If it's a private spacecraft, how do you make this work financially? How do you find $100m ? It's not like there are commercial opportunities possible on the moon. Or the technology would be re-used by Israel for rockets?
In April 2014, American philanthropist Sheldon Adelson donated US$16.4 million to the project,[13] and in June 2017, the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) announced a donation of additional 7.5 million ILS (US$2,083,333), after having donated 2 million ILS (US$555,556) in previous years.[14]
In November 2017, SpaceIL announced that they needed US$30 million to finish the project. Morris Kahn resigned from chairing the board, and promised $10M if the organization could raise the additional $20M.[20] The amount required was produced by a few major donors.[21]
Most of the money is from private donors, some of it is from the government, though that is pretty common -lots of governments give out grants and funding to private organizations for the purpose of cultivating ingenuity or developing certain industries.
As I understand it the major help, and where it had a major advantage on other similar attempts, was by access to advance research and testing facilities of avionics in the IAI (a quasi government company in charge of commercial and military development of avionics). Especially wind tunnels and similar simulators.
That being said, it is still a very much private orginazion
Looks mostly like their funding is from donors who want to promote Israel or STEM? They also received funding from the Israeli government, but I believe it was a small percentage (< 5%).
