Top image (representative): Printed circuit board. Photo: Ashley Pomeroy / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In a quarter defined by multibillion-dollar AI rounds, one of the more revealing Silicon Valley deals is worth $120 million and involves printed circuit boards.

PCB Technologies, an Israeli maker of advanced circuit boards and microelectronics listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, announced Oct. 8 that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire all of Gorilla Circuits, a San Jose fabrication and assembly shop, at an enterprise value of $120 million, according to the company’s announcement. The price represents 7.6 times EBITDA, based on average results for 2025 and the first half of 2026.

What Gorilla does

Gorilla Circuits, founded by Hershel Petty, has operated in San Jose for more than 20 years. It specializes in high-mix, low-volume production: prototypes, development hardware and short-lead-time runs for engineering teams that need boards quickly. The company says it serves more than 700 active customers, mainly in semiconductor testing, technology, and aerospace and defense. In the first half of 2026, technology and semiconductor customers accounted for about 35% of sales and aerospace and defense for about 40%, according to the release.

The financials explain the buyer’s interest. Revenue rose from $69.4 million in 2024 to $91.9 million in 2025 and reached $54.9 million in the first half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA jumped from $3.0 million in 2024 to $13.6 million in 2025, and hit $8.9 million in the first half of this year alone. Orders totaled $100 million in 2025, with a 2026 run rate of about $131 million and a backlog of roughly $38 million as of Aug. 31, the companies said.

Buying a U.S. address

For PCB Technologies, the deal is primarily about location. The company says a physical production base in Silicon Valley will let it bid on U.S. contracts that require onshore fabrication and engineering proximity, and expand into the North American technology, aerospace and defense markets. It plans to bring its own advanced substrates, microelectronics and IC packaging capabilities, including its iNPACK unit, to Gorilla’s customers.

“Our local presence is expected to open up opportunities that have previously been limited for us,” PCB Technologies CEO Oved Shapira said in the announcement. Gorilla President Mario Borjon said the combined company plans to pursue “investments in expanding U.S. manufacturing capacity” and new technologies in thermal management, RF and miniaturization.

The transaction will be financed with credit facilities from two Israeli banks and still requires approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses for national-security risks. The companies expect to close within eight months.

The long view

There is an irony at the center of the deal: a foreign company is buying an American shop precisely so it can qualify for work that favors domestic production, and that purchase must first clear a national-security review. That tension, between open capital flows and an increasingly security-minded industrial policy, will shape a growing share of hardware deals in the region.

The transaction also highlights a part of the Valley’s economy that rarely makes headlines. The quick-turn board shops, machine shops and assembly houses scattered across North San Jose and Santa Clara are the reason a chip or device team here can iterate in days rather than weeks. Shops like these operate in one of the most expensive industrial real estate markets in the country and compete with overseas fabricators on price. Gorilla’s growth, with defense now its largest market, suggests that demand for local, fast, trusted manufacturing is rising again.

That fits a broader shift in where money is going. Crunchbase reported that semiconductors, robotics, aerospace, data centers and energy each drew $10 billion or more in venture funding in the third quarter. Physical AI needs physical supply chains, and some of the most strategic links in that chain are small, unglamorous and located a few miles from the region’s biggest campuses.

Whether CFIUS signs off, and whether the new owner expands San Jose capacity as promised, will be worth watching through 2027.

Sources: PCB Technologies press release via PR Newswire (Oct. 8, 2026); Crunchbase News (Oct. 5, 2026). Financial figures are as reported by the companies and have not been independently audited by the Chronicle.