Interviewed by "Globes" on September 4, 2025, Xtend AI Robotics co-founder and CEO Aviv Shapira declared, "One of our goals is an IPO in the US." Exactly a year later, on September 4, 2026, the company completed a merger with JFB Construction Holdings at a valuation of $1.5 billion, and its stock became listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker XTND, climbing 25% on its first day of trading.
Xtend was founded in 2018 by brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira, Adir Tubi, and Rubi Liani. It was ranked by "Globes" among the ten most promising Israeli startups of 2024. Its best-known activity is in drones - it works with the IDF and with the US Department of War - but it describes itself as a robotics company, operating in what is known as physical AI.
Talking to "Globes" following the NYSE listing, Aviv Shapira explains: "Physical AI means giving artificial intelligence arms and legs and interacting with the environment. We aim at saving human lives, and we’re active in three markets: defense, law enforcement, and security.
"There are many robotics and drones companies, but we don’t focus on the robot or the drone, but on the software and the operating system. What distinguishes us is that we have managed to reduce training times from weeks to minutes, and to operate from anywhere in the world."
Another feature that distinguishes Xtend is that it decided to make its platform open, so that anyone can develop an application in this field. "It’s like mobile telephones. We aspire to be the Android of robotics, and we want to be the standard," Shapira says. He adds that users of the platform - police officers or soldiers, for example - will receive updates and applications, so that the capabilities they receive will not end with the sale itself. "We are opening up access for small apps companies to thirty armies around the world," says Shapira.
That’s not something that the market is familiar with. Is there a need to educate it?
"Yes, but not so much on the civilian side, more on the government side. In policing and defense, people look mainly at the physical product, thinking that what you buy is what you get. We open up before them a world in which you don’t buy ‘ironmongery’ but, by way of analogy, a flying iPhone. After all, in the end it’s a matter of a camera and a user interface that moves around, and the aim is to utilize an app, whether it’s a camera, a speaker, or even a bomb. A robot has to be sufficiently dynamic and to be updateable.
"In the defense industry, the solution has to be very flexible and the technology has to change all the time. If we were talking about a robot vacuum cleaner, it solves the same problem every day, but a robot that flies in an urban environment has to deal with rain one time and with a collapsed building another time. It’s very dynamic, and so software that updates the product makes it more relevant for the mission."
Originally a VR company
Xtend was never meant to be involved in defense. Shapira and his brother had founded and sold a company in the past: Replay Technologies, which was sold to Intel for $170 million. Replay did 3D animations of moves in sports, so that viewers could see them through the eyes of the player. "At Replay, we developed technology for ‘reproduction’, for taking a person and putting him somewhere else," Shapira explains. "Xtend began on similar lines - to take a sixteen year old boy and enable him to ‘enter’ a robot in Brazil and walk in the rainforest. The first product we developed was a drone flying league, something between a sport and a game. We cut the training time to zero. Anyone could fly a drone at 150 kilometers an hour."
The pivot came in 2019. "Kites and balloons started to appear in the Gaza border area. We took our technology and basically turned our soldiers into a sort of iron man, with VR (virtual reality) technology that as it were made them fly, and they shot down balloons in the sky. Besides the fun, the technology can save lives, and that’s what we focused on. October 7 gave us another push. We have the ability and the privilege to save lives. In the recent earthquake in Venezuela we managed to save two people. That is also the reason that we went for a flotation. We want to do it at scale."
Among the shareholders in the company is the son of US President Donald Trump, Eric Trump (who did not invest directly but through another investment, although Shapira mentions that they met in the course of the due diligence examination, and that "he’s a very smart, pleasant, and talented person.")
Xtend reached Wall Street through a merger with JFB Construction Holdings. Shapira relates that Xtend began a pre-IPO process, and one of the potential investors they met suggested the merger with JFB. "It’s a reverse merger: they buy us but we’re most of the company. We have business synergy with them. We’ve solved the problem of manufacturing drones and robots in the US. We opened a large factory there that JFB built, and we brought down production costs significantly," he says. "For them, it’s a business opportunity, and for us it shortened the time to market by six months."
A presence in many countries
After raising $100 million as a privately-held company and another $150 million in the merger, Shapira is aiming the company at acquisitions. "We’re looking at both maritime and land opportunities, and at fixed-wing (UAVs)." Xtend already works with major companies in the field. "Our vision is that all the companies that use our system will be able to work together, like a swarm that can carry out joint missions."
One the one hand, as an Israeli company you have significant experience from the recent war. On the other hand, it’s not easy being identified as Israeli in today’s global market.
"We built the company as a global company from day one, and we have subsidiary companies in the US, the UK, and Singapore. They see me as Israeli. I don’t hide it and I’m not ashamed, God forbid. But the company is American, with appropriate classification in every state.
"It gives us an advantage. The experience in Israel is the craziest we’ve had, but we also have experience in Ukraine, which is a different sort of war. We probably have the richest and most varied experience in real operations and battlefield situations. After missiles landed in Israel as well we carried out search and rescue operations."
In 2025, Xtend had revenue of $19.7 million, representing growth of 20.6%, and a net loss of $26.8 million, 55.6% higher than in the previous year. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue shot up by 234% to $5.8 million, and the company posted a net loss of $11.6 million and negative EBITDA of $18.9 million. The company expects significant growth in the coming years. The transition to positive EBITDA is forecast for 2028.
Shapira says that the growth will be both organic and though acquisitions. "Security budgets around the world are growing at a crazy rate. We have a presence in many countries, and that is what enables us to grow. In the future I want us to be the main operating system standard in the world for life saving and border protection," he says.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 8, 2026.
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