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Portrait of Oren Etzioni
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Oren Etzioni

Adviser and board member, Ai2

Oren Etzioni was the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), serving as CEO from the institute's inception in 2013 until late 2022. Etzioni is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where Etzioni's research included meta-search, online comparison shopping, machine reading, and open information extraction. Etzioni has also founded several companies, including Farecast, which was acquired by Microsoft, and founded TrueMedia.org, a nonprofit for detecting deepfakes.1

At a glance

Current roles
Adviser and board member +3 more
Sector
University
Education
Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, UW
Work listed
2
Honors
4
Sources cited
5
Profile reviewed

Career

Oren Etzioni is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Etzioni was the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for AI, leading it from its start in 2013 until late 2022, and remains an adviser and board member there.12

While at Ai2, Etzioni built the AI2 Incubator, which spun out more than 20 companies, and continues as its technical director. Etzioni joined the venture firm Madrona as a venture partner in 2000 and has founded or co-founded companies including Farecast, acquired by Microsoft in 2008, and Decide, acquired by eBay in 2013.21

Etzioni later founded TrueMedia.org, a nonprofit set up to help identify deepfakes during the 2024 election season. In December 2025 Georgetown University's Massive Data Institute took over the initiative, which it now hosts.13

Research

Etzioni's research at the University of Washington covered meta-search, online comparison shopping, machine reading, and open information extraction. Selected works include "A Softbot-based Interface to the Internet" (Communications of the ACM, 1994) and "Open Information Extraction from the Web" (Communications of the ACM, 2008).1

AAAI elected Etzioni a Fellow in 2003 for contributions to software agents, web-based technology, and intelligent user interfaces. The 2007 Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Award recognized research on AI on the Web and the deployment of AI technologies in applications.45

Talks and writing

Etzioni has written for general audiences on artificial intelligence, with pieces in Wired, MIT Technology Review, Harvard Business Review, and Communications of the ACM. Etzioni gave the TEDx Seattle talk "Artificial Intelligence will empower us, not exterminate us" in November 2016 and co-taught a 2020 Coursera lecture with Andrew Ng on natural language processing with attention models.1

Work and contributions

  • Open information extraction and machine reading Published research

    Etzioni's UW site describes research on meta-search, online comparison shopping, machine reading, and open information extraction, and lists "Open Information Extraction from the Web" among Etzioni's selected works.1

  • TrueMedia.org

    Founded TrueMedia.org as a nonprofit to help identify deepfakes during the 2024 election season; the initiative's tools are now hosted by Georgetown University.13

Timeline

  1. Published "A Softbot-based Interface to the Internet" in Communications of the ACM.1
  2. Joined Madrona as a venture partner.2
  3. Published "Open Information Extraction from the Web" in Communications of the ACM.1
  4. Farecast, a company Etzioni founded, was acquired by Microsoft.2
  5. Became the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for AI.1
  6. Decide, a company Etzioni co-founded, was acquired by eBay.2
  7. Gave the TEDx Seattle talk "Artificial Intelligence will empower us, not exterminate us".1
  8. Stepped down as CEO of the Allen Institute for AI after more than nine years.21

Other documented roles

Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.

  • Founding Chief Executive Officer (2013 to late 2022), Ai2 (Allen Institute for AI)1
  • Founder of the nonprofit, whose work Georgetown University took over in December 2025, TrueMedia.org13

Honors and recognition

  • AAAI Fellow · Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 20034
  • IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award · International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 20052
  • Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Award · Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 200752
  • ACL 10-year Test-of-Time Paper Award (two papers) · Association for Computational Linguistics, 20222

Where they work

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References

5 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026

  1. Oren Etzioni — University of Washington faculty siteUniversity of Washington · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  2. Oren Etzioni — Madrona team profileMadrona · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  3. About TrueMedia at GeorgetownTrueMedia (Georgetown University) · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  4. Elected AAAI FellowsAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  5. Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture AwardAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026