Matania "Mati" Zvi Kochavi is an Israeli-born billionaire spook/businessman who lives in the United States. He reportedly "made his fortune in real estate. Several years ago he became involved in the homeland security field, and this involvement increased after the September 11 attacks in 2001."[1] Richard Silverstein described him in 2014 as "the Herzliya version of the old-fashioned arms dealer with a suit and MBA."[2]

Background

Kochavi was born in July 1962 in Haifa and attended the University of Haifa, where he studied history and philosophy. He claims that early-on he wanted to be a journalist, rather than a security expert or high-tech mogul. He did his military service in "intelligence" (probably Unit 8200).[2]

Career

"In the 1990s he moved to New York, where he fell in with the wealthy real estate developers Steven Ross and Martin Adelman of the Powerhouse related companies."[2]

Business

Kochavi has started various high tech companies including Vocativ, Logic Industries, Sentry Technology Group and AGT International, with a focus on innovative use of technology for security and mass surveillance. His companies seem to involve many former multi-lingual personnel[3] from the Mossad, Shin Bet, IDF or Unit 8200.[1] Employees have included high ranking spooks such as Major General Amos Malka.[4]

AGT International

Mati Kochavi interviewed with Bill Clinton, opining that even with the technology available, predicting people is harder than ever, because of the increased complexity of "globalisation".[5]

AGT International has been called Kochavi's "flagship company"[6] and described as a "cybersecurity company".[7] He founded it in Switzerland both to avoid Israeli taxes and to "shield from his Arab customers the Israeli origins of his products and services."[2] It was reported in 2014 to have "$8-billion in projects under management and $1-billion in annual revenue."[1]. It was given government contracts worth hundred of millions of dollars to carry out two major projects with the armed forces. Logic Industries was founded as the Israeli branch of the company, but much about it is secret, so it has no website. In 2014 it was reported to have "mushroomed from an initial 20 employees to 600, making it one of Israel’s fastest-growing companies."[2]

The company’s business model seems not to develop its own original technologies, but rather to license various independent (mostly Israeli) technologies and integrate them for a complex security environment.[2] AGT created 'Falcon Eye', reported by The Middle East Eye to be a nationwide surveillance system, unveiled in the UAE in 2016. The Abu Dhabi Monitoring and Control Centre (ADMCC) said the new surveillance system “links thousands of cameras spread across the city, as well as thousands of other cameras installed at facilities and buildings in the emirate.”

The company has also sold urban monitoring products for Singapore, security systems for electrical grids, and flood management systems in China and the Netherlands.[6]

Logic Industries

Full article: Logic Industries



Founded in 2006, Logic Industries is a security software company. Abu Dhabi reportedly agreed the Falcon Eye project with it to install a system of universal surveillance to report on the movemments of the population of that city. In 2015 it laid off most of its staff.

Vocativ

Founded in 2013, Mati Kochavi describes Vocativ as "a web intelligence package that harvests "web pages, social networking sites, video-sharing sites, microblogs, forums, blogs, and RSS feeds" into searchable results."[6] Another commentator termed it "a mouthpiece for Israel’s armed forces... that's half soft porn and half IDF press releases".[3]

Moonscape Ventures

Full article: Moonscape Ventures



Kochavi has set up Moonscape Ventures, a startup fund which announced $120 million for Israeli businesses.[8][9] It was intended to be managed by Tammy Mahn and Yonit Golub Serkin. The first investment of Moonscape Ventures was $3.1 million in the start-up Social Studios whose technology uses social media data and automatically creates and curates personalized video content. Kochavi was quoted in 2014 as commenting that "Companies in the Moonscape portfolio will benefit from our deep experience, global network and partnership opportunities. By leveraging our unique access and experience, startups will be well poised to transform their innovative ideas into disruptive technologies."[1]

HEED

Full article: HEED



Mati Kochavi founded HEED, which is "a new consumer platform that is transforming the sports and entertainment experience. Using Internet of Things analytics and artificial intelligence, HEED delivers real-time stories, unique insights and a new way to visualize and engage with live events."[10]

Other activities

In 2004, Kochavi "sought to burnish his image with a major sortie into the world of think tanks with an NGO promoting the peace process called Bridging the Rift. It was to be a joint Jordanian-Israeli project bringing together scholars and researchers from both countries. The two governments were to contribute 300 dunams for a campus on which the research project would flourish. It would fall under the academic auspices of the blue-chip U.S. universities, Cornell and Stanford. At the groundbreaking, Kochavi was joined by a Who’s Who of Israeli politics including then-PM Ehud Olmert and Finance Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. His New York developer mentors, Edelman and Ross joined him. However, the project never went far and sources close to Kochavi claim it’s been “frozen” due to “governmental decisions.".[2]

Dark Net

Kochavi wrote 16 episodes of the TV documentary Dark Net, and also produced 4 of them.[11]

A Holocaust Story for the Social Media Generation

“The memory of the Holocaust outside of Israel is disappearing,” Mr. Kochavi said in an interview. “We thought, let’s do something really disruptive. We found the journal and said, ‘Let’s assume that instead of pen and paper Eva had a smartphone and documented what was happening to her.’ So we brought a smartphone to 1944.” The buzz around the project has been intense. Even before the fictional Instagram account was activated, it had more than 200,000 followers, the result of an aggressive marketing campaign involving billboards and online promotions by celebrity social media influencers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the project.”

Mati Kochavi (30 April 2019) [12]

Related Quotation

Page Quote Logic Industries “ Covert UAE-Israel Security relationship In 2008 Abu Dhabi authorities agreed to pay an Israeli owned company $816mn to install security systems protecting oil and gas installations in the emirate. Through working with two partner companies former Intelligence agent Mati Kochavi has also won contracts to implement the entire emirate-wide Falcon Eye surveillance project that monitors the movements of all those living in Abu Dhabi.”

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