Eyal Niv

Eyal Niv is a Managing General Partner at Pitango Venture Capital, one of Israel's largest and longest-running venture firms, where he leads Pitango First, the firm's early-stage technology fund (co-led with Dr. Ayal Itzkovitz, Gad Huldai and Yair Cassuto). He joined Pitango in 2015. His investing track record dates back to 1999, and over that span he has backed companies later acquired by industry giants including EMC, Oracle, Facebook, Sony and Intel.

Before Pitango, Niv was a partner at Giza Venture Capital, where he headed the firm's most recent fund. His investing has consistently centered on AI, enterprise IT infrastructure and media markets. Niv is also a co-founder of the Israeli Children's Fund.

Niv earned a BCom in Finance from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and completed studies at the Wharton School. He sits on the boards of a broad slate of Pitango portfolio companies, including AI21 Labs, Komodor, Finout, Optibus, Lumigo, Graphcore, OpenEyes and Speedata.

As a public voice in the Israeli tech ecosystem, Niv argues that Israel's defining strength is "extreme resilience" rather than innovation alone, and that the country can become a global leader in foundational AI infrastructure — forecasting that AI infrastructure and applied AI systems will surpass cybersecurity as Israel's leading tech export domain by 2030.

• Stage & checks: Leads seed and early-stage rounds via Pitango First; initial checks typically ~$5M (range roughly $1M–$10M), with significant follow-on reserves.
• Sectors: Strong bias toward AI / generative AI, AI and cloud/enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, DevOps, quantum computing, fintech and TransitTech.
• Foundational tech bias: Favors "picks and shovels" — infrastructure and platform companies that underpin the AI build-out — over thin application layers.
• Team-first: On leading AI21 Labs, Niv said it was "a great company with an insanely strong team," signaling that exceptional founding teams are central to his "yes."
• New operating thesis (2026): "The correlation between headcount growth and company success is fundamentally broken" — he believes "the winning companies of 2026 will optimize for output per employee, not organizational size," favoring lean, high-leverage teams.