The Israeli billionaire was one of the founding fathers of Israel’s high-tech industry.
Israeli businessman Morris Kahn has died aged 95. He was one of the founders of telecom billing company Amdocs (Nasdaq: DOX), which is traded on Wall Street with a market cap of $8.85 billion and is one of Israel’s veteran tech companies.
Kahn was born in South Africa in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1956 with his wife Jacqueline and their children David and Benjy. In the 1950s he began his business career in Israel but was unsuccessful at first. His attempts to set up a leather glove factory and bicycle factory and developing a special patent against car theft did not meet with any great success.
From Golden Pages to Amdocs
Kahn’s business breakthrough came in 1968, when he won a tender to produce telephone directories (Golden Pages) based on technology developed by Boaz Dotan, who later founded Amdocs. The next step was to develop billing software and manage customer service systems for telephone companies. At this point, it was decided to separate the computing activities from Golden Pages and establish Amdocs.
Amdocs, a company that produces billing software, would become not only a significant milestone in Kahn’s life, but also one of the founders of Israel’s high-tech industry. Amdocs created thousands of jobs and influenced generations of Israeli tech professionals, engineers, and managers.
Kahn’s Aurec Group later invested in many prominent businesses in the economy, including cable TV company Golden Channels, international telecom company Golden Lines, Netvision, Maximedia, Alpha-Card, Med-1, Netcom and AIG Israel. Kahn worked to establish the infrastructure of Israel’s high-tech industry.
Acute business sense
Kahn had an acute and keen business sense and knew how to sell most of his holdings (in Amdocs, Golden Channels, Golden Lines, Golden Pages and Netvision) at peak prices. In the end, Kahn, together with his partners (Shmuel Meitar), realized holdings worth approximately $1.9 billion, which made him, as far as is known, the wealthiest Israeli businessman until 20 years ago.
Previous estimates have been that Kahn managed to pay extremely low taxes due to sophisticated tax planning. Forbes estimated his wealth at $1.1 billion in 2025.
Kahn shied away from the media and jealously guarded his privacy. In one of the few interviews he gave to a media outlet, Yedioth Ahronoth in 2002, he said, “There is no mystery in me, I am an open person. I am a private person, and I guard my privacy. That is my nature, really. Besides, there is something ostentatious and arrogant about it that arouses disgust. What I do or feel should not interest anyone.”
Kahn was an avid sea lover and a diver who spent many weeks a year on his yacht. Among his holdings was also a stake in Coral World, a company that builds underwater observatories, and among other things, built the underwater observatory in Eilat.
In recent years, Kahn was one of the major donors and the living spirit of the SpaceIL project, which led to the landing of the first private spacecraft on the moon.
