Gigi Levy-Weiss (; born Gigi Levy,

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

) is an Israeli businessman and

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of pr ...

. He is a co-founder and partner of the investment firm and

business accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components, and (sometimes) culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubato ...

NFX. He works primarily with internet, software and gaming companies. He is the former CEO for online gambling company

888 Holdings Evoke plc, formerly 888 Holdings Limited, is an international sports betting and gambling company. It owns brands such as 888casino, 888poker, 888sport, Mr Green, and William Hill. Business operations are led from its headquarters in London, a ...

, and is on the board of the Israeli-Palestinian nonprofit organization

MEET Meet may refer to: People with the name * Janek Meet (born 1974), Estonian footballer * Meet Mukhi (born 2005), Indian child actor Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Meet'' (TV series), an Australian television series * '' Meet: Badlegi Duniya K ...

Early life and education

Levy (later Levy-Weiss) was born and raised in

. Before attending college Levy-Weiss was a pilot in the

Israeli Air Force The Israeli Air Force (IAF; , commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial and space warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Indep ...

. In October 2002 he started attending the

Kellogg Graduate School of Management The Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management (branded as Northwestern Kellogg) is the graduate business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. History Early history (1908–1950 ...

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

in Evanston, IL, where he earned his MBA in May 2004.

Career

Early in his career Levy-Weiss worked with his own

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

, also holding a number of management and consulting positions with technology companies in Israel and the UK. Among those roles he was

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of Giltek Telecommunication, a publicly traded telecom

systems integrator A systems integrator (or system integrator) is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as system integration. They also solv ...

. From 2003 to 2005 he was Vice President of Western Europe for Amdocs Limited, an international telecommunications software company. The following year he became Division President for the company for Western Europe, and Central and Latin America. On June 18, 2006, Levy-Weiss joined the international sports betting company and gambling website operator

as their

Chief Operating Officer A chief operating officer (COO), also called chief operations officer, is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the C ...

(COO). He was COO until January 2007, when he became the company's CEO. His tenure coincided with the 2006 enactment of US online gambling legislation UIGEA and the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

. His position as a CEO officially ended on May 31, 2011, though he remained on the board for an additional twelve months, assisting in the transition to a new CEO. After leaving 888 Holdings, Levy-Weiss has been an investor, board member, and in some cases a co-founder for a number of technology companies in Israel,

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and London. Many of the startups he invests in have involved online commerce, advertising technologies, mobile applications, gaming, and

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

spaces. From 2007 until its acquisition in 2016 by Taiwan's GMobi, he was a board member at Massive Impact. He was an investor and board member for SweetIM from 2009 to 2013, which was acquired by Perion. Perion purchased SweetPacks, maker of SweetIM, in November 2012 for approximately $41 million. Levy-Weiss was one of the founders of digital entertainment company Playtika in 2010. In 2011, over half of Playtika's shares were acquired by casino operator

Harrah's Entertainment Harrah's Entertainment (later named Caesars Entertainment Corporation, previously The Promus Companies) was an American casino and hotel company founded in Reno, Nevada, and based in Paradise, Nevada, that operated over 50 properties and seven go ...

's at a company value of $80–90 million, in what was the largest acquisition on record of an Israeli online gaming company. The total sum of the two stages of the buyout for Playtika was rumored to be around US$140 million. Israeli company Promodity, an advertising platform, announced in August 2012 that Levy-Weiss had invested in the company. In 2014, he sold his assets in the company. He has been a board member at Global-e since 2013, and late that year he invested in Space Ape Games, an English social games company. He also has invested in startups such as the technology company Kenshoo. Other investments include companies Crossrider (later acquired for $37million), Plarium, R2Net, Eyeview, RealMatch, Lovelive.tv, NonoRep, Gooodjob, Selina, Superfly, SpeakingPal, Ekoloko, TradeO, Zoomd, Moovu, and Moolta, (which was acquired by SimilarWeb) and

Clawee Clawee is a claw machine game, played online on real arcade machines controlled remotely through video streaming via a mobile app or computer. The game was invented by the Israeli company Gigantic, which operates the machines in a warehouse in Pe ...

. In 2014, Levy-Weiss was appointed to

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

's EMEA Client Council, a marketing forum including representatives from brands and agencies of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, together with Facebook leaders. In 2015, Levy-Weiss cofounded the accelerator and funding firm NFX Guild in the San Francisco Bay Area with James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky. NFX is named for "Network Effects." In 2015 Levy-Weiss co-founded Beach Bum, a gaming company focused on classic hit card and

board games A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

. Beach Bum was acquired by the French hyper-casual gaming company

Voodoo Voodoo may refer to: Religions * West African Vodún, a religion practiced by Gbe-speaking ethnic groups * African diaspora religions, a list of related religions sometimes called Vodou/Voodoo ** Candomblé Jejé, also known as Brazilian Vodu ...

in 2021. In 2016, Levy-Weiss was part of a group of investors that led a Series A funding round for Inception, an Israeli startup specializing in

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

entertainment content.

Public service

Levy-Weiss has been involved with a number of non-profit organizations in Israel, notably on the management board for Israeli humanitarian fund

Latet Latet (, ''lit.'' to give) is an Israeli nonprofit aid organization that was founded in 1996 by Gilles Darmon, then a new immigrant from France. Acting as an umbrella organization for 180 local NGOs across 105 communities in the country, it pr ...

from 2008 to 2013. He became a board member at the non-profit MEET - Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow in November 2013. He also sits on the advisory boards of non-profit tech initiatives Place-il and KamaTech. In 2023 Levy-Weiss was active in creating the Israeli High-Tech protest, Tech for Democracy, which opposes the legal reform of the Israeli government. After the

7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel On October 7, 2023, Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli ...

, Levy-Weiss co-founded Brothers and Sisters for Israel, an organization of IDF

reservists A reservist is a person who is a member of a military reserve force. They are otherwise civilians, and in peacetime have careers outside the military. Reservists usually go for training on an annual basis to refresh their skills. This person ca ...

devoted to relief and aid for civilians and soldiers. The organization received the Presidential Award for Volunteerism from the

President of the State of Israel The president of the State of Israel (, or ) is the head of state of Israel. The president is mostly, though not entirely, ceremonial; actual executive power is vested in the cabinet led by the prime minister. The incumbent president is Isa ...

. At

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

, his

alma mater Alma mater (; : almae matres) is an allegorical Latin phrase meaning "nourishing mother". It personifies a school that a person has attended or graduated from. The term is related to ''alumnus'', literally meaning 'nursling', which describes a sc ...

, Levy-Weiss is on the advisory board of the Technology Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MBA program. He joined the supervisory board at Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA in Germany in May 2015. He has been a speaker at conferences such as Com.vention, Casual Connect, and others.

Personal life

Levy-Weiss and his wife, Daphi Levy-Weiss, live in the Israel coastal city of

Ramat HaSharon Ramat HaSharon (, ) is an affluent city located on Israel's central coastal strip in the south of the Sharon, Israel, Sharon region, bordering the cities of Tel Aviv to the south, Hod HaSharon, Hod-HaSharon to the east, and Herzliya and kibbutz ...

with their three children.

References

External links

nfx.com/
*
Gigi Levy
at

About.me about.me is a personal web hosting service co-founded by Ryan Freitas, Tony Conrad and Tim Young in October 2009. The site offers registered users a simple platform from which to link multiple online identities, relevant external sites, and pop ...

Gigi Levy at IMA Ventures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levy-Weiss, Gigi Living people Angel investors Israeli venture capitalists Israeli business executives Kellogg School of Management alumni Tel Aviv University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) he:גיגי לוי-וייס