The first phase of Israel’s national AI supercomputer has gone live.

The system’s infrastructure has been provided by neocloud Nebius, with 1,000 Nvidia B200 GPUs available to the Israel Innovation Authority for allocation over the coming weeks.

The supercomputer was established under the National Program for AI R&D Infrastructure (Telem Program), and Nebius was awarded the tender in May 2025 to build and operate the $140 million system.

The 1,000 Nvidia GPUs form part of a wider capacity agreement Nebius signed with Israeli real estate company Mega Or last year. Spanning 8MW, under the terms of the deal, Nebius deployed 4,000 Nvidia GPUs, of which 25 percent were offered to the Israel Innovation Authority for a national supercomputer.

In a statement, the government body said that 70 percent of the supercomputer’s resources will be allocated to high-tech companies during the AI model training stage, and 30 percent will be reserved for research groups in the early stages of their projects.

Applications will require a minimum usage of 16 B200 GPUs for industry users and eight accelerators for academia, for periods ranging from one month to six months. Implementation must begin no earlier than the month following committee approval, and allocation may be expanded in the future based on demand, the agency said.

In addition to establishing a national AI supercomputer, the Israeli government has also launched two programs to boost the country’s AI workforce. This includes a scheme for transitioning individuals with advanced degrees into AI-related domains, and a second program to attract AI exports from abroad.

“The launch of the national supercomputer for use by industry and academia is a key step in strengthening Israel’s R&D infrastructure for artificial intelligence,” said Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority.

“Following the establishment and operation of the infrastructure, we are now enabling companies and researchers to gain direct access to advanced computing resources through the allocation of discounted accelerators. This initiative is designed to enable the development and training of large models in Israel, accelerate industrial and research innovation, and strengthen Israel’s ability to continue leading in the global technological race.”

Nebius is a cloud provider focused on AI workloads that spun out from Yandex in 2024, offering access to GPUs across its presence in the US, the Middle East, and Europe. In November, the company signed a $3bn deal with Meta, revealing its capacity was now sold out and was targeting an expansion to 2.5GW by the end of 2026.

In addition to the May 2025 deal with Mega Or, earlier this month, Nebius signed an additional 80MW data center leasing agreement with Mega Or for two upcoming data centers in Israel. One data center will be in Masmiyya and offer 22MW, with the remaining 58MW at a data center in Beit Shemesh. The data centers are estimated to cost around $880 million in total to construct.