StartupBlink, an innovation-economy research platform, ranks Israel No. 3 – behind only the US and UK – in its global list. Israel has held this spot for four years in row. Israel is No. 1 in the world for the number of R&D branches, with 11 global tech brands such as Intel, IBM, and Oracle. The Tel Aviv area – nicknamed “Silicon Wadi” – was No. 9 globally in 2024 and has been in StartupBlink’s top 10 since 2020.
Egged is Israel’s largest bus company. Israeli poet Hayim Nahman Bialik named the company Egged from the Hebrew for “union” after four cooperatives merged in 1933. Today, one of the largest bus companies in the world, Egged has subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria. In Israel alone, it operates almost 4,000 buses taking nearly one million passengers a distance of 622,000 miles every day.
Israel, a country of fewer than 10 million people, punches above its weight in many fields. Newsweek lists Sheba Medical Center as the 9th best hospital in the world. The Center for World University Rankings lists 4 Israeli universities in the top 1% worldwide: Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University and the Technion. The UN’s WIPO lists Israel as #14 in its Global Innovation Index.
