Yeda Research and Development — Weizmann Institute's Technology-Transfer Arm

Yeda Research and Development Company was founded in 1959 as the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, tasked with licensing the Institute's scientific discoveries to industry and returning the proceeds to further research.

Yeda has generated over USD 2 billion in licensing revenue in a recent six-year period and historically more than NIS 1 billion in royalties, consistently ranking among the top five academic institutions worldwide for royalty income. Some 80-90% of that income traces to just three inventions: the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone (glatiramer acetate, discovered by Michael Sela, Ruth Arnon and Dvora Teitelbaum, licensed to Teva in 1987 and FDA-approved in 1996), the MS drug Rebif (licensed to Serono), and an NDS satellite-broadcast encryption system. Yeda passes roughly 40% of royalty income back to the inventing researchers, reinvesting the rest in the Institute.

Yeda is one of the world's oldest and most successful university technology-transfer offices, built on a 65-year track record of turning basic science into licensed products. But its revenue is a hit-driven model concentrated in a handful of blockbuster licences rather than a broad, diversified portfolio — a pattern that is hard to replicate deliberately and depends on a research institute of Weizmann's calibre.

Read the full analysis: https://israelvalley.com/2026/03/31/the-weizmann-institutes-innovation-and-technology-transfer-office/