\u201cWhen I met Avinatan at the hospital a few days after his release, it was absolutely surreal,\u201d Rosenberg told The Times of Israel during a recent interview at Nvidia\u2019s Tel Aviv office. \u201cUntil that point, he was a two-dimensional person on a poster and on the t-shirt I had been wearing for two years \u2014 and then suddenly, he\u2019s three-dimensional, a real person. That was just very, very strange, but of course we were all very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosenberg, 49, is the personnel director for Nvidia\u2019s 5,000 employees in Israel, who work out of five offices and R&D hubs in the cities of Yokne\u2019am, Ra\u2019anana, Tel Aviv, and Beersheba. Or, 32, grew up in the West Bank town of Shilo, the second of seven brothers, and joined Nvidia as an electrical engineer after graduating from Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know more about Avinatan than I know about any other employee \u2014 although we had never met \u2014 as I got to know and spent many hours with all of his close and extended family as well as friends,\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure I know more about him than he would want a manager to know, from stories about his childhood and other tales.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n Or, who was released on October 13 as part of a ceasefire deal with the Hamas terror group in Gaza, was mostly held alone<\/a> in underground tunnels after he was abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. His girlfriend, Noa Argamani, was also kidnapped from the festival and was rescued by Israeli forces in June 2024.<\/p>\n \t The ceasefire deal marked a key step toward ending a tumultuous two-year war triggered by the October 7 atrocities, during which thousands of marauding terrorists from Gaza slaughtered some 1,200 people and abducted 251 to the Strip. The hostages, living and dead, have been released in tranches over the last two years, in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners, and Or was among the final living hostages to be freed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no playbook for an employee being taken hostage,\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cWe had to make that up as we went along, while continuing our daily jobs and taking care of other employees who were on reserve duty, evacuated from home, or who lost family members and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n In the days following October 7, Rosenberg stepped up his own efforts, gathering Nvidia employees to support Or\u2019s family and friends at frequent marches and rallies. But he did not envision that he would become a main voice in advocating for the hostages\u2019 release for over two years, together with their families.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we confirmed that Avinatan was taken hostage on October 7, I wrote a personal email to notify Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was very empathetic. He sent out a note to all employees worldwide, and has, throughout the past two years, shown continuous support for the family, spoken about [Or] at internal company events, and also in public appearances,\u201d Rosenberg said.<\/p>\n Or and Huang met last week at Nvidia\u2019s US headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Argamani, who was also at the meeting,\u00a0described Nvidia as \u201cone big family<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the entire two years that Or was held captive, Huang \u201cpersonally accompanied the family and called repeatedly to ask how they were doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing how the company stood by him the entire time shows us what true mutual responsibility really means \u2014 how even in days of success and prosperity, they stood by their employee, and fought alongside us,\u201d Argamani wrote in a post on social media platform X.<\/p>\n \t From the first days of Or\u2019s captivity in October 2023, Rosenberg decided to do everything he could for his employee to come back home alive. Initially, the Nvidia veteran and father of three kids showed up every evening, standing with Or\u2019s family outside the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. In the days and weeks that followed, he also participated in marches of the hostage families to Jerusalem and other locations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started helping the family with printing t-shirts and signs [with Or\u2019s picture and slogans with a call to bring him home], and every Sunday, I sent an email with a link to an Excel sheet for employees to sign up Monday through Thursday to support the family,\u201d Rosenberg said. \u201cWearing Avinatan\u2019s t-shirt at one of the marches in November 2023, I offered my help to the organizers, and before I knew it, I was handed a megaphone and was leading the crowd up front shouting: \u2018We won\u2019t stop until they are all back,\u2019 and other chants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have a very loud voice, and I am tall, which is helpful,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The protest organizers asked Rosenberg to come back the next day, a request he felt he could not refuse, despite having family commitments. Since then and over the next two years of conflict, he wore the t-shirt with Or\u2019s printed picture and became a vocal advocate for the hostage families at large demonstrations, marches, daily gatherings, and on stage at Tel Aviv\u2019s Hostages Square, including on Fridays and Saturdays.<\/p>\n \t \u201cI promised the hostage families, I\u2019m not going to lose my voice. You got my voice until they all come back,\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cI never lost my voice.\u201d<\/p>\n For Rosenberg, one of the chants he came up with, \u201cYou are not alone, we are with you,\u201d became the guiding idea behind his frequent attendance at rallies.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing a hostage family is a very lonely place, and I always connected it to the analogy of a phone: before you go to sleep, and sometimes during the day, you charge it, as you want to make sure that it\u2019s 100% when you wake up in the morning,\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cThe families are the same \u2014 you need to charge them with energy so that they can continue their days, and getting them to 100% is impossible unless you bring them back their loved ones, and even then, it is not going to be 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat was my support role \u2014 to make sure that they could continue, and that they didn\u2019t feel that they were alone in this fight to bring back their loved ones, however they wanted to conduct that fight, their struggle each to his own,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \t Asked about how he balanced his role as a senior executive at Nvidia and family life during the challenging period, he said that he was a very \u201cefficient\u201d person with a strong team that knows how to do its job, whether he was at his desk or away.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always available, so even during marches, I could answer the phone,\u201d Rosenberg said. \u201cFor Nvidia, part of my work was to make sure Avinatan comes home, so from my perspective, it was fairly easy to balance and justify the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you asked some of the families and a lot of people who were surrounding us in Hostages Square, most of them had no idea what I did for a living, and that was good because it was never about me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \t Nvidia\u2019s R&D activities in Israel, where many of its high-end processors and networking chips essential for training the largest AI models are developed, are already the firm\u2019s largest outside of the US. The appetite for Nvidia\u2019s chips has been driving the company\u2019s stock price rapidly since early 2023, turning it into the world\u2019s first $5 trillion<\/a> company at the end of October.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/rosenbergOr-300x480.jpg\")
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\n\t\tFreed hostage Avinatan Or (left), who was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, is welcomed at the hospital by Nvidia Israel\u2019s head of HR, Gideon Rosenberg, October 2025. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/G7635WnW8AE-1lT-640x400.jpeg\")
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\n\t\tFrom left: senior vice president and head of NVIDIA\u2019s Israel research and development center Amit Krig, released hostage and NVIDIA employee Avinatan Or, released hostage Noa Argamani, and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, meeting at the company\u2019s US headquarters following Or\u2019s release from Hamas captivity, December 11, 2025. (NVIDIA via Noa Argamani on X)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gideon2-640x400.jpeg\")
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\n\t\tNvidia HR Israel manager Gideon Rosenberg on stage during a rally at Tel Aviv\u2019s Hostages Square. (Uriel Even Sapir)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/F251013YA307-e1760385952610-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tReleased hostage Avinatan Or arrives at Beilinson Hospital, Petah Tikva, October 13, 2025. (Yossi Aloni\/ Flash90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/avinatanor2.jpg\")
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\n\t\tNvidia Israel HR head Gideon Rosenberg (right) meets with freed hostage Avinatan Or, following his release from Hamas captivity in Gaza, October 2025. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n