Orbotech Ltd. a subsidiary of KLA Corporation and a technology company used in the manufacturing of consumer and industrial products throughout the electronics and adjacent industries. The company providing electronics reading, writing, and connecting solutions used by manufacturers of printed circuit boards, flat panel displays, advanced packaging, micro-electro-mechanical systems and other electronic components. The company is headquartered in Yavne, Israel and operates in North America, Europe, Japan and Asia-Pacific. Corporate history Early years Optrotech, one of the two companies which eventually merged to create Orbotech, was founded in 1981 by a team of engineers at Electro-Optical Industry Ltd. (El-Op) led by Shlomo Barak, who was developing electro-optical systems for military use, but saw commercial use for them as well. The company received financial backing from Uzia Galil of Elron Electronic Industries, an Israeli holding company. After 18 months of development, Optrotech was first to market with its first-generation Automated optical inspection product, although a number of other companies also had been working on their own automated inspection systems. As the first to market, Optrotech was able to become the market leader in its field helping transform the printed circuit board industry, enabling companies to begin the first of a series of productivity improvements. The faster production times and greater volumes helped drive costs down, and the steadily dropping prices of printed circuit boards provided still further stimulation for the development of the global electronics and computer industries. In 1983, a fellow Israeli company Orbot was founded by brothers Yochai and Kobi Richter, Shimon Ullman, Zvi Lapidot and Ami Caspi; with the financial backing of Ormat Industries. Orbot successfully launched competing automated optical inspection solutions and by 1986 overtook Optrotech as the AOI market leader. In 1984 Optrotech had an initial public offering on NASDAQ raising $10 million USD. The funds raised enabled Optrotech to develop the next generation of its automated optical inspection technology and launched an effort to diversify its market, beginning development of its first CAD/CAM system. Merger of Optrotech and Orbot In 1991, due to a slowdown in the global AOI market Optrotech and Orbot started discussing a merge of their complementary operations. In August 1992, Optrotech and Orbot reached a merger agreement, in which Orbot absorbed Optrotech, excluding its semiconductor subsidiary Orbot Instruments (which was later sold to Applied Materials). The resulting business was then renamed Orbotech and managed to capture 70 percent of the AOI