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Amnon Shashua

Amnon Shashua (born May 26, 1960) is an Israeli computer scientist, businessman and philanthropist. He is the Sachs Professor of Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the autonomous driving and driver-assistance technology company Mobileye, Co-founder of the artificial vision devices company OrCam, Founder and owner of ONE ZERO digital bank,[1] chairman of artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs,[2] and co-founder of Mentee Robotics[3] and AAI Technologies.[4]

Biography

Amnon Shashua was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, to parents of Iraqi origin.[5] From a young age, he was fascinated with computers, a field that was in its early stages of development. He attended the ORT school in Givatayim for his early education in computer engineering.[5]

Amnon Shashua received his B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and his M.Sc. in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science[6] under the supervision of Shimon Ullman. His Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences was received from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in 1993; and his postdoctoral training under Tomaso Poggio at the center for biological and computational learning at MIT.

Career

Academic

Shashua has been on the computer science faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1996. In 1999 he was appointed as an associate professor and in 2003 received full professorship. From 2002 to 2005 he was the head of the engineering and computer science school at the Hebrew University.[7] Shashua has held the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University since 2007.[8]

Shashua's work includes early visual processing of saliency and grouping mechanisms, visual recognition and learning, image synthesis for animation and graphics, theory of computer vision in the areas of multiple-view geometry and multi-view tensors, multilinear algebraic systems in vision and learning, primal/dual optimization for approximate inference in MRF and Graphical models, and (since 2014) deep layered networks.

In 2026 he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) as an international member of its Class of 2026 for his contributions to computer vision and its application to autonomous driving technology.[9]

Business

In 1995, Shashua founded CogniTens, which was sold to Hexagon AB in 2007.[10] In 1999, Shashua co-founded Mobileye, a company that develops systems-on-chip and computer vision algorithms for driving assistance systems, as well as autonomous driving technology.[11][12] On August 1, 2014, Mobileye launched its IPO on the NYSE which was the biggest Israeli IPO ever in the US raising approximately $1 billion at a market cap of $5.3 billion.[13]

In 2010, Shashua co-founded OrCam, an Israeli company which launched an assistive device for the visually impaired based on computer vision capabilities.[14]

In August 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for approximately $15.3 billion.[15][16] Shashua became a senior vice president at Intel, in addition to his title of President and CEO of Mobileye. In 2017, he also co-founded AI21 Labs.[17] In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize for his work in Artificial Intelligence.[18][19]

In October 2022, Mobileye went public again, trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange with Shashua as its CEO.[20][21]

In 2022, he co-founded Mentee Robotics with Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Prof. Lior Wolf to develop intelligent humanoid robots.[3] In 2023, he was awarded Israel Prize in the category lifetime achievement and exceptional contribution to the nation.[22]

In 2023, he founded AAI Technologies with Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Dr. Yoav Levine, Dr. Or Sharir, Dr. Noam Weiss, and Dr. Gal Benyamini. The company develops expert-based artificial intelligence (Expert AI) systems.[4][23] In September 2025, the startup was on track to becoming a unicorn.[23][24]

In January 2026, it was announced that Mentee Robotics, co-founded by Shashua, would be sold to Mobileye for $900 million.[25][26]

Philanthropy

Shashua, along with his family, has engaged in various philanthropic activities through the Shashua Family Foundation.[27]

Shashua's wife, Anat Ramaty Shashua, is president of the Foundation as well as chairwoman of the Orr Shalom organization for children and youth at risk.[27] Together, they also founded The Social Solidarity Foundation, a public benefit organization supported by the Shashua Family Foundation, that assists in the development and growth of small businesses in Israel.[28] Their daughter, Inbar Shashua Bar-Nir, serves as chairwoman of the board.[29]

As of 2024, Shashua and his family have donated approximately $60 million to various charitable causes, focusing on promoting economic opportunities and supporting underrepresented populations in Israel. These populations include ultra-Orthodox communities, Israeli-Arabs, women in STEM fields, and peripheral communities.[30]

The Shashua Family Foundation has also funded scholarships at Tel Aviv University (TAU), his alma mater.[30]

In response to the economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the family established the WE-19 program, a $35 million fund designed to support approximately 2,000 small businesses affected by the pandemic.[30]

Selected publications

See also

External links

  • Amnon Shashua, academic page on Hebrew University of Jerusalem website

References

  1. One Zero, Israel's first digital bank, secures full license, opens for business Israel Hayom, January 11, 2022^
  2. Amnon Shashua's AI21 Labs raises $35m to reinvent writing Globes, November 22, 2020^
  3. There's a new humanoid in town: How does Amnon Shashua's MenteeBot stack up against the competition? ctech, 2024-04-17, retrieved 2025-07-14^
  4. Amnon Shashua's AI startup AA-I Technologies revealed Globes, 2024-09-16, retrieved 2025-07-14^
  5. Isaac Horovitz. Developing Driverless Cars in Jerusalem: High-tech taps into chareidim to make the future a reality Ami Magazine, March 6, 2019^
  6. Weizmann Institute of Science^
  7. The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering retrieved 2014-12-11^
  8. Amnon Shashua - School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem - VideoLectures.NET^
  9. National Academy of Engineering Elects 130 Members and 28 International Members NAE Website, retrieved 2026-02-16^
  10. Batya Feldman, "Hexagon buys Israeli 3D optics start-up CogniTens," Globes, September 4, 2007.^
  11. At High Speed, on the Road to a Driverless Future (Published 2013) 2013-05-27, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  12. Ingrid Lunden. Exclusive: One Zero, the AI fintech started by the founder of MobileEye, is raising $100M, say sources TechCrunch, 2024-10-21, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  13. Gabrielle Coppola. Mobileye Raises $890 Million as Largest Israeli IPO in the U.S. Bloomberg.com, 2014-07-31, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  14. Device From Israeli Start-Up Gives the Visually Impaired a Way to Read (Published 2013) 2013-06-04, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  15. Intel acquisition of Mobileye. intelandmobileye.transactionannouncement.com, retrieved 2019-03-18^
  16. CNBC. Intel to buy Mobileye for $14 billion to $15 billion: Israeli media report www.cnbc.com, 2017-03-13, retrieved 2019-03-18^
  17. Amnon Shashua's AI21 Labs raises $35m to reinvent writing Globes, 2020-11-22, retrieved 2023-02-14^
  18. Laureates 2020 retrieved 2025-10-15^
  19. הזוכה הישראלי בפרס דן דוד: פרופ' שעשוע Israel Hayom, February 2, 2020^
  20. Ashley Capoot. Mobileye pops more than 37% in market debut after spinning out of Intel CNBC, 2022-10-26, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  21. Matt McFarland. Mobileye goes public, raising Intel $861 million CNN, 2022-10-26, retrieved 2025-10-15^
  22. Batya Feldman. מייסד מובילאיי פרופ' אמנון שעשוע יקבל פרס ישראל על מפעל חיים. // Calcalist, March 22, 2023.^
  23. Shashua’s stealth AI startup raises hundreds of millions at over $1 billion valuation ctech, 2025-09-25, retrieved 2025-11-06^
  24. Sophie Shulman/Calcalist. Amnon Shashua’s new AI startup on track to become a unicorn Ynetglobal, 2025-09-26, retrieved 2025-11-06^
  25. Sophie Shulman. The question marks behind Mobileye’s $900 million bet on Mentee ctech, 2026-01-08, retrieved 2026-01-22^
  26. Kirsten Korosec. Mobileye acquires humanoid robot startup Mentee Robotics for $900M TechCrunch, 2026-01-06, retrieved 2026-01-22^
  27. About Shashua Family Foundation Shashua Family Foundation, retrieved 20 July 2024^
  28. 1Point 8 – Israeli high-tech industry's unique new initiative for investment in Israeli society Startup Nation Central, 30 January 2022, retrieved 20 July 2024^
  29. Jerusalem Post Staff. 50 Influential Jews: Two Generations of Philanthropists - No. 12 The Jerusalem Post, 15 September 2023, retrieved 20 July 2024^
  30. The Tel Aviv University Alumnus Super-Driving the Future Tel Aviv University, 14 June 2023, retrieved 20 July 2024^