Mira Murati
CEO, Thinking Machines Lab
Builder
Why they matterFormer OpenAI CTO. Her lab shipped Tinker, an API for fine-tuning open models.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Who’s shaping AI / the United States
Who’s shaping AI in the United States
The builders, researchers, policymakers, investors, explainers and critics moving AI forward in the United States. Every entry links to a source and to the moments on our timeline.
- People
- 6
- Global leaders from here
- 11
- Timeline events
- 2
- Last checked
- 2 Oct 2026
Percy Liang
Professor, Stanford. Director, Center for Research on Foundation Models
Researcher
Why they matterLeads Stanford's foundation model center, known for open models and rigorous benchmarks like HELM.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Michael Kratsios
Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Policymaker
Why they matterLeads White House science policy, including the AI Action Plan. Co-chairs PCAST.
Jul 2025: White House AI Action Plan
Sarah Guo
Founder and General Partner, Conviction
Investor
Why they matterFounded Conviction in 2022. Its funds total nearly $1B and back Harvey, Sierra and Cognition.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Kevin Roose
Co-host, Machine Gods (with NPR)
Explainer
Why they matterCo-created the Hard Fork podcast. Now co-hosts Machine Gods, a twice-weekly AI show with NPR.
Sep 2026: Machine Gods launches with NPR
Meredith Whittaker
President, Signal
Critic & watchdog
Why they matterWarns that AI agents with deep device access undermine encrypted messaging and privacy.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Global leaders from the United States
Dario Amodei
CEO, Anthropic
Builder
Why they matterLeads Anthropic, maker of Claude. Axios reported in Sep 2026 that its revenue pace topped $100B a year.
Sep 2026: Anthropic revenue pace passes $100B a year
Elon Musk
Founder of xAI, now SpaceXAI inside SpaceX
Builder
Why they matterFounded xAI, maker of Grok. SpaceX acquired it in Feb 2026 and renamed it SpaceXAI in Jul 2026.
Feb 2026: SpaceX acquires xAI
Jensen Huang
CEO, NVIDIA
Builder
Why they matterRuns the main supplier of AI training chips. Unveiled the Vera Rubin platform at GTC 2026.
Mar 2026: Vera Rubin unveiled at GTC
Mark Zuckerberg
CEO, Meta
Builder
Why they matterSet up Meta Superintelligence Labs in Jun 2025. Its first model, Muse Spark, shipped in Apr 2026.
Apr 2026: Muse Spark released
Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI
Builder
Why they matterLeads the company behind ChatGPT, which passed 1 million signups within five days of its Nov 2022 launch.
Nov 2022: ChatGPT launches
Satya Nadella
CEO, Microsoft
Builder
Why they matterRuns Microsoft, an investor in both OpenAI and Anthropic and the maker of Copilot.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Sundar Pichai
CEO, Google and Alphabet
Builder
Why they matterLeads Google, whose Gemini app reached 1 billion monthly users in Aug 2026.
Aug 2026: Gemini app reaches 1 billion monthly users
Fei-Fei Li 李飞飞
Co-founder, World Labs. Joining AMD as Chief Scientist
Researcher
Why they matterCreated ImageNet. AMD agreed in Sep 2026 to buy her company World Labs for $8.2B.
Sep 2026: AMD agrees to buy World Labs
Andrej Karpathy
Pre-training research, Anthropic
Explainer
Why they matterTeaches how LLMs work in his free Zero to Hero videos. Coined "vibe coding" in Feb 2025.
Feb 2025: coins "vibe coding"
Andrew Ng
Founder, DeepLearning.AI. Managing General Partner, AI Fund
Explainer
Why they matterMore than 8 million people have taken an AI class from him. Co-founded Coursera.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Timnit Gebru
Founder and Executive Director, DAIR
Critic & watchdog
Why they matterFounded DAIR in Dec 2021 to study AI harms. Won the 2026 Right Livelihood Award.
Dec 2021: founds DAIR
On the AIooze timeline