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Alex Krizhevsky

Creator of AlexNet, the network that launched the deep-learning boom

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Alex Krizhevsky is a Ukrainian-born Canadian computer scientist who designed AlexNet with Ilya Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton. Trained on two gaming graphics cards in his bedroom, it won the 2012 ImageNet competition by a huge margin and convinced the world that deep learning worked.

Biography

Toronto

Krizhevsky studied at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton. He created the CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 image datasets, widely used in research.

AlexNet

He wrote fast GPU code, cuda-convnet, to train a deep convolutional network on ImageNet using two Nvidia GTX 580 cards. In 2012 AlexNet cut the error rate from about 26 per cent to 15 per cent.

Google

Google bought the trio’s company, DNNresearch, in 2013. Krizhevsky worked at Google on image recognition and self-driving cars.

Later

He left Google in 2017 and joined the start-up Dessa. He has since kept a low profile.

Timeline

  1. 2009

    CIFAR datasets

  2. 2012

    AlexNet wins ImageNet

  3. 2013

    Google buys DNNresearch

  4. 2017

    Leaves Google

Notable works

  • 2012

    ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Paper

    With Sutskever and Hinton.

Did you know?

  1. 1

    AlexNet was trained in his bedroom at his parents’ house.

  2. 2

    The paper is one of the most cited in computer science.

  3. 3

    The network is named after him.

Frequently asked

Who is Alex Krizhevsky?

Alex Krizhevsky is a Ukrainian-born Canadian computer scientist who designed AlexNet with Ilya Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton. Trained on two gaming graphics cards in his bedroom, it won the 2012 ImageNet competition by a huge margin and convinced the world that deep learning worked.

Where is Alex Krizhevsky from?

Alex Krizhevsky was born in Ukraine (then Soviet Union).

What is Alex Krizhevsky known for?

Alex Krizhevsky is best known for AlexNet (2012); training neural networks on GPUs; CIFAR-10 dataset.

References

  1. Alex Krizhevsky — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  2. Alex Krizhevsky (Q28018607) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.

Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Alex Krizhevsky”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more

External links

Wikipedia
Filed under Artificial intelligenceComputer visionDeep learning Computer Scientist

About this profile

Cite this page

“Alex Krizhevsky.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/alex-krizhevsky

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