Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian-born software engineer, AI researcher, and blockchain entrepreneur best known as co-founder of NEAR Protocol, one of the leading layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchains. Before entering crypto, he worked as a research scientist at Google Brain, where in 2017 he was one of the eight co-authors of "Attention Is All You Need" – the paper that introduced the Transformer architecture and laid the foundation for modern large language models. That combination of deep AI expertise and hands-on blockchain building makes him an unusual voice in Web3 investing.
Polosukhin co-founded NEAR Protocol in 2018 alongside Alexander Skidanov. The network targets developer accessibility and scalability, offering sharding-based throughput and a human-readable account model. NEAR raised over $500 million across multiple rounds from investors including a16z crypto, Tiger Global, and FTX Ventures (pre-collapse). Polosukhin served as CEO and remains one of the most recognizable figures in the NEAR ecosystem. He is currently based in Portugal.
In 2023, Polosukhin shifted a significant portion of his attention toward the intersection of AI and blockchain. He co-founded NEAR.ai, an initiative exploring decentralized AI infrastructure. This pivot reflects his view that open, user-owned AI systems require credibly neutral infrastructure – an argument he has made publicly at conferences and in long-form posts. His angel investing activity flows from this same thesis: early-stage projects at the AI-crypto convergence.
Notable investments
Public information about Polosukhin's specific angel portfolio is limited. His disclosed or widely reported investments include projects within and adjacent to the NEAR ecosystem. Eight portfolio companies are recorded, but deal sizes and full company names have not been publicly disclosed by Polosukhin himself or through regulatory filings accessible at time of writing. Investors in his position commonly back projects through SAFTs or token warrants that carry no public disclosure obligation.
- NEAR Protocol ecosystem projects – infrastructure tooling and developer platforms building on NEAR's sharding architecture.
- AI agent infrastructure – early-stage teams building autonomous agent frameworks, consistent with the NEAR.ai thesis.
- Open-source LLM tooling – given his Transformer paper background, Polosukhin has expressed interest in open AI model development, though specific funded companies are not publicly named.
Team
As an angel investor, Polosukhin operates individually rather than through a named fund with a formal team. His investment decisions appear shaped by his own technical judgment rather than a committee process. He co-founded NEAR Protocol with Alexander Skidanov, a former engineer at Microsoft and MemSQL, who continues as co-CEO of NEAR. The two have maintained a complementary split: Polosukhin on research and AI strategy, Skidanov on protocol engineering.
Recent activity
Between 2024 and early 2026, Polosukhin publicly championed the concept of the "open web" – a stack where AI agents act on behalf of users on decentralized rails rather than through centralized API gatekeepers. He has spoken at ETHDenver, Token2049, and similar venues making this case. NEAR.ai released early agent tooling in this period. His angel activity during these months aligns with the same theme: small checks into teams building agent-to-agent communication protocols and decentralized inference networks.
Polosukhin's profile as an investor is inseparable from his identity as a builder. His authorship of the Transformer paper gives him credibility inside AI labs that few crypto-native investors can match. That access, combined with NEAR's existing developer community, positions him to see early-stage AI-crypto deals before they reach traditional venture funds. Whether his eight-company portfolio includes a breakout project is not yet publicly known – but the strategic coherence of his thesis is clear.
