She left Israel’s Finance Ministry to bet on AI. Now she is helping build LTX

When Shani Mandel-Laufer joined Lightricks in 2022, the Jerusalem-based company was best known for consumer photo and video editing apps. A few months later, the generative AI revolution began reshaping the technology industry, and Lightricks began changing with it.

Today, as Lightricks splits into two companies, Mandel-Laufer sits on the management team of LTX, the new company focused on generative models, world models and the vision of Physical AI. She serves as its chief business officer, leading strategic partnerships, business development, pricing and go-to-market strategy.

Her path to that position began with a decision that, at the time, seemed difficult to justify.

Mandel-Laufer had been building a promising career in Israel’s public sector. While studying philosophy, economics and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she began working as a research assistant to former Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug. She later joined the Budget Division at the Ministry of Finance, first as a housing referent and later as the energy coordinator, where she was involved in major reforms in the electricity and gas markets.

Then, about four years ago, just as her public-sector career was gaining momentum, she left.

In less than four years at Lightricks, she moved through a succession of roles, from investor relations to planning and strategy, business development and partnerships. She ultimately became chief business officer of LTX, the company created through Lightricks’ split.

Her work now involves turning LTX’s technology into a business: developing its business and revenue model, negotiating strategic partnerships, building its go-to-market infrastructure and working with investors. The company is in advanced negotiations with major Hollywood studios, large technology platforms, hardware and robotics companies, and other growing AI companies.

The person who encouraged her to make the leap was Shaul Meridor, her former colleague at the Finance Ministry. Meridor, who had served as director of the ministry’s Budget Division until 2020, later became CFO of Lightricks and recently joined Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party.

“I had a great time there,” Mandel-Laufer says of the Finance Ministry. “When Shaul moved to Lightricks he suggested I join the company several times. I told him I was in my dream position, and I also planned to do the Wexner program and continue on the public track.”

Eventually, Meridor asked her where she would go when she eventually left the ministry.

“I did a retroactive induction and told myself that I really enjoyed it, but even if I ended up becoming a deputy in the division and left, it would be more difficult to start a new track. I preferred to start from the bottom and grow within high-tech.”

The decision changed the trajectory of her career.

“He is a real mentor,” she says of Meridor. “You have to come with very high energy to do so many different things and roles, and in the end someone has to give you the opportunity to do it. He brought me in and helped me and trusted me a lot and gave me a free hand.”

Mandel-Laufer initially worried that leaving government would mean giving up some of the impact she had found in the public sector.

While studying for a master’s degree in financial economics, she had even considered pursuing a doctorate with Prof. Eugene Kandel. But she eventually realized that she was more interested in building and implementing things than researching them.

“I wasn’t worried about the interest, but there was a moment when I thought that I wouldn’t have the same impact as in the public sector,” she says. “Today I can say that LTX will change the world, so I’m just as proud of the impact.”

That transition has also shaped the way she approaches her current job.

“I deal with LTX’s most strategic partnerships,” she says. “In my previous life, there were also many players on the other side of the fence. Each side has its own opinion in the discussion, and the next day in another discussion it’s on your side and you use it.”

The same dynamic exists in technology, she says, where companies can simultaneously compete and cooperate.

“We have a generative model and we compete with creative software companies, but there are also close partners of mine there. You have to constantly maintain good relationships in the industry, whether it’s in the public sector or outside.”

The timing of her move also turned out to be significant. Only months after she joined Lightricks, generative AI began transforming the technology industry.

Lightricks began developing products that combined generative and open models, while Mandel-Laufer’s responsibilities expanded beyond the financial and strategic work she had initially been hired to do.

“I started doing things that went beyond planning, budgeting, strategy, and investor relations. We started developing a product that was more for creators and B2B, doing strategic reviews of what the market and the value chain looked like.”

The experience from the Finance Ministry proved useful. “In the department, you come to a field and the next day you represent it in the Knesset, so you have to learn the field very quickly and come up with recommendations for what legislative and structural changes are important to make.”

The transformation of Mandel-Laufer’s career mirrored the transformation of Lightricks itself.

The company built its global reputation through consumer products such as Facetune and Videoleap, which reached millions of users. It is now dividing its business into two companies, with one continuing to focus on creative products and LTX concentrating on generative models and the emerging field of Physical AI.

Mandel-Laufer believes the latter could ultimately become a much larger economic opportunity than today’s language-model boom.

“This is a video model that can simulate the world,” she says. “This is relevant to simulations that use software and models to make a digital twin. This is relevant to planning a floor in a building, simulating traffic before approving a train station, and more.”

The same technology could be used to predict what a robot will do next, she says.

“It is a model that understands objects. I believe that the economic potential in Physical AI will be much greater than in LLM, language models. A language model doesn’t help a forklift or a bus driver, you need the visual element.”