Senior vice presidents at tech companies are usually not particularly well-known to the public, even if they are senior executives at the Israeli branch of one of the world's largest companies, valued at an estimated $4.5 trillion. However, the face and voice of Gideon Rosenberg, Deputy General Counsel and Head of Human Resources for NVIDIA in Israel, have been recognized by tens of thousands of participants at rallies in Tel Aviv's Museum Square every Saturday night, and the thousands who took part in marches to Jerusalem for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He has been there every time, on stage and at the head of the convoy, always with a megaphone in hand and his voice thundering, "All of them. Now."
"I was never a political person," he said in an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom. "Before October 7, I never led a convoy and never spoke at a demonstration. I volunteered in parent leadership at the kids' school and tried to do good in general, but I wasn't involved in this kind of activity – until they kidnapped my employee, until I discovered that Avinatan was in Gaza."
Like so many stories worth telling these days, Rosenberg's also begins in the early morning hours of that cursed Saturday. "Right after I understood the dimensions of the event, I realized it would also affect our employees," he said. "Nvidia has more than 5,000 employees in Israel, many of whom live and work in the south, and we started trying to find out what was happening with them."
Within a few hours, the chilling video of the abduction of Avinatan Or, an engineer at Nvidia, and his partner Noa Argamani from the Nova Festival spread, becoming one of the unforgettable icons of that terrible day. "I asked employees who knew Avinatan, 'Are you sure that's him?' I didn't know him personally before this and in addition to all this difficult event, I also felt uncomfortable that I couldn't identify an employee of the company, even if we have thousands of employees in the country. So we checked again and again until we were sure it was him – and then I wrote a personal message to Jensen."
Jensen is of course Jensen Huang, CEO of chip giant Nvidia and one of the central and admired figures in global tech in recent years. Rosenberg wrote to him that Or had been abducted to Gaza and also updated him that Daniel Waldman, daughter of Eyal Waldman, one of the founders of Mellanox (the Israeli technology company acquired by Nvidia in 2020 for about $7 billion), had been murdered along with her partner Noam Shay – both had worked for the company in the past.
"Jensen is a very empathetic person, anyone who has met him or follows him knows that. He immediately responded and informed all the company's employees worldwide that their colleague had been kidnapped. There are no words to describe what he has done since that moment to help," Rosenberg recalled. "Within a short time, I made contact with Avinatan's brother and offered him my help, both as a manager at the company and simply as a human being who cares. The family decided to show up at the Begin Gate of the Kirya with pictures of Avinatan, and I met them there. To get to know them and to support them. I didn't know it would become a regular meeting and such an important part of my life for more than two years."
Rosenberg (49, a Tel Aviv resident) said that from that moment, things happened quickly. He sent a message to company employees, inviting them to accompany family members to Begin Gate; arranged to print shirts and signs with Or's portrait and a call to bring him home; and promised to help them with whatever they needed.
"We were always there with them in the evening, from seven to nine, in sirens and missiles, and all this time we also had to take care of other employees who were affected, evacuated from home, or who lost family members and friends," he said. "It was a difficult and somewhat crazy routine. Nvidia had five employees whose family members were kidnapped to Gaza, and some were murdered there, and we even recruited new employees over time who also have relatives who are hostages. In addition, employees lost brothers and friends in the war, and company employee Amit Chayut fell in battle. We understood that we had to do everything we could to help them. It was clear to me that this was my most important mission and that of the company."
"Gradual rise until explosion"
The war caught Nvidia Israel at the height of an intensive growth process, which Rosenberg, a lawyer by training, closely accompanied, witnessed, and partnered in one of the most amazing success stories in tech. He began his career in Mellanox's legal department 15 years ago, when the company employed only about 400 employees, mainly at its offices in Yokneam, but also at other development centers in Israel, in the Palestinian Authority territories, and even in Gaza, where Palestinian employees continued to work even after the company was sold to Nvidia.
"The sale to an American company on a much larger scale and with a different organizational culture required many adjustments from us," he said. "Nvidia decided to keep all the employees in Israel, because it wasn't just interested in Mellanox's technology, mainly data center connectivity, which expanded Nvidia's product portfolio, but in its people. I supported the deal on the legal side, and later I also became VP of Human Resources. At that time, only about 2,000 employees worked at the company, and within a few years, we grew by 2.5 times, with the major recruitment period occurring mostly in parallel with the war."
These years have been dramatic not only for Nvidia itself, but for the entire tech world. "I remember the pivotal day when they announced OpenAI's ChatGPT, exactly three years ago," Rosenberg said. "We all at the company understood that something had fallen, that the AI field was really breaking through, as we hoped would happen. This, of course, didn't happen in one day. The company built itself toward this moment. OpenAI worked with Mellanox on the technology back then, and we knew how important our products were for the AI era. It was a gradual rise until explosion – and when it happened, it happened fast and in big leaps, and it was important to preserve the organization's identity."
"Nvidia's DNA is excellence. Pushing for achievements in every field – technology, operations, sales, and more. The idea is to work as part of a team and with shared responsibility and purpose. This is an ethos that Israelis can easily connect to. The company also encourages dialogue and expression of opinion, and expects smart people to challenge the system. Employees understand the importance of Israel in Nvidia's activity, and there is enormous pride in being part of its success. Jensen himself also makes a point of noting this on many occasions," he added.
Recently, Nvidia won the title of "The Best Company to Work for in Israel" for the second consecutive time, in a ranking based on a Dun & Bradstreet survey of tens of thousands of employees at tech companies in Israel. The survey examined satisfaction across a variety of areas: advancement opportunities and professional development, work-life balance, work environment, sense of diversity and inclusion, level of compensation and employment conditions, quality of management and relationship with direct managers, and overall organizational culture.
"Satisfaction is not just good conditions," Rosenberg explained. "Money is, of course, important and critical – salary, stocks, financial horizon – but a leading company needs to create satisfaction and interest and security for employees. From the CEO to the most junior manager, it's clear to everyone that we need to ensure our employees have it good and that they will want to continue working with us – and we invest a lot in this."
"I simply didn't want them to be alone"
According to Rosenberg, this concern for his employee led him to join the first march for the hostages in November 2023. "I arrived there as a citizen and as someone who has a kidnapped employee. I told the organizers I wanted to help, and suddenly someone gave me a megaphone and told me to navigate the convoy – to make sure they walked at a uniform, slow pace and in an orderly line – maybe just because I have a loud voice. It was a very powerful event, with public resonance, and I decided to continue acting. I showed up for 'my shift' with Avinatan's family, came to the square to meet the other families, and became more and more involved in the activity for the hostages and especially their families."
Rosenberg became one of the leaders of the struggle and a regular host of Saturday night rallies. "It wasn't a political matter for me," he emphasized. "I simply didn't want the families to be alone, and I wanted so much to bring Avinatan home."
Or continued to be an employee of the company the entire time, even if he ultimately spent more time in Hamas captivity than as a company employee before he was kidnapped. "He received his salary and his stocks. He is still our employee, and we continue to help him and the family with everything they need," Rosenberg said. "This was always the company's message, and it always came from the top, from senior management abroad. Jensen met with the family and continued to correspond regularly with them. He spoke about Avinatan at internal company events and also in public appearances."
"On October 7, I didn't have a 'playbook' that says what to do if a company employee is kidnapped. We didn't know how to deal with something like this, but I hope I did the right things along the way. I also have no idea if anything I did somehow helped bring Avinatan home, but I tried to give his family as much strength as possible, because they were in a very lonely and difficult place."
"Suddenly he was three-dimensional"
On October 13, 2025, Or was released from Hamas captivity as part of the third hostage deal with the terror organization. "The meeting with him at the hospital was surreal," Rosenberg recalled. "Suddenly, he was three-dimensional, a real person. Until then, he was just a picture and a name. I knew so many things about him, almost everything, and certainly much more than any employee wants his manager to know about him, but we actually never met. I knew his family much better than him, and it was strange and wonderful."
"Today we talk, correspond on WhatsApp, and meet occasionally. It's amazing and moving that we got to this. He is on the path to health, and he is strengthening and rehabilitating, and I am very happy that I got to know him and that I got to see his father smile for the first time after those long and terrible two years," he added. "Everyone had such a hard time during this period – I also had a hard time balancing between regular life, work, family, and activity for others. I know I'm not special in this, but it was important to me that my children and other people see that it's possible and worthwhile to do this. It was important to me to set such a personal example – and when you see the amazing change that has occurred in the family since the hostages returned home – it's really worth everything."
