- Founder & CTO, Together AI21
- Neubauer Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago1
Ce Zhang is the CTO of Together AI, which lists Zhang among its founders, and a Neubauer Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago; before that, Zhang was an Associate Professor at ETH Zurich. Zhang's research looks at the tension between data, models, computation and infrastructure, with a focus on machine learning platforms and systems that are data-centric, human-centric and declaratively scalable. Zhang is a co-author of the RedPajama paper, which describes an open dataset for training large language models, and of the Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (HELM) paper. Zhang completed a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a postdoc at Stanford, both advised by Chris Ré.1234
At a glance
- Current roles
- Founder & CTO +1 more
- Companies
- Together AI, University of Chicago
- Sector
- Company
- Education
- Stanford, UChicago
- Work listed
- 2
- Honors
- 4
- Sources cited
- 11
- Profile reviewed
Career
Zhang completed a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, both advised by Christopher Ré, before joining ETH Zurich, where Zhang became an Associate Professor of computer science. Zhang is now CTO of Together AI, which lists Zhang among its founders alongside Vipul Ved Prakash, Chris Ré, Tri Dao, and Percy Liang, and a Neubauer Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, where Zhang's site lists the course DATA 34100.512
Zhang's site also lists a role as a PhD mentor at INSAIT and as a co-editor-in-chief of DMLR, a journal in the JMLR family focused on data-centric machine learning research.1
Research
Zhang's group takes a systems approach to machine learning, building platforms that are data-centric, human-centric, and declaratively scalable, with the stated goal of making machine learning accessible, cost-efficient, and trustworthy. Position papers listed on Zhang's site include DataPerf, a benchmark suite for data-centric AI development, and the paper that framed the first MLSys conference.51
Zhang's recent papers on large language models include work on training foundation models across decentralized, heterogeneous hardware (2022), FlexGen for high-throughput LLM inference on a single GPU (2023), and RedPajama, an open dataset for training large language models (2024). Zhang is also a co-author of the HELM benchmark paper, whose contributions appendix credits Zhang with managing the Together Research Computer used to evaluate open models.67389410
Scientific service
Zhang has served as program co-chair of the SysML and MLSys demo tracks and the MLOps workshop, as an associate editor for SIGMOD and VLDB, and as a NeurIPS area chair for the benchmarks and datasets track in 2022.11
Work and contributions
RedPajama Open data
Co-author of "RedPajama: an Open Dataset for Training Large Language Models" (2024), whose listed affiliations include Together AI and the University of Chicago; the paper releases the RedPajama-V1 and RedPajama-V2 datasets. The RedPajama-Data repository, which holds the code for preparing the datasets, is Apache-2.0.389
HELM (Holistic Evaluation of Language Models) Published research
Co-author of "Holistic Evaluation of Language Models" (2022); the paper's author-contributions appendix credits Zhang with managing the Together Research Computer infrastructure used to evaluate the open models.410
Timeline
- Received the SIGMOD Best Paper Award.115
- Received the SIGMOD Research Highlight Award.115
- Received a Google Focused Research Award.11
- Received a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant.115
- Co-authored "Decentralized Training of Foundation Models in Heterogeneous Environments".6
- Co-authored "Holistic Evaluation of Language Models" (HELM), managing the compute used for open models.410
- Co-authored FlexGen, a system for high-throughput LLM inference on a single GPU.7
- Co-authored "RedPajama: an Open Dataset for Training Large Language Models".3
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.
- Associate Professor, ETH Zurich1
- Postdoctoral researcher (advised by Chris Ré), Stanford University1
Honors and recognition
Where they work
- Together AI 5 people in the wiki
- University of Chicago 2 people in the wiki
Related people
- Christopher RéAlso at Together AI
- Tri DaoAlso at Together AI
- Vipul Ved PrakashAlso at Together AI
- Percy LiangAlso at Together AI
- Sara HookerLanguage models · Datasets and data
- Matei ZahariaTraining systems · Datasets and data
- Andriy MulyarLanguage models · Datasets and data
- Loubna Ben AllalLanguage models · Datasets and data
- Myle OttLanguage models · Training systems
- Sridhar RamaswamyLanguage models · Datasets and data
Suggest a correction or removal
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References
11 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026
- Ce Zhang — homepage
- About Us | Together AI (team listing)
- RedPajama: an Open Dataset for Training Large Language Models (arXiv 2411.12372)
- Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (arXiv 2211.09110)
- Ce Zhang — Bio
- Decentralized Training of Foundation Models in Heterogeneous Environments (arXiv 2206.01288)
- FlexGen: High-Throughput Generative Inference of Large Language Models with a Single GPU (arXiv 2303.06865)
- RedPajama: an Open Dataset for Training Large Language Models (arXiv HTML v1, author affiliations)
- togethercomputer/RedPajama-Data repository (Apache-2.0 license)
- Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (arXiv PDF v2, Appendix A author contributions)
- Ce Zhang — Services and Honors