# Illia Polosukhin

> Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017), the paper that introduced the Transformer architecture powering virtually every modern AI system, and co-founded NEAR Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain that raised $500M+ and peaked at a $20B+ market cap. Now CEO of the NEAR Foundation, he is building 'User-Owned AI' - privacy-preserving, decentralized AI infrastructure that puts users in control of their data and models rather than corporations.

- **Role:** CEO at NEAR Foundation
- **Organizations:** NEAR Protocol, NEAR Foundation, NEAR AI
- **From:** Ukraine
- **Nationality:** Ukrainian-American
- **Education:** Computer Science / Engineering, National Technical University 'Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute'
- **Known for:** Co-author of 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017) - 173,000+ citations, among the most cited scientific papers of the 21st century, Co-founded NEAR Protocol, which peaked at $20B+ market cap and raised $500M+ in ecosystem funding, Secured investment from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) for NEAR in 2020

## Career timeline

- **Early 2000s** — Started coding as a teenager, taking freelance software projects
- **2014** — Joined Google Research as Engineering Manager, focused on ML and NLP
- **2017** — Co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' at NeurIPS - introducing the Transformer architecture
- **2017** — Left Google along with all other co-authors of the Transformer paper
- **2017** — Co-founded NEAR.ai with Alexander Skidanov, focused on program synthesis (AI writing code)
- **2018** — Pivoted NEAR.ai to blockchain, rebranded as NEAR Protocol, started in a WeWork in San Francisco
- **2019** — NEAR Protocol raised $12.1M (led by Metastable Capital, Accomplice)
- **2020** — NEAR Protocol raised $21.6M from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z); mainnet launched
- **2022** — NEAR raised $150M+; NEAR token reached all-time high of $20.42
- **2023** — Named CEO of NEAR Foundation in November
- **2024** — NEAR repositioned as 'the blockchain for AI'; launched NEAR AI initiative
- **2025** — Co-authored 'Decentralized Confidential Machine Learning' paper with Alexander Skidanov
- **2025** — Launched 'Attention' Substack newsletter; NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat launched
- **2026** — Published 'Agent Harnesses are the New Operating System'; IronClaw hit 12,100+ GitHub stars

## Achievements

- Co-author of 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017) - 173,000+ citations, among the most cited scientific papers of the 21st century
- Co-founded NEAR Protocol, which peaked at $20B+ market cap and raised $500M+ in ecosystem funding
- Secured investment from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) for NEAR in 2020
- GitHub Mars 2020 Contributor - code used in NASA's Mars 2020 mission
- GitHub Arctic Code Vault Contributor - code preserved for future generations
- Led NEAR to become a major Layer-1 blockchain with global developer adoption
- Pioneered the 'User-Owned AI' concept at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence
- IronClaw (Rust AI agent harness) reached 12,100+ GitHub stars
- Named CEO of NEAR Foundation in November 2023

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Published 'Agent Harnesses are the New Operating System' on Substack; IronClaw gaining significant traction with 12,100+ GitHub stars
- **2025-12** — Launched NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat with partners Brave, OpenMind, and Phala (100M+ combined users)
- **2025-08** — Launched 'Attention' Substack newsletter focusing on AI, blockchain, and Open Superintelligence
- **2025-03** — Co-authored 'Decentralized Confidential Machine Learning' paper with Alexander Skidanov
- **2024-01** — NEAR Foundation restructured, reducing workforce ~40%; refocused on AI-native blockchain narrative
- **2023-11** — Named CEO of NEAR Foundation

## Links

- Website: https://near.org
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/illia-polosukhin-77b6838/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ilblackdragon
- GitHub: https://github.com/ilblackdragon

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/illia-polosukhin
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-30