Arthur Mensch
Co-founder and CEO, Mistral AI
BuilderFrance
Why they matterCo-founded Mistral in 2023. A Sep 2025 round led by ASML valued it at €12B.
Sep 2025: ASML-led round values Mistral at €12B
Who’s shaping AI / Global leaders
Global leaders shaping AI
The people whose influence on AI crosses borders: heads of frontier labs and chip makers, the field’s best-known researchers, and the voices shaping global rules. Each also appears on their home country’s page.
- People
- 20
- Timeline events
- 5
- Last checked
- 2 Oct 2026
C.C. Wei 魏哲家
Chairman and CEO, TSMC
BuilderTaiwan
Why they matterLeads TSMC, the foundry that makes chips for most leading AI hardware companies.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Dario Amodei
CEO, Anthropic
BuilderUnited States
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
BuilderUnited States
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
BuilderUnited States
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
Liang Wenfeng 梁文锋
Founder and CEO, DeepSeek
BuilderChina
Why they matterFounded DeepSeek, whose R1 model was released as open weights under the MIT license in Jan 2025.
Jan 2025: DeepSeek-R1 released
Mark Zuckerberg
CEO, Meta
BuilderUnited States
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
BuilderUnited States
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
BuilderUnited States
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
BuilderUnited States
Why they matterLeads Google, whose Gemini app reached 1 billion monthly users in Aug 2026.
Aug 2026: Gemini app reaches 1 billion monthly users
Demis Hassabis
Chair, Google DeepMind. Chief Scientist, Alphabet
ResearcherUnited Kingdom
Why they matterShared the 2024 Nobel in Chemistry for AlphaFold, which predicted structures for 200M proteins.
Oct 2024: Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold
Fei-Fei Li 李飞飞
Co-founder, World Labs. Joining AMD as Chief Scientist
ResearcherUnited States
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
Yann LeCun
Executive Chairman, AMI Labs
ResearcherFrance
Why they matterLeft Meta to start AMI Labs, which raised $1.03B in Mar 2026 to build world models.
Mar 2026: AMI Labs raises $1.03B
Yoshua Bengio
Scientific Director, LawZero. Professor, Université de Montréal
ResearcherCanada
Why they matterChairs the International AI Safety Report and co-chairs the UN Scientific Panel on AI.
Jul 2026: UN Scientific Panel's first report
Amandeep Singh Gill
UN Under-Secretary-General and Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies
PolicymakerIndia
Why they matterHeads the UN office that leads its work on AI governance.
Jul 2026: UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, Geneva
Masayoshi Son 孫正義
CEO, SoftBank Group. Chairman, Stargate
InvestorJapan
Why they matterSoftBank completed a $22.5B OpenAI investment in Dec 2025, bringing its stake to about 11%.
Dec 2025: SoftBank completes OpenAI investment
Andrej Karpathy
Pre-training research, Anthropic
ExplainerUnited States
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
ExplainerUnited States
Why they matterMore than 8 million people have taken an AI class from him. Co-founded Coursera.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Geoffrey Hinton
University Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Critic & watchdogCanada
Why they matterLeft Google in May 2023 to speak about AI risk. Shared the 2024 Nobel in Physics.
May 2023: leaves Google to warn about AI risk
Timnit Gebru
Founder and Executive Director, DAIR
Critic & watchdogUnited States
Why they matterFounded DAIR in Dec 2021 to study AI harms. Won the 2026 Right Livelihood Award.
Dec 2021: founds DAIR
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