The problem
Chip and systems giants invest a year just training a new design engineer, yet cannot find enough of them — while Palestinian universities graduate some 3,000 computer scientists a year into an economy with 21 percent unemployment, separated from those employers by permits and borders (IEEE Spectrum, 2009).
How it works
Asal recruits and vets Palestinian engineers into dedicated pods housed in Ramallah — and in the planned city of Rawabi — that operate as long-term extensions of the client’s R&D org. Apple’s Rawabi center, staffed entirely through Asal, works with teams in Herzliya and Haifa on hardware-development tools and products; other pods serve Microsoft (including Surface pen-and-touch R&D), Intel, Mellanox-Nvidia, and LivePerson. G.ho.st’s CEO pointed chip-design firm Nuvoton to Asal’s Murad Tahboub precisely because the firm could locate every engineer it needed (IEEE Spectrum).
Pain points
Costly hiring mistakes after year-long training ramps, acute shortages of specialized hardware talent, and graduates whose English, shared time zone, and lower wages make them ideal for outsourcing — if a trusted intermediary bridges the access gap.
Business model
Contract R&D outsourcing on multi-year engagements: clients pay per dedicated engineer or pod while Asal carries recruitment, facilities, management, and retention risk.
Challenges
Concentration in a few giant clients whose roadmap shifts can idle whole pods, retention of senior hardware engineers against emigration offers, and growing headcount under movement restrictions that make client-site visits a permit-dependent exception rather than the norm.
Funding
No public record of venture funding — Asal grew as a services exporter on multinational contracts, operating since at least 2009 (IEEE Spectrum). It is associated with the Massar ecosystem: Rawabi founder Bashar Masri sits on Asal’s board (Algemeiner, Jul 2022).
Latest — Jul 2022
Apple announced the expansion of its Palestinian R&D center in Rawabi, which already employed 60 engineers — all recruited through Ramallah-based contractor Asal Technologies, starting with the first five in 2018 — working with teams in Herzliya and Haifa on hardware products (Algemeiner, Jul 2022).