TIME names 100 most influential people in AI for 2026

TIME's fourth AI list names 100 leaders, innovators, shapers and thinkers amid debate over AI's impact

TIME magazine unveiled its 2026 TIME100 AI list, naming 100 people it says are having the greatest influence on the development and direction of artificial intelligence worldwide.

The fourth annual list brings together executives behind some of the world's largest AI companies with researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, labor advocates and figures from the creative industries amid growing debate over the technology's economic and social impact.

TIME divided the 100 honorees into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers.

Among those in the Leaders category are OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman; SpaceX CEO Elon Musk; Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei; IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna; Google DeepMind Chief AI Readiness Officer Lila Ibrahim; and ByteDance Chairman and CEO Liang Rubo.

The category also includes prominent figures involved in the infrastructure supporting the AI boom, including Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison, CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator and SMIC Co-CEO Liang Mong Song.

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The Innovators category highlights people developing new applications and approaches to AI, including OpenEvidence founder Daniel Nadler, Cursor CEO Michael Truell, Moonshot AI CEO Yang Zhilin, Caltech professor Anima Anandkumar and Cerebras Systems co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman.

TIME also recognized AI's growing impact on creative industries, naming actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck among the Innovators, alongside Suno co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman and Tarteel co-founder and CTO Mohamed Moussa.

The Shapers category includes Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN specialized agency, whose work has focused in part on addressing the global digital divide and expanding participation in AI development.

Actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt, co-founder of the Creators Coalition on AI, was also named a Shaper. He has advocated for greater involvement by artists and the public in decisions about how AI is developed and deployed, as well as protections for creators.

TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs said this year's list reflects an AI landscape that has become increasingly 'explosive and divisive,' citing developments including Musk taking a leading AI company to public markets, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei clashing with the Pentagon, Oracle's Larry Ellison racing to build data centers and Moonshot AI's Yang Zhilin developing Chinese models that have been known to occasionally outperform advanced US competitors.

Chinese technology and AI figures also have a notable presence on the 2026 list, with ByteDance's Liang Rubo, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu, Moonshot AI's Yang Zhilin, Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng, AgiBot CEO Deng Taihua and SMIC executive Liang Mong Song among those selected.