Delek Automotive transferred $215 million in Veridis shares to its Delek Motors subsidiary after fur...
The AMW Read
Confirms Hailo's already-known decline (Microchip acquisition, 50% workforce cut) with new investor-side financial detail; damage is contained to one company's balance sheet, not segment-wide.
Delek Automotive transferred $215 million in Veridis shares to its Delek Motors subsidiary after further write-offs tied to its investment in Israeli AI chipmaker Hailo.
Delek Automotive moved NIS 645 million ($215 million) of its Veridis environmental-services shares to Delek Motors, its wholly owned automotive subsidiary, to strengthen the unit's equity and protect covenants on a 2018 bank loan used to acquire Veridis. The company said no covenant breach has occurred but acted ahead of year-end compliance testing. The transfer follows continued damage from its Hailo bet: a NIS 242 million ($81 million) write-off at the end of 2025, plus a further NIS 161 million ($53.7 million) write-off in the latest quarter. Hailo, once valued near $1 billion, was later acquired by Microchip after cutting half its workforce amid funding pressure.
Hailo was one of Israel's most closely watched edge AI inference chip startups, building silicon meant to put AI compute directly into cameras, vehicles, and industrial devices rather than routing it to the cloud. Its slide from unicorn valuation to acquisition target, and the resulting balance-sheet strain at a publicly traded automotive importer, is a concrete data point on how costly edge AI silicon bets have gotten for non-specialist strategic investors. The pressure lands as Delek Automotive's core business also weakens, with vehicle deliveries down 42% year over year and market value down two-thirds from its 2022 peak.
For builders, Hailo's path shows edge AI accelerator startups increasingly exit via acquisition by an established chipmaker rather than independent scale-up, even after reaching billion-dollar valuations. For investors, especially corporate backers outside the AI sector, it's a reminder to size single-name AI-hardware exposure against balance-sheet covenants before losses force asset shuffling elsewhere in the business.