TIME has unveiled its TIME100 AI 2026 list, naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Ben Affleck and Paris Hilton among the 100 people it says are having the greatest influence on artificial intelligence.
Released on August 27, the fourth annual list brings together technology executives, researchers, investors, policymakers, entertainers and advocates whose work is shaping how AI is developed and used.
The honorees are divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. While many familiar technology figures appear, the inclusion of Hollywood stars and political campaigners demonstrates how the debate over AI has expanded beyond Silicon Valley.
Who made the TIME100 AI 2026 list?
OpenAI is represented by chief research officer Mark Chen, CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman. The three executives are listed together in the Leaders category as OpenAI continues to play a major role in the global race to develop increasingly capable AI systems.
Elon Musk also appears among the Leaders, alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, AWS CEO Matt Garman and Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei.
Other major technology names in the category include Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu, Google Search head Elizabeth Reid, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator.
| Category | Notable names | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Leaders | Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison | AI companies, infrastructure and investment |
| Innovators | Ben Affleck, Michael Truell, Vivek Raghavan, Utkarsh Saxena | New AI products and applications |
| Shapers | Paris Hilton, Bernie Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt | AI policy, labor rights and creative protections |
| Thinkers | Mira Murati, Ilya Sutskever, Fei-Fei Li, Yann LeCun | AI research, safety and long-term development |
OpenEvidence founder Daniel Nadler, Cursor co-founder Michael Truell, Suno co-founder Mikey Shulman and Cerebras Systems CEO Andrew Feldman are among those recognized as Innovators.
The category also includes Sarvam AI co-founder Vivek Raghavan and Adalat AI co-founder Utkarsh Saxena. Sarvam AI focuses on building AI models for Indian languages, while Adalat AI applies the technology to legal and judicial workflows.
Mira Murati, co-founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, appears in the Thinkers category. She is joined by Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, World Labs CEO Fei-Fei Li, Google executive Marian Croak and AI researcher Yann LeCun.
Larry Ellisonâs inclusion comes as Oracle continues expanding its role in the infrastructure behind generative AI. The companyâs growing cloud commitments have also made Oracleâs AI backlog and spending outlook increasingly important to investors, as seen in its recent AI cloud earnings update.
Why are Ben Affleck and Paris Hilton included?
Ben Affleck is one of the most unexpected names on the list. TIME placed the actor and filmmaker in its Innovators category for his work involving AI and movie production.
According to TIMEâs profile of Affleck, he founded InterPositive to develop tools intended to improve film post-production. TIME reported that the business was later sold to Netflix and that Affleck joined the streaming company as a senior adviser.
Affleck has argued that AI could lower some of the costs and technical barriers involved in filmmaking while allowing creative professionals to concentrate on work requiring human judgment. He has also supported calls for safeguards protecting creative workers and their content.
Paris Hilton was selected as a Shaper because of her advocacy against abusive deepfakes and non-consensual digitally altered images. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears in the same category as a co-founder of the Creators Coalition on AI, which campaigns for protections and standards governing AIâs use in creative industries.
Senator Bernie Sanders and AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler were also named as Shapers, reflecting concerns about automation, employment and how AI-generated productivity gains will be distributed among workers and businesses.
The selections show that influence in AI is no longer limited to researchers building models. It now extends to people shaping copyright rules, labor protections, online safety, energy infrastructure and public attitudes toward the technology.
TIME said its editors and reporters spent months researching candidates and consulting industry leaders and experts. The complete TIME100 AI 2026 list contains 100 honorees across the four categories.
The publication will also hold a TIME100 Impact Dinner in San Francisco on September 14, bringing together figures working across technology, business, entertainment and AI policy.
Published by the Swikblog News Desk. Information in this report is based on TIMEâs official TIME100 AI 2026 announcement and individual honoree profiles.
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