Illia Polosukhin
Illia is a co-founder of NEAR, where we're building user-owned AI and the infrastructure for an open, intelligent web. Before NEAR, Illia was a researcher and engineer at Google, where he co-authored "Attention Is All You Need," the paper that introduced the Transformer architecture behind modern AI.
Essays
- Rethinking the Self-Custody/Safety Binary in DeFi May 2026
- Agent Harnesses are the New Operating System Mar 2026
- The Unified Commerce Layer Feb 2026
- Your Data Can and Will Be Used Against You Dec 2025
- Unwritten Rules of the Game Oct 2025
- Payments Rule Everything Around Me Oct 2025
- Keep your friends close and your robots closer Sep 2025
- The Looming Security Armageddon No One Is Talking About Aug 2025
- Introducing "Attention" Aug 2025
Research
Talks & interviews
- Beyond the Prompt: The Man Who Put the T in GPT Dec 2025
- The Neuron: AI Is Broken, and How to Fix It Sep 2025
- Shaping the Digital Future: Keynote Dec 2024
- TED: AI Should Optimize Your Life, Not Companies' Profits Oct 2024
- The Delphi Podcast: AI Thesis and Crypto x AI Sep 2024
- CNBC: Democratizing AI Jun 2024