eBay is closing its R&D center in Israel at the beginning of next year. The eBay Israel R&D center website boasts of its prowess in cutting-edge technology that eBay uses to power innovative (or “magical,” in eBay parlance) tools for buyers and sellers:
“The Applied Research group at eBay Israel R&D center explores and provides solutions for deeply complex problems by conducting research in areas of Data Science, Machine Learning, NLP, Recommendation Systems, Information Retrieval, and Computer Vision. We work closely with the engineering and product teams to bring state of the art technology to production environments. The group focuses on a variety of topics, all with a deep impact on eBay’s core business. For example, using ML to make eBay’s data more structured, generating high quality content for eBay’s catalog, offering intelligent pricing suggestions, and guiding sellers on how to bid on eBay’s promoted listings.”
It’s unclear who will pick up the slack as the R&D center winds down. In reporting on the closure on Wednesday, Globes included the following statement from eBay: “After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to close our office in Israel during the first quarter of 2026. We are committed to continuing to provide support and accompany our employees throughout the transition process. As a global company, eBay is continuously evaluating its operating model in line with its long-term strategic goals, and in order to optimize support for customers and employees.”
eBay Israel’s R&D center is a leader in research, development, and innovation spanning seller and buyer experiences – “eBay is leading the industry in the fields of machine learning, AI, NLP, entity recognition, taxonomy management, and more,” according to the eBay Israel website.
In 2018, Israeli news site Globes pegged the number of eBay employees based in its development center in Netanya, Israel, at 330.
In 2023, another news site Calcalist reported that eBay had laid off in February “dozens of employees at eBay’s R&D center in Israel, which was set up in 2005 following the acquisition of shopping.com for $620 million” and reported eBay was laying off another 20-25 workers in December 2023 out of 250 Israeli employees.
Globes said that last year, many employees had expressed concern about a closure “due to the war and eBay’s weakening against its rival Amazon.”
In a “goodbye” post on LinkedIn, eBay wrote, “Our center in Israel, which has been operating for two decades, a place that grew up with us and has become an integral part of many amazing people, is about to end its journey. Over the years, we have developed groundbreaking technology here, innovative research, connected people, learned, changed, and still managed to maintain the magic that every Abie employee knows.” It also invited employees and others to “share a memory, a kind word, or best wishes for our employees who are soon embarking on a new path.”
6/1/2025: Edited slightly for clarity.
Two thoughts. First, to the extent these folks (those at the office to be closed) were the ones constantly (and needlessly) tinkering with established formating on the sales form or Seller Hub, good riddance. Second, I assume they’ll be replaced by AI but if not, hope eBay reshores this type of work back to the USA, and employs American citizens to do the work.
Alibaba and Aliexpress are waiting in line for this former eBay Israeli R&D company.
Or even Amazon ? maybe Etsy ?…no.
I’ve never understood how major corps can operate in war-town countries. The same with India. Every now and then it will war with Pakistan, yet American corps still move and build there.
“The group focuses on a variety of topics, all with a deep impact on eBay’s core business.”
eBay’s core business is numerous massive consumer fraud campaigns.
@ Zigmund
“Alibaba and Aliexpress are waiting in line for this former eBay Israeli R&D company.”
Interesting concept there – a company from Israel sharing technology with two companies run by the CCP. Some how I don’t think it will be approved by the Israeli government.
Funny…All this hype around AI.
AI is proving to be more difficult than thought, while many in the business community are calling it a failure as too much data is need to generate human like responses.
When corporations in tech announce they are laying off people due to advancements in AI, the technical community is calling “Bull Sh*T”. What is being said is that these layoffs are really going to outsourcing to places like India, while many now call A.I. as “(A)ctually (I)ndia”.
Ebay may be leaving Israel due of political reasons, however, I suspect Ebay is possibly preparing for an economic downturn that requires the company to find cheaper help, elsewhere.
Israel has a strong technical community to contract from, however, it comes at a price.