Amnon Shashua (Hebrew: אמנון שעשוע; born May 26, 1960 in Ramat Gan, Israel) is an Israeli computer scientist, mathematician, algorithm specialist, creator of high-tech enterprises, businessman, billionaire, and philanthropist.^[41,42] In 2025, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at approximately 1.8 billion dollars. He completed his education with a BS from Tel-Aviv University, an MS from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993 with a dissertation titled "Geometry and photometry in 3D visual recognition" supervised by Shimon Ullman. His fields of work encompass computer science, mathematics, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence. Shashua is the Sachs Professor of Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.^[7,42,4,1,2]

He is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Mobileye, a physical AI, autonomous driving, and driver-assistance technology firm that he co-founded alongside Ziv Aviram, which is an Intel company in Israel where he has also served as Senior Vice President at Intel.^[7,42,4,1,2] He is a co-founder of the artificial vision devices company OrCam (OrCam Technologies), chairman of artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs, and a co-founder of Mentee Robotics, AAI Technologies, and doubleAI.^[7,42,4,1,2] Additionally, he is the founder and owner—or co-founder—of the Israeli digital bank ONE ZERO, having announced in 2020 the opening of the first digital bank in Israel.^{[43,4,1,2,7,42]} He is known for co-founding Mobileye and OrCam, making advancements in AI and computer vision, and his philanthropy through the Shashua Family Foundation. His honors include the Kaye Innovation Award, Mifal HaPayis Landau Prize, serving as an Israeli Independence Day torch lighter, Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year, the Dan David Prize, Mobility Innovator Award, The Automotive Hall of Fame, MotorTrend's Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator Award, and the Israel Prize, which he received for the year 5783 (2023) in the field of lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State.

Amnon Shashua was born to parents of Iraqi origin in Ramat Gan, Israel, according to English Wikipedia, or in Givatayim, according to Hebrew Wikipedia. From a young age, he was fascinated with computers, a field that was then in its early stages of development. He attended the ORT school (Ort Technikum) in Givatayim for his early education in the computer engineering track, and after completing his studies, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and served as an armor officer.^[5,6]

In 1985, Shashua received his first academic degree, a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in mathematics and computer science, from Tel Aviv University.^[44] In 1989, he completed his studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Shimon Ullman, earning a master's degree in computer science according to English, Arabic, and Spanish Wikipedia, a master's degree in mathematics and computer science according to Hebrew Wikipedia, or a bachelor's degree according to Russian Wikipedia.^[44] In 1993, he received his doctorate (Ph.D.) in brain and cognitive sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducting his research while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.^[2] He then completed his postdoctoral training under the supervision of Tomaso Poggio at the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT.^[2]

In 1995, Shashua founded CogniTens, which was sold to Hexagon AB in 2007.^[55] In 1999, he co-founded Mobileye, a company that develops system-on-chips and computer vision algorithms for detecting pedestrians, vehicles, traffic signs, lanes, and more for driver assistance systems. The company is also developing autonomous driving technology. On August 1, 2014, Mobileye launched its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, which was the largest Israeli IPO ever in the United States, raising nearly $1 billion at a market value of $5.3 billion.^[56]

On March 13, 2017, both Intel and Mobileye announced Intel's intent to acquire Mobileye for $15.3 billion.^[15] The deal, which was completed on August 8, 2017, was the largest acquisition of an Israeli technology company to date, and Shashua currently serves as Senior Vice President at Intel and President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mobileye.^[16] In May 2020, Intel announced that it would acquire the mobility service solutions company Moovit, bringing Intel-owned Mobileye closer to achieving its plan to become an integrated mobility provider.^[17,57]

From 1995 to 1996, Shashua served as a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the Technion in Haifa. In 1996, he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the School of Computer Science and Engineering. In 1999, he was appointed as an associate professor (though Russian Wikipedia states that he received the title of professor), and in 2003, he attained the rank of full professor. From 2002 to 2005, he was the head and director of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University.^[7] Shashua has held the Sachs Chair in Computer Science at the Hebrew University since 2007.^[8] He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Azrieli - College of Engineering Jerusalem.

Over the years, Shashua has authored more than 100 research papers and articles in the fields of machine learning (or computational learning) and computer vision.^[45,46] His research includes early visual processing of saliency and grouping mechanisms (as well as neural discrimination), visual perception, recognition and learning, image synthesis and rendering for animation and graphics, and other related areas. In computer vision theory, his work encompasses multiple-view geometry, multi-view tensors according to English and Spanish editions (or multi-view sensors according to the Arabic edition), and a variety of geometric shapes—both known and unknown—from different angles. His work also covers multilinear algebraic systems in vision and learning, as well as primal/dual optimization for approximate inference in MRF and graphical models. Since 2014, he has focused extensively on artificial intelligence, deep layered networks, and deep neural networks (DNN). 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.^[9,11,12,21]

In 1995, Shashua founded CogniTens, a company that engaged in three-dimensional imaging for quality control on production lines using optical sensors and cameras, which was sold to the Swedish company Hexagon AB in 2007.^[10,55] In 1999, Shashua co-founded Mobileye, a company that develops systems-on-chip and computer vision algorithms, and engages in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) as well as autonomous driving technology based on image processing technologies.^[9,11,12] Shashua serves as the president and CEO of Mobileye, and has also been described as its director and chief engineer.^[12] On August 1, 2014, Mobileye launched its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, raising approximately $1 billion in what was recorded as the largest Israeli IPO ever in the United States and of all time, with English Wikipedia stating a market capitalization of $5.3 billion while Hebrew Wikipedia reports a valuation of $5.8 billion.^[13,14,64] In August 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for approximately $15.3 billion, representing the largest deal in the history of the Israeli economy up to that time.^{[15,16,64,14]} Following the acquisition, Shashua became a senior vice president at Intel while continuing in his role as president and CEO of Mobileye. In October 2022, Mobileye went public for a second time, listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange with Shashua as CEO, once again recorded as the largest Israeli IPO of all time.^[19,58]

In 2010, Shashua and Ziv Aviram co-founded OrCam Technologies, an Israeli company that launched assistive devices and glasses for the visually impaired based on computer vision capabilities, image processing technology, and computerized text-to-speech.^[14,15] In 2015, Shashua was ranked by Forbes Israel magazine among Israel's 100 wealthiest people, with an estimated wealth of NIS 4.3 billion. In 2019, he joined Marius Nacht's venture to establish the First Digital Bank, becoming a co-founder of the institution.^[3,49] The Bank of Israel approved the establishment of the bank in September 2019, and it began operating in August 2022. Following Nacht's departure from the venture, Shashua became the bank's primary controlling shareholder.

In 2017, Shashua co-founded the startup AI21 Labs alongside Prof. Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen, serving as its chairman and developing artificial intelligence applications.^[17,2] In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize for his work in artificial intelligence. In 2022, he co-founded Mentee Robotics with Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Prof. Lior Wolf to develop intelligent humanoid robots.^[3,63,49] In 2023, Shashua was awarded the Israel Prize in the category of lifetime achievement and exceptional contribution to the nation. Shashua founded AAI Technologies together with Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Dr. Yoav Levine, Dr. Or Sharir, Dr. Noam Weiss (Wies), and Dr. Gal Benyamini (Beniamini) to develop expert-based artificial intelligence (Expert AI) systems, with English Wikipedia stating it was founded in 2023 and Hebrew Wikipedia dating its founding to 2024.^[22,9] In September 2025, the startup was on track to become a unicorn.^[23] In January 2026, it was announced that Mentee Robotics was sold to Mobileye for $900 million.^[24,25] In 2026, Shashua spoke at a forum.

Shashua, along with his family, has engaged in various philanthropic activities through the Shashua Family Foundation.^[26] 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, including ultra-Orthodox communities, Israeli-Arabs, women in STEM fields, and peripheral communities.^[29] In addition to his other occupations, Shashua works to integrate Haredi men and women into the labor market, serves as a member of the advisory board of the company "Kama-Tech", and invested in its venture to establish the first shared workspace in Bnei Brak. The Shashua Family Foundation has also funded scholarships at Tel Aviv University (TAU), his alma mater.^[29,30]

Shashua's wife, Anat Ramaty Shashua, serves as president of the Foundation as well as chairwoman of the Orr Shalom organization for children and youth at risk. Together, they established a public benefit organization supported by the Shashua Family Foundation—referred to as The Social Solidarity Foundation, or founded in 2020 as a public benefit company named "The House for Social Solidarity"—which assists in the development and growth of small businesses and startups in Israel.^[27] Their daughter, Inbar Shashua Bar-Nir, serves as chairwoman of the board.^[28] Within the framework of this foundation and in response to the economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, an initiative was launched, including the WE-19 program, a $35 million fund designed to support approximately 2,000 small businesses affected by the pandemic.^[31]

Shashua is married to social entrepreneur Anat Remati-Shashua, chairperson of the Orr Shalom organization, and lives in Mevaseret Zion. He is an off-road cycling enthusiast. In December 2021, Shashua was injured in a minor helicopter accident near Kibbutz Yakum in the Sharon.

Shashua's work with Lior Wolf on multi-view geometry was named one of three joint "best papers" at the 2000 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) and received an "Honorable Mention" for the Marr Prize at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).^[47] His research with Tamir Hazan on graphical models was runner-up for "Best Paper" at the 2008 Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI).^[48] He was awarded first prize in the 2004 Kaye Innovation Award and received the 2005 Mifal Hapayis Landau Prize for Science and Research in the field of Exact Sciences - Robotics.^[50,51]

Regarding the torch-lighting honor, Arabic Wikipedia states that on Israeli Independence Day 2017, Shashua received one of the highest honors in Israeli society when he was chosen to light a torch at the national ceremony on Mount Herzl, whereas Russian Wikipedia records that he lit a torch at a ceremony in the Knesset.^[52] The committee that selects torch lighters chose to honor him for his contribution to developing advanced technologies that help reduce road accidents and assist the visually impaired.

In 2019, Shashua and his team were named finalists in the European Inventor Award, presented by the European Patent Office, for their advanced driver assistance technology that makes roads safer worldwide.^[54] That same year, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology named him the Electronic Imaging (EI) Scientist of the Year, an annual award honoring excellence, peer respect, and significant contributions to electronic imaging, recognizing his work in computer vision and machine learning as well as the development of autonomous driving and wearable assistive devices for the blind and visually impaired.^[53] In 2020, he received the Dan David Prize for his work in artificial intelligence.^[18]

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Shashua was included in the Israeli government headquarters for fighting the virus, where he conducted a mathematical analysis to compare strategies for combating the epidemic.^[65,66] In 2023, he received the prestigious Israel Prize in the "outstanding contribution" category, and in 2025, Time magazine included him in its list of the most influential people in the development of artificial intelligence under the "leaders" category.^[22,67] In 2026, Shashua was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Early publications include work by S Ullman and A Sha'ashua published in the [1988 Proceedings] Second International Conference on Computer Vision in 1988. In 2001, A Shashua and T Riklin-Raviv published "The quotient image: Class-based re-rendering and recognition with varying illuminations" in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. Subsequent machine learning research included "Ranking with large margin principle: Two approaches" by A Shashua and A Levin in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (2002), and "Learning over sets using kernel principal angles" by L Wolf and A Shashua in the Journal of Machine Learning Research (2003). In 2004, papers presented at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, 2004 included contributions by A Shashua, Y Gdalyahu, and G Hayun, as well as by E Dagan, O Mano, GP Stein, and A Shashua. Additional conference contributions include a paper by A Shashua and T Hazan in the Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Machine learning - ICML '05 (2005), as well as research by R Zass and A Shashua in the 2008 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (2008).

In 2015, N Cohen, O Sharir, and A Shashua published "On the Expressive Power of Deep Learning: A Tensor Analysis". Research on autonomous vehicles by S Shalev-Shwartz, S Shammah, and A Shashua includes "Safe, multi-agent, reinforcement learning for autonomous driving" in 2016 and "On a formal model of safe and scalable self-driving cars" in 2017.