From Nvidia to Microsoft: The new CEO of the Israeli operation
After nearly a decade at Nvidia as the company's sales manager in Israel, Nati Amsterdam will step into the shoes of Alon Haimovich, who recently resigned from Microsoft Israel.
After nearly a decade at Nvidia as the company's sales manager in Israel, Nati Amsterdam will step into the shoes of Alon Haimovich, who recently resigned from Microsoft Israel.
Amsterdam will join the sales, marketing, and service branch of the software giant following a turbulent period that included audits conducted by Microsoft management in Seattle regarding the use of its cloud services by security forces.
In the transition between roles, Amsterdam is making an interesting change: he is moving from a position where he manages one of the most sought-after products for the Israeli market — Nvidia's Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips, which are highly sought after by server farm builders and neo-cloud companies — to a challenging role where he must maintain Microsoft's standing during a period of reputational decline.
Microsoft's standing in Israel is under attack on several fronts: the external front, where the company lost the government cloud tender 'Nimbus' to Amazon and Google, with more and more government ministries and subordinate units moving their cloud and software systems to the tender winners. At the beginning of the year, the Digital Array and the Accountant General at the Ministry of Finance decided to replace Microsoft's Office products with equivalent software produced by Google, Workspace.
The American company also suffered a reputational blow in Israel from within, after it decided to unilaterally terminate the cloud agreement with Unit 8200 due to what it called a violation of its terms of use, and subsequently conducted in-depth audits regarding how the security establishment uses its systems. Against the backdrop of these audits, the previous CEO Alon Haimovich left his position earlier this year, and the management of the branch was temporarily transferred to Microsoft France.
Amsterdam, 51, from the town of Kadima, brings with him extensive experience working with the enterprise market in Israel — universities, giant companies, real estate developers, and server farms — and with the government and security sector. He has served as the sales manager for Nvidia in Israel since 2017, in the years preceding the acquisition of Mellanox.
