After a decade at Nvidia: Nati Amsterdam appointed CEO of Microsoft Israel

Microsoft announced the appointment of Nati Amsterdam, head of Nvidia's business operations in Israel, as CEO of Microsoft Israel. Amsterdam will assume the role in October and lead the local business operations. Avi Yoshi, who served as acting CEO, will continue as CTO. The appointment comes after about two and a half months without a permanent CEO, following the departure of Alon Haimovich. The previous affair, involving the company's assistance to Unit 8200, raised many questions.

Microsoft has appointed Nati Amsterdam, head of Nvidia's business operations in Israel, as CEO of Microsoft Israel. The company announced this on Monday. Amsterdam is set to assume the role in October and will lead the local business operations of the tech giant. Avi Yoshi, who served as acting CEO since the departure of previous CEO Alon Haimovich, will continue as CTO of Microsoft Israel. Amsterdam has nearly 30 years of experience in senior roles in the local operations of technology companies, including serving as CEO of VMware Israel. He joins Microsoft from Nvidia, where he has worked since 2017 and established its business operations in Israel. Amsterdam holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Ruppin Academic Center and an MBA from Ben-Gurion University, and he served in the communications and encryption field in the Israeli Air Force. The appointment comes after about two and a half months during which Microsoft Israel operated without a permanent CEO. The previous CEO, Haimovich, announced in early May that he would end his tenure at the end of that month, after four years as CEO. The resignation and rapid departure raised many questions, with most attention focused on the company's involvement in assisting Unit 8200, which was reportedly done without the knowledge of the global company. The Unit 8200 and Microsoft affair reached its peak in September 2025, following an investigation by the British Guardian. The affair concerns the Israeli intelligence unit's use of Microsoft's cloud services (Azure) for surveillance and data processing on a large scale. At the end of September 2025, after an urgent external review, Microsoft informed Israel that it was blocking Unit 8200's access to some of its storage and artificial intelligence services.