Computer scientist, inventor, and co-founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, known for pioneering massively parallel computing. Hillis has a long personal acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein predating Epstein's 2008 conviction, including dining with him at an Edge Foundation event in 1999, corresponding about currency trading, and receiving a package from Ghislaine Maxwell in 2002. In 2015 Hillis met with Epstein at the MIT Media Lab.
He was named in the MIT internal investigation as having helped connect Epstein with Joi Ito, and attended a Digital Currency Initiative meeting arranged by Ito at which Epstein was present. A visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, Hillis appears in the released Epstein files in connection with MIT and the Edge Foundation network.