Decart pledges millions to Technion in strategic AI push
Dr. Dean Leitersdorf, the company’s founder and CEO, is himself a graduate of the Technion’s excellence program, which will now be renamed the Technion–Decart Excellence Program.
The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and the startup company Decart have announced a strategic collaboration under which Decart will support the Technion’s excellence program, which will now be renamed the Technion–Decart Excellence Program. As part of the agreement, Decart will provide funding amounting to millions of shekels to support the program’s activities in the coming years. Dr. Dean Leitersdorf, the company’s founder and CEO, is himself a graduate of the Technion’s excellence program, along with seven other Decart employees.
In addition to supporting the excellence program, Decart and the Technion recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a joint AI research center.
This initiative aligns with Decart’s broader vision to advance AI in Israel. The company emphasizes that Israel has the potential to become a global AI powerhouse, but achieving this requires active leadership, independent capabilities, and local infrastructure development. The excellence program is currently headed by Prof. Eitan Yaakobi from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, himself a program alumnus.
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Decart was founded by Dr. Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. Since its founding, the company has raised $53 million from leading venture capital funds, including Sequoia, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures. The company currently employs over 50 people, most of whom are based at its headquarters in Tel Aviv, with additional offices in northern Israel, San Francisco, and New York.
