Visionix, one of Israel’s biggest and longest-established medical device companies, was quietly acquired last week without any great fanfare by Finnish company Revenio for €250 million ($290 million).
Visionix, which was founded in Jerusalem in 1994, develops and manufactures innovative eye care examination and diagnostic products. The company specializes in eye scanning devices for early diagnosis and monitoring of diseases, as well as vision testing tools. Visionix is considered a market leader in the field and reports annual revenue of €143 million.
The company, which has about 600 employees, including about 180 in Israel (some 150 in production and the rest in development), will be merged into Revenio, which will pay nearly €200 million in cash and about €55.7 million in Revenio shares. After the acquisition is completed, Visionix executives will be integrated into the management of the Finnish company, and Visionix shareholders will be among the biggest shareholders of the merged company, which will have 800 employees.
The man who founded the company and has managed since its inception, when it employed four new immigrants in one of Israel’s first technology incubators, through an IPO, a boom, a crash, delisting, a series of acquisitions, and then establishing itself as one of the leading forces in its market, is CEO Dr. Marc Abitbol. He tells "Globes" about the path the company has taken, the lessons he has learned, and explains why he is retiring now.
From a caravan in Jerusalem to the German stock exchange
Abitbol immigrated to Israel from France when he was 18. He studied physics and worked in the defense industries. His doctorate dealt with imaging through the atmosphere. "The then US President Ronald Reagan founded a program to point a laser at a satellite and in that way image it in space. And I thought, if we take the same technology, only to much smaller ranges, we could measure what's happening inside the eye. "It's also an optics box."
This is the technology with which Abitbol founded Visionix, and it is still the technology most closely associated with the company. "Until we reached the market, eye imaging measured the distortions in the eye on an average, while our technology measured thousands of points, and the characterization of vision was more accurate." initially, the company did not measure eyes, but lenses. The same principle, except that the level of miniaturization required was lower. Later, it also developed into eye scans and beyond.
The beginning was not easy. In an article about the company in 1998, Abitbol said that in the early days of the incubator, the company worked from a caravan with no air-conditioning, in non-sterile conditions that also affected the results. But they were determined, and at a time when venture capital in Israel was just starting out, the company raised several million dollars from the Fairchild and Inventech funds.
"Around 1997, with 15 employees, we signed a distribution agreement with the Japanese company Topcol, which was huge at the time. We were so small and lacking in resources that we couldn't even get to meet them in Japan, if they hadn't financed our trip. Today we compete with them on an equal footing," Abitbol says.
With resources like that, how did you manage to establish yourself in the market?
"Medical device companies usually have two options - to market their products themselves while building their own sales team. This is a very complicated and expensive matter that could bring down the company, or to operate through distributors, who don't always care about your product. Our approach was a little different. We identified companies whose information from our product could support their product. Then, our distributor is a leading factor in the market who also has an interest in promoting our product. It's a bit like the Gruffalo mouse - I'm a mouse but I go everywhere with a monster.
"Such an approach requires flexibility that suits Israelis very well. You have to listen to the partner, understand what they want and quickly adapt the product to their requirements, and that's what we did with great success." By the end of the 1990s, Visionix was working with many of the biggest names in the field.
"In 2000, we decided to take the company public. It was the first high-tech bubble, and we ended up on the Neuer Markt stock exchange, which wanted to be Frankfurt's Nasdaq. Investors, who didn't understand all this high-tech stuff, companies with no revenue at absurd valuations, suddenly saw us - albeit with only $3 million in revenue, but somewhat profitable and doing something they understood. We had an amazing IPO." The company raised $17 million at a valuation of $51 million, 17-times oversubscribed..
What followed was, of course, the bursting of the high-tech bubble and the entire capital market crashing with it. Neuer Markt itself only survived until 2003. Visionix's stock also plummeted, and Abitbol admits that it wasn't just the market's fault: "We had quality problems, too many different projects - the troubles of startups."
I understood that I had to produce in Israel, and that's how it's been since."
Abitbol arranged to delist. "I had connections with a French investor, BNP Paribas, who didn't understand what we wanted, but thought it would be nice to say that they had an Israeli company in their portfolio. Jean-Charles Molin, who ran asset management, told me: 'I'll remain a minority shareholder and you'll invest the majority, so that I can be the one who can sleep at night.' He made 200 times the money, and is still a shareholder."
At this stage you became a French company, and left production in Israel?
"We bought a small company in France and turned it into a parent company for tax planning reasons. One day I got stuck in a demonstration by farmers in a village in France. I went out to talk to them, and they told me: 'Spanish produce is cheaper, but what ties a people to their land if not agriculture?' I understood at that moment that the same principle applied to me too, and that I had to produce in Israel. And so it's been ever since. Today we have 150 people on the assembly line in Jerusalem."
It was then, when the company's financial situation was quite shaky after the disappointing stock market experience, that the company realized its mission and launched the eye test itself, and not just for lenses. "This product took off like a rocket. The eye test market is much larger than the lens market. This product was innovative, and to this day we are the most innovative company on the market, and the competitors are always behind us."
Then in 2010 the biggest change in the company took place. "We took a big risk and acquired a company called Briot, which marketed technology for cutting contact lenses for opticians and was very strong in terms of its presence in the market, but it was in difficulties. Within two years we doubled revenue of our products and in Israel 10-fold. We also rebuilt the international company that was four times larger than us."
Since then you have been making regular acquisitions including a stake in a Chinese company. How has that worked out?
"After the acquisition of Briot, we started to take off. We acquired companies, usually for market access but also technology. We did a joint venture with the Chinese and discovered many similarities, compared with the Europeans: more entrepreneurship compared with conservatism, more tolerance for chaos. I have a very good relationship with them, they bring me gifts, and have invited me to joint celebrations. The Europeans were unable to break through these barriers with the Chinese."
And have you with the Europeans?
"I come from there, so it's easy for me to talk to them. I see both sides. For example, we once held a meeting in Jerusalem on a charged issue, and things got heated between the Israelis. Then the CEO of our French subsidiary came up and asked: 'Why do you let your CFO talk to you like that?' I replied: 'The day he stops talking to me like that, I'll have to fire him.'"
An acquisition in 2019 introduced Visionix into the field of remote medicine. "The optometrist can control the devices via the cloud and perform an examination while sitting at home or out at sea. Other technologies from the company have made it possible to transfer the examinations to less skilled personnel, from an optometrist to a technician and then also to a non-technician, with the expertise being in the system itself. The patient undergoes a set of tests before the doctor or optometrist arrives, and they receive all the measurements straight away. The entire flow of patients through the clinic has changed in this way," he says.
These capabilities allowed Visionix to expand rapidly during the Covid pandemic, and the pandemic in general worked in its favor. "Europeans were not allowed to go to the US, and Israelis were allowed at some stage, so we were able to complete another acquisition, of Optovue, which interested many parties, but only we were able to do it. All of Visionix's acquisitions, says Abitbol, are made directly and personally, "mano la mano" (from Spanish - hand in hand), and not through an investment bank. The Optovue acquisition brought us to the place from which the current deal was made possible."
On the huge merger: "It’s difficult the company is my baby"
Abitbol is 65 and always planned to retire at 67 and had already begun preparing alternatives. At the same time, after Covid, the company suffered a series of blows. "The trends that made us grow ended, and operational problems of component costs and transportation emerged," he says. "After three amazing years, we suffered a little."
Is it hard to sell a business you've had for so many years
"It's definitely hard. The company is family-owned. The CFO has been with me since 1997, and there are people who stayed with me for years until retirement, and my son and daughter also work in the company. There was a concern that a private equity buyer would break up the company and try to sell it in parts. But I'm loyal to my investors, so there's no choice."
Then came Revenio, a company about the same size as Visionix. "They're a Finnish company, and like all Finns, they have a 'Nokia trauma.' This means that no matter how big or excellent the company is at the operational level - if it doesn't have technological depth and a product pipeline to continue down the road, it can collapse all at once." Visionix has the technological depth.
"We met, and it was an exciting evening for both of us. This is my baby and he doesn't want to lose his baby. He told me, 'Let's merge, and you stay on the company's management.' I replied, 'Even in the story of creation, there is talk of two lights, and later about a big light and a small light. One interpretation is that one of them became small after they fought. And I don't want to fight with you.'"
Revenio did not give up on the continued involvement of Visionix people. "We take part of the proceeds in shares and will be the second largest investor in a company that is publicly traded. Some of my managers will be absorbed into the merged company. Together we will create one of the largest and most independent platforms in the field, the most profitable company in our market by a wide margin."
Abitbol will be on the board of directors and responsible for integration and innovation. Later, he hopes to join venture capital funds to mentor companies and support them in recovery processes. In addition, he is promoting the army preparatory program he founded in the name of his son Eliav, who fell in 2024 in Lebanon.
What will happen to production in Israel?
"Revenio doesn't have a production line, so they are interested in it and it may grow. But the strength of the shekel is a blow. Salaries are higher here than in Europe."
Did the fact that the company is Israeli affect the deal?
"We have always been an Israeli company and we have always been proud of it. Until three years ago, they would say about our product, 'This is an Israeli missile' - these were advantages for us. Today, being linked to Israel is no longer an advantage in the world, but I walk around with a kippah on my head, not only because of religion but because it is my identity, and they have never said anything to me. In the last two years, my investors have accompanied me more closely than some of my progressive Jewish relatives in Canada and the US, some of whom I no longer speak to. They knew every day where my children were and were with me when Eliav fell.
"It's the connection on a personal level, but at least for one of them, BNP, I don't think they would invest in us today. I also know that money from the Arab world that comes to Europe comes with conditions against Israel. With the merger, they wanted to write in a press release that Visionix is a French company. I told them not to write a lie. I founded an Israeli company."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 7, 2026.
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