Yoni Bloch

Founder & CEO Eko

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Yoni Bloch is an Israeli singer-songwriter who built a technology company out of a frustration with the form of his own medium. Born in Beersheba in 1981, he learned piano at six, taught himself guitar and drums, and began writing songs at fourteen — the same age at which he taught himself to program on a Commodore 64. That combination is the whole explanation for what followed. After three albums and a place in the Israeli music scene, he founded the company now called Eko, originally Interlude, to build branching interactive video: film in which the viewer’s choices reshape the narrative in real time, without the playback ever stopping. The company produced interactive work with Bob Dylan and Coldplay, campaigns for Intel, Pepsi and Disney, and drew an unusually broad investor base spanning Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates, MGM, Sony and Samsung. Eko has since repositioned completely. Its current business is product data capture — turning physical items into verified digital records and media designed to be consumed by AI shopping systems rather than by human viewers.

Career Highlights

• Founded the company now trading as Eko, originally Interlude, and has led it as Chief Executive Officer through a complete change of business.
• Pioneered branching interactive video, where viewer choices alter the story without interrupting playback.
• Created interactive music video work with Bob Dylan and Coldplay.
• Built brand partnerships with Intel, Pepsi and Disney.
• Raised from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates, MGM, Sony and Samsung.
• Launched Eko Studio, putting the interactive video toolset in the hands of independent creators.
• Repositioned the company onto product data capture and media for AI-driven commerce.
• Released three albums in Israel — Ulay Ze Ani (2004), Hergelim Raim (2007) and Al Mi Ani Oved (2008) — and appeared as a guest judge on the Israeli version of Idol.

Professional Journey

Bloch’s first career was music. He grew up in Beersheba, moved to Lehavim at seventeen, and came to public attention through Bama Hadasha, a platform for unsigned artists, where a record executive’s daughter found his work and passed it on — a route to Israeli radio airplay that would be difficult to plan. Three albums followed: Ulay Ze Ani in 2004, a melodic rock debut with a comic streak; Hergelim Raim in 2007, which included a Hebrew rendering of Edgar Allan Poe; and Al Mi Ani Oved in 2008, released with an accompanying film. He composed for television and theatre and sat as a guest judge on Israel’s version of Idol.

The technical half of his background was there from the start. He had taught himself to program as a teenager, and the company he founded — Interlude, later renamed Eko — came out of the collision between the two skills. The premise was branching video: a viewer’s choices redirect the narrative in real time, with no buffering pause and no break in the music or the cut. That is a harder engineering problem than it appears, because every branch must be pre-loaded and seamlessly switchable, and it is what distinguished Interlude’s work from the click-through interactive video that preceded it.

The output was mostly cultural at first. Interactive music videos with Bob Dylan and Coldplay demonstrated the form to audiences who had no vocabulary for it; brand work with Intel, Pepsi and Disney funded it. The investor base the company attracted was telling in itself — alongside conventional venture firms in Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates sat Intel Capital, MGM, Sony and Samsung, a mix of chipmaker, studio, label and device manufacturer, each with a different reason to want interactive video to work. Offices followed in New York, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. Eko Studio opened the toolset to independent creators, rather than keeping it inside funded productions.

The company Bloch runs today is a different business built on a related capability. Eko now captures physical products — hands-on, in a controlled process — to generate verified product data and media, and markets the result as a single file that produces unlimited downstream outputs. The commercial argument rests on two claims the company makes prominently: that roughly 30% of the data in major retail catalogues is wrong, and that 61% of customers now use AI when they shop. If both hold, then product information stops being something a person reads on a page and becomes something a model reasons over, and the accuracy of the underlying capture becomes the constraint on the whole transaction. Eko’s framing is a shift from item identification to item understanding. The through-line from the interactive video work is real — both are about producing rich, structured media from a single capture — but the customer, the buyer and the market are entirely different.

Education

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Attended. No degree, field or dates are recorded in any source found, and this entry has not been independently verified.