TIME magazine has published its fourth annual TIME100 AI list, naming 100 people it says are exerting the greatest influence over the development and direction of artificial intelligence, in a roster that spans corporate executives, researchers, policymakers, labour advocates, and figures from the creative industries.

The cover features Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mira Murati, Larry Ellison, Fei-Fei Li, Ilya Sutskever, Eddie Wu, Arvind Krishna, Paris Hilton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Sacks, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Marian Croak, and Liz Shuler.

TIME divided the 100 honourees into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers, and Thinkers. Among the Leaders are OpenAI's Sam Altman, chief research officer Mark Chen, and president Greg Brockman; Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei; and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, who this year took a major AI company to public markets. Chinese technology figures have a strong presence, with ByteDance's Liang Rubo, Alibaba chief executive Eddie Wu, Moonshot AI's Yang Zhilin, and others included.

TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs framed the 2026 selections as a reflection of a year he described as explosive and divisive for the sector. Published alongside the list are in-depth interviews with Thinking Machines Lab chief executive Mira Murati, International Telecommunication Union secretary-general Doreen Bogdan-Martin, and OpenEvidence founder Daniel Nadler.

The list drew immediate debate. Several observers noted the absence of Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, arguing these figures played more direct roles in shaping AI infrastructure and models than some of those included. Others welcomed the broadening of the list beyond purely corporate figures to include labour, policy, and creative voices.