About Us

We turn curiosity into
production-grade AI skill

Cortex was founded in 2020 by ML researchers frustrated by AI courses that stopped at theory. Today our graduates train, fine-tune and deploy real models for a living.

60K+
Learners
worldwide
6
AI tracks
available
120+
Mentors
on our team
3.2K
GPU-hours
used monthly

Our Story

From a Slack channel to a global academy

20

2020 — A study group goes public

Three ML engineers start running weekend study groups for friends switching careers into AI. 40 people show up to the first cohort.

21

2021 — First GPU lab goes live

We partner with a cloud provider to give every learner real GPU access — no more fighting for Colab quota.

23

2023 — LLMs & Generative AI track launches

As the field shifts overnight, we rebuild our curriculum around transformers, prompting and fine-tuning within weeks.

26

2026 — 60,000 learners, 6 tracks

Today Cortex graduates work as ML engineers, researchers and founders across 40+ countries.

Our Team

The people behind Cortex

RK
Dr. Rina Kapoor
CEO & Co-founder

Former research scientist at a major AI lab. PhD in Machine Learning. Published 20+ papers on deep learning.

OF
Omar Farouk
Director of Curriculum

Ex-research engineer turned educator. Designed the project-based curriculum used across all six tracks.

LM
Lena Moreau
CTO & Co-founder

Infrastructure engineer and open-source maintainer. Built the GPU scheduling platform that powers every lab.

Our Values

What drives us

Build, don't just watch

Every concept is paired with a notebook you run yourself — no purely passive video lectures.

Curriculum that tracks the frontier

Every track is rebuilt every six months to reflect the latest models and tooling, not last year's syllabus.

🤝

Mentors who tell you the truth

Honest review of your models and code, not participation trophies.

🎯

Outcomes-obsessed

We publish our completion and placement rates publicly because we stand behind them.

⚖️

Responsible by default

Ethics and safety aren't an elective — every track touches on responsible AI practice.

🌱

Selective, but accessible

We interview every applicant, but flexible financing means cost is never the barrier.

Ready to train your first model?

Start a free trial lesson and meet your mentor

Start for free →