Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng was born on April 18, 1976, in London.⁠[1]

By his own account, his family spent a number of years in Hong Kong and a number of years in Singapore; his mother has written a couple of children’s novels and a biography.⁠[2]

His father, Ronald Ng, is a haematology specialist who grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Singapore in 1984; starting in 2012 he took courses on Coursera and other platforms, completing 146 online courses by 2020.⁠[3]

He was programming by age 6, having first learned coding from his father, a medical doctor who tried to use data to program a computer to diagnose patients.⁠[4]

After finishing high school at Raffles Institution in Singapore, he went on to Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry, MIT and UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry.⁠[4]

He said he began his PhD at MIT and then transferred to UC Berkeley.⁠[2]

As an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry, he led the STAIR (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) project, which aimed to teach robots to carry out a variety of tasks.⁠[2]

In September 2008, his doctoral students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley demonstrated an autonomous helicopter: after pilot Garett Oku flew stunts such as the “inverted hurricane,” the helicopter repeated them on its own through “apprenticeship learning.”⁠[5]

In 2009, as an assistant professor in Stanford University’s computer science department, he received the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, recognized among other things for fundamental contributions to applying machine learning to robot perception and control.⁠[6]

In 2010, while still a Stanford professor, he proposed that GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry train large neural networks on vast amounts of data, and after the proposal was accepted he founded Google Brain. He recalled: “I was actually quite bullish about AGI, even back then.”⁠[7]

In 2011 he led the development of Stanford University’s first MOOC platform, an effort that led to the creation of Coursera.⁠[8]

He recalled that his first machine learning MOOC had 104,000 learners.⁠[9]

In late January 2012, Coursera, the online education company he started with his Stanford colleague Daphne KollerDaphne KollerDaphne Koller is an Israeli-born computer scientist and entrepreneur who taught for many years at Stanford University and is known for her work on probabilistic graphical models and her 2004 MacArthur Fellowship. She co-founded Coursera with Andrew Ng in 2012 and in 2018 founded insitro, a machine-learning-driven drug discovery company she leads as CEO.Open the full entry, became public; it was set to run many of Stanford’s upcoming online classes.⁠[10]

In April 2012, Coursera announced that PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry and the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry would join Stanford, with two venture capitalists investing more than $15 million; his machine learning class, opened to the world earlier, had drawn more than 100,000 sign-ups.⁠[11]

The experiment was led by him, then a Stanford University computer scientist, and Google Fellow Jeff Dean: a cluster of 1,000 machines (16,000 cores) was run on 10 million 200x200-pixel thumbnails taken from YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry content and, without being told during training what a cat was, formed the concept of a cat; the paper was to be presented at ICML 2012, the 29th International Conference on Machine Learning, in Edinburgh.⁠[12]

In 2013 he was named to the TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry 100 list of the world’s most influential people; he served as co-CEO of Coursera until 2014.⁠[8]

He and Carol Reiley met in 2009 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Kobe, Japan; on March 31, 2014, the couple announced their engagement on IEEE Spectrum with a robot-themed photo shoot.⁠[13]

By August 2017 he was married to roboticist Carol Reiley.⁠[4]

On May 16, 2014, Baidu announced the opening of its U.S. R&D center in Sunnyvale, California, and named him chief scientist, leading Baidu Research.⁠[14]

The same day he announced that he was stepping away from day-to-day responsibilities at Coursera while continuing as chairman of the board.⁠[9]

He had been director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab; on joining Baidu he took leave from Stanford to lead Baidu’s AI labs in Beijing and Sunnyvale.⁠[15]

In March 2017, speaking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he said AI would transform almost every industry as electricity did about 100 years ago; he argued that fears of evil AI were overstated and that job displacement was the more serious societal issue.⁠[16]

On March 22, 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu in a post, writing that Baidu’s AI group had grown to roughly 1,300 people, including the 300-person Baidu Research, and that his team had launched new businesses such as autonomous driving and the DuerOS conversational computing platform.⁠[17]

He said: “As the principal architect of Baidu’s AI strategy, I am proud to have led the incredible rise of AI within the company.”⁠[18]

He said he next planned to look for ways to use AI to help people, with particular interest in health care and education.⁠[19]

He announced deeplearning.ai in June 2017; on August 8 it launched the five-course Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera, with three of the courses available that day.⁠[20]

In his launch post he wrote: “AI is the new electricity.”⁠[21]

DeepLearning.AI says it was started in 2017 and describes itself as an education technology company empowering the global workforce to build an AI-powered future.⁠[22]

On October 18, 2017, the mental health startup Woebot named him chairman; he would serve on its board and support its work rather than join full time.⁠[23]

On December 14, 2017, he announced Landing.ai, a startup bringing AI to manufacturing, with Foxconn as its first strategic partner. He wrote: “It is now time to build not just an AI-powered IT industry, but an AI-powered society.”⁠[24]

On January 30, 2018, he officially launched AI Fund, which had raised more than $175 million from investors including NEA, Sequoia, Greylock Partners and SoftBank GroupSoftBank GroupSoftBank Group (SoftBank Group Corp.) is an investment holding company headquartered in Tokyo, founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981. Starting out as a distributor of personal computer software, it moved into the internet, broadband and mobile communications, and has since become an investment group centered on AI-related assets such as Arm, the SoftBank Vision Funds and OpenAI.Open the full entry; rather than operating as a traditional venture fund, it would use the money to build new companies from scratch.⁠[25]

On November 14, 2018, he announced AI for Everyone, a new deeplearning.ai course for non-technical audiences such as CEOs, product managers, marketers and salespeople, planned for Coursera in early 2019.⁠[26]

On August 21, 2019, he announced a second office in Medellín, Colombia, for projects including Landing.ai and AI Fund; the team there had just under 50 people, with plans to grow to 150–200 within two years.⁠[27]

On February 20, 2020, he appeared on episode 73 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, titled “Deep Learning, Education, and Real-World AI”; the episode summary describes his work at Google Brain, Coursera, Baidu, deeplearning.ai, Landing.ai and AI Fund.⁠[28]

In the August 25, 2021 issue of The Batch he wrote that his son, Neo Atlas Ng, had just been born, a few days after his grandfather’s death.⁠[29]

On November 8, 2021, Landing AI announced a $57 million Series A led by McRock Capital; its LandingLens platform helps manufacturers build and deploy AI visual inspection, and he said it was designed to work even on small data problems.⁠[30]

In September 2023 TIME named him to its inaugural TIME100 AI list; also on the list was Alison Darcy, founder of Woebot Health, an AI Fund portfolio company.⁠[31]

AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry announced on April 11, 2024, that he had joined its board of directors effective April 9; the announcement lists him as founding lead of Google Brain from 2011 to 2012 and chief scientist and vice president of Baidu from 2014 to 2017.⁠[32]

On May 5, 2025, AI Fund announced the oversubscribed close of its second fund at about $190 million. He said: “AI technology advances over the past few years are creating a golden age for founding startups.”⁠[33]

On July 15, 2025, Bain & Company announced a strategic partnership with him and his newly launched advisory firm AI Aspire, which guides enterprises through AI transformation.⁠[34]

His personal website lists him as founder of DeepLearning.AI, managing general partner at AI Fund, managing partner at AI Aspire, executive chairman of LandingAI, chairman and co-founder of Coursera, and adjunct professor at Stanford University, and says more than 8 million people have taken an AI class from him.⁠[35]

LandingAI’s leadership page lists him as executive chairman and founder, with Dan Maloney as chief executive officer.⁠[36]

His research page says he has authored or co-authored over 200 machine learning papers; recent ones include MedAgentBench, a 2025 benchmark for medical LLM agents, and METER, a 2026 database of methane-emitting infrastructure.⁠[37]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.andrewng.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[35]

X: Public account: https://x.com/AndrewYNg (opens in a new window)⁠[35]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewyng/ (opens in a new window)⁠[35]

Coursera: Official website: https://www.coursera.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

DeepLearning.AI: Official website: https://www.deeplearning.ai/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

LandingAI: Official website: https://landing.ai/ (opens in a new window)⁠[36]

AI Fund: Official website: https://aifund.ai/ (opens in a new window)⁠[38]

Amazon: Official website: https://www.aboutamazon.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[32]