Illia Polosukhin
Illia Polosukhin is a NEAR AI founder with a career across model research and computing infrastructure. He studied at Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute from 2008 to 2013 and contributed to Google’s Transformer team. In 2017, he and Alexander Skidanov started NEAR AI with an early focus on code generation from language. The effort moved toward the NEAR Protocol in 2018 and returned to an AI research direction in 2024. NEAR AI has expressed interest in AI systems that users can own. Its 2025 cloud launch added services for private model inference.
- Now at
- NEAR AI
- Works
- 19
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.
Timeline
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2008–2013
University study
Polosukhin studied at Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute from 2008 to 2013.
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June 2017
Shared Transformer credit
Polosukhin co-authored the Transformer paper in 2017.
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2017
An early AI company
Polosukhin and Skidanov started NEAR AI in 2017.
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2018
Building NEAR Protocol
The NEAR effort moved toward the protocol in 2018.
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2024
A research arm for AI
NEAR added its AI research arm in 2024.
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December 2025
Private inference services
NEAR AI announced cloud and private chat services in December 2025.
Sources and credits
Photo: Illia Polosukhin; image supplied by web.kpi.kharkov.ua. License: Not stated by source. Source: web.kpi.kharkov.ua. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.