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Nvidia ( NVDA ) has set July 23 deadline for offers

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Haifa municipality says thinks has 'best potential'

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Rival Intel ( INTC ) is cutting staff globally

By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM, July 9 (Reuters) - Nvidia ( NVDA ) has

received a high number of offers of potential sites to help it

carry out a plan to greatly expand its operations in Israel to

meet growing demand for artificial intelligence data centres,

two sources told Reuters.

The Santa Clara-based Nvidia ( NVDA ), which has become the most

valuable company in history at $4 trillion, earlier this week

issued a request for information, or RFI, to buy land to build a

new campus near its facility in northern Israel that industry

sources estimated would cost billions of dollars and create

thousands of jobs.

Nvidia ( NVDA ), a leading designer of high-end AI chips, entered

Israel in 2020 after buying Mellanox Technologies for nearly $7

billion. It is located in Yokne'am, where many tech companies

are based, near the northern port city of Haifa.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) in Israel declined to comment beyond its RFI.

A third source, speaking on condition of anonymity because

they were not authorised to speak to the press, said the company

received "dozens and dozens and dozens" of offers from

municipalities and others, not all near Haifa.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) has set a July 23 deadline for offers to build its

campus of up to 180,000 square metres.

For its part, the Haifa municipality said it was "currently

busy preparing an attractive offer for the company. We think we

are the city with the best potential for them."

A race among Microsoft ( MSFT ),, Meta Platforms ( META )

, Alphabet, and Tesla, to build AI

data centres and dominate the emerging technology has led to a

surge in demand for Nvidia's ( NVDA ) high-end processors.

One of the sources said Israel's expertise was "extremely

important to the AI era" and Nvidia ( NVDA ) needed to expand rapidly.

The company has already nearly tripled in size in Israel

since its acquisition of Mellanox, which a source said

contributed to $13 billion in revenue to Nvidia ( NVDA ) last year. The

company has not confirmed the figure.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) has also made a number of other acquisitions over

recent years in the country where it has 5,000 employees.

It has also built Israel's most powerful AI supercomputer

that was a blueprint for Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer.

Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority, said the

new Nvidia ( NVDA ) campus will be massive and could house "a few

thousand employees".

"Nvidia ( NVDA ) sees its operation in Israel as something which is

going to stay here for a very long time and to expand here," he

told Reuters. "This declaration is a sign of confidence in

Israel."

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) planned expansion in Israel comes as rival Intel ( INTC )

- in Israel since 1974, and one of the country's

largest employers at 9,350 - has begun to trim its workforce

globally. Israel media said a few hundred workers in Israel are

being made redundant.

A local spokesperson would not comment on numbers, only

pointing to Intel ( INTC ) CEO Lip-Bu Tan's comments in April that the

company was "taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more

efficient company".