Anobit's executive management gathered their 200-odd employees at the company's Herzliya headquarters this morning to formally announce its acquisition by Apple. This is Apple’s first acquisition in Israel and the company will open its first and only overseas development centre in the Holy Land.

The fact that the two companies were talking to each other only emerged last week. Anobit develops a performance enhancing chip which is already incorporated into Apple's flagship products such as the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air.

The chip may as much as double the memory volume in the new iPads and MacBooks.

Benefiting from the deal with Apple are founders Professor Ehud Weinstein, Ariel Maislos and Ofir Shalvi.

The company's investors, whose investments in the company over the past four years amount to $76 million, will also cut a coupon off the deal – Israeli fund Pitango, American Battery Ventures and Intel's and Micron Technologies' VC funds.

Apple's designs for Anobit, which currently has 200 employees, are still unknown, but they are understood to be planning to hold on to the Israeli employees and even open a local R&D centre that will recruit more employees.