in 2025, employees in the country's high-tech industry received about 50 billion shekels, roughly 15.8 billion dollars, in net cash from their equity compensation. It was an all-time high, higher even than in 2021, a year remembered as phenomenal for tech exits. And the figure was, if anything, understated: it did not include the three largest deals of the year, the sales of Wiz to Google for 32 billion dollars, CyberArk to Palo Alto Networks for 25 billion dollars and Armis to ServiceNow for 7.75 billion dollars, because those transactions had not yet closed and the money had not yet been paid.

The money arrived through three channels at once. Startups were sold at a record pace, with additional transactions worth roughly 20 billion dollars signed and completed beyond the three headline cyber deals. Employees of Israeli public companies traded on Wall Street cashed in as share prices rose. And staff at multinational research centres in Israel, more than 100,000 people working for companies such as Nvidia, Google and Microsoft, exercised options and restricted stock units into a rising market. The 50 billion shekel figure counts only cash actually deposited into bank accounts, net of an average tax rate of about 35 percent on capital-based compensation, and it excludes salaries and bonuses entirely.

The individual stories inside the total are striking. Employees of Nvidia Israel alone realized more than 3 billion shekels, about 950 million dollars, in share sales during 2025, and still held additional shares worth billions of shekels. The largest secondary transaction in the history of Israeli high-tech saw 500 employees and early investors at DriveNets sell shares worth 650 million dollars to the American telecom giant AT&T. At cloud-security company Cato, 1,400 employees shared 120 million dollars. Across all such transactions, trust companies transferred approximately 35 billion shekels before tax to more than 10,000 employees and angel investors; at IBI Capital alone, 23 billion shekels was distributed among 9,300 employees, an average of 2.4 million shekels, about 760,000 dollars, per person.

The wave was broad enough to reshape the country's wealth statistics. According to industry data, 2025 created about 12,000 new shekel millionaires, roughly 200 of whom received more than 10 million shekels each. Large payouts did not always require multibillion-dollar sales: the sale of a one-year-old startup with a few dozen employees for 150 to 200 million dollars could generate larger individual rewards than the sale of a much bigger public company. Mid-sized exits such as the sale of insurtech company Next to Munich Re for 2.6 billion dollars and fintech company Melio to Xero for 2.5 billion dollars contributed heavily.

The demographics of the windfall tell their own story. About 75 percent of those exercising equity were men and 25 percent women, most lived in central Israel, and more than 70 percent of those cashing in were aged 40 and over. But the trend lines point younger and more diverse: women account for about 37 percent of recipients under 30, and while fewer than 20 percent of beneficiaries were aged 30 or younger in 2023, the share is now as much as 40 percent in startups, reflecting a cyber boom staffed by young workers often straight out of military service. The high-tech sector employs about 400,000 people, roughly a third each at startups, multinationals and Israeli public tech companies.

The most remarkable figure may be the one that has not happened yet. According to IBI Capital's chief executive, another 80,000 employees currently hold vested, in-the-money options and shares worth a combined 67 billion shekels, about 21.2 billion dollars. With a single instruction to an equity-plan administrator, those funds, net of tax, could be transferred to employees' bank accounts — creating another 9,000 shekel millionaires. Including multinational employees, total vested, exercisable equity rises to 130 to 140 billion shekels. The 2025 windfall, in other words, may turn out to have been the warm-up act, and the lesson is about patience as much as luck: equity compensation looks like nothing for years, and then, when a company wins, it arrives all at once, minus roughly a third for tax.

The lesson: Equity pay is invisible until it isn't: years of options and restricted stock can quietly turn into life-changing cash — but only after the company wins, the shares vest, and the taxman takes roughly a third.

Source: original reporting · How we source stories