Matthew D. Zeiler

Also known as Matt Zeiler, Matthew Zeiler

Zeiler is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who founded Clarifai, a computer vision company, and now leads research at Nebius. He studied Engineering Science at the University of Toronto, wrote his undergraduate thesis with Geoffrey Hinton, and finished a PhD at New York University under Rob Fergus in 2013. His papers include ADADELTA, a learning rate method posted in 2012, and Visualizing and Understanding Convolutional Networks, written with Fergus in 2013. Clarifai, founded in November 2013, won the 2013 ImageNet competition and raised a $60 million Series C in 2021. At Nebius, he is SVP, Research, leading work on multimodal agentic reasoning and world models since the Clarifai team joined in May 2026.

Now at: Nebius
Badges: Founder

Timeline

2007

Undergraduate thesis with Hinton

While studying Engineering Science at the University of Toronto in 2007, he sees a computer-generated video of a flickering flame made with neural nets. He goes on to write his undergraduate thesis with Geoffrey Hinton.
By 2013

A PhD at NYU

He goes to New York University, where Rob Fergus is his PhD advisor, and works in Yann LeCun's labs. During the PhD he interns at Google Brain and leaves early, after seeing that his NYU models get better results than Google's.
2012–2013

ADADELTA and ConvNet visualization

In December 2012, he posts ADADELTA, a per-dimension learning rate method for gradient descent that adapts over time using only first order information. In November 2013, he and Rob Fergus post Visualizing and Understanding Convolutional Networks, which introduces a technique for viewing intermediate feature layers and finds architectures that outperform Krizhevsky et al. on ImageNet.
2013

Founding Clarifai

He finishes his PhD in 2013 and founds Clarifai, a computer vision company, in November 2013. Its models win the 2013 ImageNet competition, an early boost for the company.
2015–2016

Funding rounds and API version 2

Clarifai raises a $10 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures in 2015. In 2016, it launches version 2 of its API, adding custom training and visual search, and raises a $30 million Series B led by Menlo Ventures.
2018

Disclosing Project Maven work

In 2018, he discloses in a blog post on the company website that Clarifai takes part in Project Maven, a US Department of Defense AI program.
October 2021

A $60 million Series C

Clarifai, which now works on unstructured image, video, text and audio data, announces a $60 million Series C led by New Enterprise Associates in October 2021. The round brings its total funding to $100 million.
Since May 2026

SVP of Research at Nebius

In May 2026, the AI cloud company Nebius announces that the core Clarifai engineering and research team, led by Zeiler, is joining it. He becomes SVP, Research, leading a team on multimodal agentic reasoning, world models, token efficiency and long-term memory.