Volkswagen CEO Visits Israel to Meet with Startups, Prime Minister

Recently appointed Volkswagen AG CEO Herbert Diess visited Israel on Thursday to meet with representatives from the country’s mobility startup scene. In May, the group opened an innovation and scouting campus in Tel Aviv called Konnect, which Mr. Diess visited.

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Mr. Diess met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of cooperating on innovative mobility services, according to Volkswagen’s statement.

Mr. Diess met with the CEO of taxi-hailing company Gett, to discuss the development of robotaxis. Earlier this month, Gett raised $80 million in a funding round led by Volkswagen, raising its valuation to $1.4 billion. Mr. Diess also met with Amnon Shashua, the CEO of Intel’s Mobileye, to discuss and test self-driving cars.

“I particularly wanted to come to Israel at the beginning of my tenure, not least because of our company’s own past”, Mr. Diess said, capping the trip with a visit to Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.