Amnon Shashua (Hebrew: אמנון שעשוע; 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 physical AI company Mobileye, co-founder of the artificial vision devices company OrCam, founder and owner of ONE ZERO digital bank, chairman of artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs, and co-founder of Mentee Robotics and AAI Technologies. His work spans computer vision, Machine learning, and Deep learning, with significant contributions to autonomous driving and assistive technology.
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, to parents of Iraqi origin, Shashua developed an early fascination with computers. He attended the ORT school in Givatayim for his early education in computer engineering. He earned a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and an M.Sc. in computer science from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1989, supervised by Shimon Ullman. He completed his Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1993, working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, followed by postdoctoral training under Tomaso Poggio at MIT's center for biological and computational learning.
Academic Career
Shashua joined the computer science faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996. He was appointed associate professor in 1999 and full professor in 2003. From 2002 to 2005, he headed the engineering and computer science school at the university. He has held the Sachs chair in computer science since 2007.
His research has covered early visual processing, including saliency and grouping mechanisms, visual recognition and learning, image synthesis for animation and graphics, and the theory of computer vision, particularly multiple-view geometry and multi-view tensors. He has also worked on multilinear algebraic systems in vision and learning, primal/dual optimization for approximate inference in Markov random fields and graphical models, and, since 2014, deep layered networks. In 2026, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering as an international member of its Class of 2026, recognized for contributions to computer vision and its application to autonomous driving.
Business Ventures
Shashua founded CogniTens in 1995, a company later sold to Hexagon AB in 2007. In 1999, he co-founded Mobileye, which develops systems-on-chip and computer vision algorithms for driving assistance and autonomous driving. On August 1, 2014, Mobileye launched its IPO on the NYSE, the largest Israeli IPO in the US at the time, raising approximately $1 billion at a market cap of $5.3 billion.
In 2010, Shashua co-founded OrCam, which produces assistive devices for the visually impaired using computer vision. In August 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for approximately $15.3 billion, and Shashua became a senior vice president at Intel while retaining his roles as president and CEO of Mobileye. In 2017, he also co-founded AI21 Labs, an AI company. In October 2022, Mobileye went public again on the Nasdaq, with Shashua as CEO.
In 2022, he co-founded Mentee Robotics with Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Lior Wolf to develop intelligent humanoid robots. In 2023, he founded AAI Technologies with Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Yoav Levine, Or Sharir, Noam Weiss, and Gal Benyamini, focusing on expert-based AI systems. By September 2025, the startup was on track to becoming a unicorn. In January 2026, it was announced that Mentee Robotics would be sold to Mobileye for $900 million.
Philanthropy
Shashua and his family have engaged in extensive philanthropic activities through the Shashua Family Foundation. His wife, Anat Ramaty Shashua, serves as president of the foundation and chairwoman of the Orr Shalom organization for children and youth at risk. Together, they founded The Social Solidarity Foundation, a public benefit organization that supports small businesses in Israel. Their daughter, Inbar Shashua Bar-Nir, chairs its board.
As of 2024, the family has donated approximately $60 million to charitable causes, focusing on economic opportunities and underrepresented populations, including ultra-Orthodox communities, Israeli-Arabs, women in STEM, and peripheral communities. The foundation has funded scholarships at Tel Aviv University. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they established the WE-19 program, a $35 million fund supporting about 2,000 small businesses.
Selected Publications
Shashua has authored numerous influential papers. Notable works include:
- Shalev-Shwartz, S; Shammah, S; Shashua, A (2016). "Safe, multi-agent, reinforcement learning for autonomous driving". arXiv:1610.03295.
- Shalev-Shwartz, S; Shammah, S; Shashua, A (2017). "On a formal model of safe and scalable self-driving cars". arXiv:1708.06374.
- Shashua, A; Riklin-Raviv, T (2001). "The quotient image: Class-based re-rendering and recognition with varying illuminations". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
- Ullman, S; Sha'ashua, A (1988). "Structural Saliency: The Detection of Globally Salient Structures using a Locally Connected Network". Second International Conference on Computer Vision.
- Shashua, A; Hazan, T (2005). "Expectation maximization algorithms for conditional likelihoods". ICML '05.
- Shashua, A; Gdalyahu, Y; Hayun, G (2004). "Pedestrian detection for driving assistance systems". IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium.
- Cohen, N; Sharir, O; Shashua, A (2015). "On the Expressive Power of Deep Learning: A Tensor Analysis". arXiv:1509.05009.
- Shashua, A; Levin, A (2002). "Ranking with large margin principle: Two approaches". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems.
- Zass, R; Shashua, A (2008). "Probabilistic graph and hypergraph matching". IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Recognition and Impact
Shashua has received several prestigious awards. In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize for his work in artificial intelligence. In 2023, he received the Israel Prize in the category of lifetime achievement and exceptional contribution to the nation. His election to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2026 further underscores his influence.
His companies have had a substantial impact on the automotive and AI industries. Mobileye's technology is widely used in driver assistance systems, and its acquisition by Intel marked a significant milestone in the field. OrCam's devices have improved the lives of visually impaired individuals. AI21 Labs and other ventures continue to push the boundaries of Generative AI and large language models.
Personal Life
Shashua is married to Anat Ramaty Shashua, and they have a daughter, Inbar Shashua Bar-Nir. The family resides in Israel and is actively involved in social causes. Shashua's early education at ORT school in Givatayim and his subsequent academic path reflect his long-standing commitment to technology and innovation.