Does Bayer support Israel?

Bayer has operated in Israel since 2008 through subsidiary Bayer Israel Ltd. in Hod Hasharon (~100 employees), spanning pharma, consumer health and crop-science activity including vegetable-seed R&D. In June 2022, alongside Israel's Ministry of Economy, Bayer announced a global cybersecurity development center in Israel — described as one of its largest internal cyber units — to partner with Israeli cybersecurity startups.

Bayer Pharma AG signed a research collaboration and license agreement with Israel's Compugen for antibody-based cancer immunotherapies against two Compugen-discovered immune checkpoint targets: $10 million upfront, up to $30 million in preclinical milestones, over $500 million in potential milestone payments, plus royalties. The amount shown is the verified upfront payment.

Bayer committed $10 million over five years to a new agricultural innovation fund established with Israel's Trendlines Group to back Israeli ag-tech startups in biopesticides, packaging technology and crop and animal breeding.

Bayer, Netafim International and BGN Technologies — the technology-transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev — announced a three-year research collaboration agreement on 7 February 2019 at the Fruit Logistica trade fair in Berlin. The work extends DripByDrip, the system Bayer and Netafim built to carry Bayer's Velum Prime nematicide to crop roots through Netafim drip lines; the laboratory and field trials are run in Israel, at Netafim's facilities and at the university's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. This is a commercial R&D agreement and no financial terms were disclosed.

Maariv reported that in September 2019 a delegation of 15 senior figures from the global R&D leadership of Bayer's pharmaceutical division held a run of meetings in Israel with 32 Israeli startup, biotech and research companies to weigh investments and future collaborations. It was led by Jörg Müller, head of the division's global R&D, and Maariv reported it was the first Bayer delegation of that size to come to Israel, earlier visits of this kind having gone only to Sweden and Boston. Bayer said the aim was a long-term partnership with Israel's research environment rather than an investment in any one company, and no money was committed; the delegation also met Germany's ambassador to Israel, Susanne Wasum-Rainer. Maariv noted Bayer's earlier Israeli investments in Compugen, Evogene and the Trendlines incubator. The division's roughly 3 billion euro annual R&D budget quoted in the article is Bayer's worldwide spending, not a sum tied to Israel.

Leaps by Bayer — Bayer's venture-capital arm, not its operating business — backed Israeli biotech Ukko's $40 million Series B round (round total; Bayer's individual share undisclosed). Ukko develops engineered proteins to address food allergies and gluten sensitivity.

Bayer's Crop Science division signed a licensing and collaboration agreement with Israel's AgPlenus for a novel broad-spectrum herbicide targeting the APTH1 protein, with Bayer taking an exclusive development and commercialization license and AgPlenus receiving an upfront payment, research funding, milestones and royalties. This continues Bayer's long-running Israeli crop-science ties with parent company Evogene, inherited from Monsanto, under which Evogene received a $3.5 million seed-traits collaboration payment in December 2022.

In March 2024 Bayer hosted Shualei Kfar Aza, the amateur football team of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, on a three-day visit to Leverkusen. Three of the team's players were murdered in the 7 October 2023 attack on the kibbutz and two, the twins Gali and Ziv Berman, were taken hostage and were still held in Gaza when Israel Hayom reported the trip in February 2024. Coach Yanai Katzir said the visit was arranged through Bayer, the pharmaceutical company that owns the club Bayer 04 Leverkusen, and that he made it a condition of the trip that tickets be bought for the two hostages as well; Israel Hayom reported ahead of it that 30 players would fly. ynet, reporting from Leverkusen, described a visit to Bayer's offices where the players told the company's staff their own and the kibbutz's story, a tour of the club's facilities, the Leverkusen under-15 match against Bochum, and the Bundesliga game against Wolfsburg on 10 March 2024. The hosting was in kind and no cost was disclosed. ynet's reporter travelled as Bayer's guest and disclosed it at the foot of the piece.