On the dragon's tail

"For all I know, I'm the only Jew in this city," he adds.

Hurvits is the CEO of Advanced Chip Carriers & E-Substrate Solutions, or ACCESS, a technology company he founded with China's Founder Group. It went into production in 2010, "showing strength in the first two or three years", and now has 700 employees and $60-70 million in annual revenues. In addition, it has developed and filed some 200 patents worldwide.

To translate to laymen's terms, the substrate is the structure that houses the chip. There is the subsequent process of placing the chip on the substrate, which is called "assembly". It is a business dominated by Japanese, South Korean and Taiwan companies. And Hurvits wants to vault over them by combining the substrate and assembly processes, so seamless that "you won't know where the chip ends and the package starts".

In the next step, ACCESS will "influence" how the chip functions, which will help the company "evolve from a certain industry to another segment".

"I want to ride on the tail of the dragon and get closer to the end user," Hurvits says. He sees his joint venture as "a Chinese company taking control" even though he and his Israeli colleagues brought some of the "tier-one technologies" for the startup.

"It was an interesting experiment because foreign companies usually take control when having such partnerships with Chinese," he says, and describes his China experience in the metaphor - "climbing on the rocket".