In 1999, Professor Amnon Shashua founded Mobileye, an Israel-based company, to develop computer vision applications for driving assistance systems for the purpose of improving road safety, building on his academic research into machine learning. Over the years, the company, led by Shashua’s technology and product strategy, has created a portfolio of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle solutions, with more than 100 million Mobileye chips shipped to date.
Mobileye first went public in 2014, in the largest IPO ever at the time for an Israeli company, and was then acquired by Intel in 2017, and Shashua joined Intel as a senior vice president.
The focus on artificial intelligence is a recurring theme in Shashua’s other companies as well: OrCam, whose MyEye device assists people who are visually impaired or blind; AI21 Labs, which helps AI systems process language as a human mind would, and most recently, Mentee Robotics, which aims to build humanoid robots.
Beyond his AI-based companies, Shashua has launched a digital bank in Israel, which was approved by the Bank of Israel in September 2019 — the country’s first new bank in 40 years.
Shashua, 61, received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985. He then earned a master’s degree in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science and a Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.
Shashua was appointed to the Sachs Chair in computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007. He has received many awards for his research over the years, including becoming a 2020 Dan David Prize laureate in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2019, he was recognized as the Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology for his pivotal contributions to computer vision and machine learning. The award also recognized his contributions to advanced autonomous driving and wearable assistive devices for the blind and visually impaired.
He has published more than 160 scientific papers, holds over 90 patents, and continues to be an active academic researcher.
