Mati Kochavi is an Israeli entrepreneur, tech pioneer, and filmmaker.
Mati was born in Haifa, Israel, and attended the University of Haifa. In the 1990s, he moved to the United States, where in 2007, he founded, and still chairs, AGT International, a global leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics. With AGT International, Kochavi sought to solve some of the biggest problems plaguing today’s urban environments, such as infrastructure, urban management, natural resource management, and food safety.
AGT’s approach was to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies to create, and harvest sensor-based data from the physical environment, and turn that data into actionable insights that can help urban planners solve these complex issues.
To leverage AI, the company developed a unique AI-powered platform called IoTA, which aimed to make sense of the physical world by providing tech solutions with cognitive capabilities.
AGT was not the only company Mati founded. In fact, he brought up several other tech companies, including Vocativ, 3iMIND, HEED, and Korro AI.
Mati Kochavi Presenting Korro AI At The World Knowledge Forum
Video and philanthropy work
The former is a film studio and a video content creation company that produces premium content and other television shows for some of the biggest media companies in the United States, such as SHOWTIME, Discovery, and NBC Universal. One of the more prominent products of Vocativ Studios was Dark Net, a series Kochavi created with his daughter, Adi. Dark Net discusses the negative sides of today’s technologies, including the web.
The latter is a digital platform that helps brands and venues deepen their relationship with their visitors and customers through a blend of both physical and virtual experiences.
But when it comes to filmmaking and video production, Kochavi is perhaps best known for his latest two projects – Eva Stories, and Equiano Stories. These two projects are somewhat similar, as both aim to educate the younger generations on some of the biggest, and most tragic, moments in human history.
Both are feature films designed for social media. They depict true stories, lives of teenage children living during unimaginably hard times. Eva Stories follows the story of Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old girl who lived in Eastern Europe during Nazi Germany. In 1944, she was taken to a concentration camp where she was eventually murdered. The film was released on Instagram, as a series of posts depicting what life might have looked like for the girl. It gathered more than a million followers.
Storytelling at its finest
The project was a resounding success, bringing in more than 300 million views, and 200 million search engine queries, in less than two days after its release. More than 100 media publications covered Eva Stories, and the project ended up receiving more than 20 awards. Presidents of more than 20 countries worldwide spoke highly of the project.
Equiano Stories follows the true story of Olaudah Equiano, a young African boy who was kidnapped and taken to the Caribbean to work as a slave. The film was split into 500 short clips, published on TikTok and Instagram where combined, they garnered almost a million followers.