Systems and techniques that facilitate freeze-out as a regularizer in training neural networks are presented. A system can include a memory and a processor that executes computer executable components. The computer executable components can include: an assessment component that identifies units of a neural network, a selection component that selects a subset of units of the neural network, and a freeze-out component that freezes the selected subset of units of the neural network so that weights of output connections from the frozen subset of units will not be updated for a training run.