429 Israeli Firms and 26,510 Jobs: Florida's Quiet Tech Transplant

Israeli-founded technology companies contribute $7.3 billion to Florida's economy, according to a study by 5WPR, an American marketing agency, released in April 2026. The study identified 429 Israeli-founded companies operating across the state, supporting 26,510 jobs in total, of which 8,190 were direct positions.

Miami-Dade County, which contains Miami and its surrounding suburbs, accounted for more than $6 billion of that output, 2.78 per cent of the county's gross domestic product, the study said. It attributed the pattern to Florida's tax environment, the state's access to Latin American markets, and established Israeli community networks, and framed the trend as a shift away from traditional American business hubs such as New York.

Who actually did the counting

5WPR is a public relations and marketing firm rather than a research institute, and the numbers it publicised were not generated from scratch. CTech, the technology arm of the Israeli business daily Calcalist, reported the same headline figures as coming from the Florida–Israel Economic Impact Report published by the United States–Israel Business Alliance and built on 2024 data. CTech's account added that the same data set found workers at Israeli-founded firms in Miami-Dade earning about 18 per cent more than the local average, and identified two Israeli-founded companies in Florida valued above $1 billion.

The release was timed to a Miami trade event. Israel Defense reported that the findings were published on 23 April 2026 alongside Israel Tech Week 2026 in the city, and listed cybersecurity, fintech, healthtech, agritech, cleantech, defence technology and space systems as the sectors where the companies cluster.

Why Miami rather than Manhattan

South Florida has spent a decade building institutions aimed specifically at Israeli founders. The Florida-Israel Business Accelerator, based in Tampa, works with Israeli technology companies looking to establish a presence in the state and operates alongside state and county economic development bodies. Florida levies no personal income tax, and Miami's time zone and flight links make it a natural staging post for companies selling into Latin America, the two structural advantages the study named.

What this represents back in Israel

Israeli technology is overwhelmingly an export business, and increasingly the whole of it. High-technology firms accounted for 58 per cent of Israel's total exports in 2025, The Jerusalem Post reported in June 2026, citing the Israel Innovation Authority's annual report, with sector output rising to 352 billion shekels. Much of that is sold as services rather than shipped as goods, which is why an American state can host hundreds of Israeli-founded firms without those firms appearing prominently in Israel's merchandise trade statistics.

What the study leaves open

The material supplied does not define what counts as an "Israeli-founded" company, does not say how many of the 429 firms relocated from elsewhere in the United States as opposed to being founded in Florida, and gives no comparison figure for an earlier year, so the size of the shift it describes cannot be measured from the numbers alone. Nor does it name the companies counted or explain how indirect jobs were modelled from the 8,190 direct ones.