How an Israeli engineer went from Rafael to iPhone Portrait Mode and a $300 million O

Few consumers are familiar with Ziv Attar, the Israeli entrepreneur revealed on Monday to have sold Glass Imaging to OpenAI for $300 million. Yet if you own an iPhone, there is a good chance you have used technology he helped pioneer, including the smartphone camera’s Portrait Mode. With the sale to the AI giant, Attar is cementing his position as a leading entrepreneur in photography and imaging. Follow CTech on our brand-new Telegram channel Attar was born and raised in Afula and studied optical engineering at the Technion. After completing his bachelor’s degree in 2002, he began working as a senior optics specialist at Rafael. In 2007, he founded OpEra Optics, a startup developing optical and miniature camera technologies, where he served as Chief Optical Designer. In 2011, leveraging OpEra’s intellectual property, he co-founded LinX with Andrey Tovchigrechko.