Top 10: AI Leaders

Organisations have broadened worker access to AI by 50% in just one year, Deloitte reports in its 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise survey. 

The people leading this uptake are strategists who are not just building models, but reshaping the global economy.

From Sam Altman’s push for ubiquitous AGI to Jensen Huang’s hardware revolution and Liang Wenfeng’s efficiency breakthroughs, these individuals represent the frontier of innovation. 

We explore the pioneers bridging the gap between raw compute and meaningful outcomes, defining how we work, create and solve the world’s most complex challenges.

10. Tareq Amin

Company: HUMAIN
Title: CEO
Head Quarters: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

With more than two decades of experience in telecoms, digital transformation and AI, Tareq is the CEO of HUMAIN, a full-stack AI company owned by the Public Investment Fund and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

As a Jordanian-American technologist, Tareq leads the development of scalable AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, data models and applications aimed at positioning Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub.

9. Peter DeSantis

Company: Amazon​​​​​​​
Title: SVP, Silicon Development and Quantum Computing
Head Quarters: Seattle, US

Peter deploys custom silicon for Amazon, especially the next-generation Trainium and Inferentia chips. 

As a deeply technical leader known for his focus on efficiency, Peter oversees the rapid construction of Amazon’s new liquid-cooled AI regions, ensuring the company can deliver supercomputing scale without relying solely on third-party GPUs.

Before Amazon’s restructure earlier this year, Peter was the architect of AWS Utility Computing. Now, he is responsible for the entire physical and silicon stack that supports Amazon’s AGI ambitions.

8. Peng Xiao

Company: G42​​​​​​​
Title: CEO​​​​​​​
Head Quarters: Abu Dhabi, UAE

As the Group CEO of G42, the Abu Dhabi-based technology holding company, Peng manages a vast portfolio covering healthcare, energy and government services. 

Peng is responsible for G42’s US$1.5bn partnership with Microsoft, which enables G42 to align its hardware infrastructure with US export controls.

He focuses on helping nations build their own computational capacity and data independence by actively deploying supercomputing clusters in the desert. He also helped to develop G42’s Arabic LLM Jais.

7. Mustafa Suleyman

Company: Microsoft AI​​​​​​​
Title: EVP of Frontier Models and Strategy​​​​​​​
Head Quarters: Redmond, US

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella appointed Mustafa as EVP of Frontier Models and Strategy so he can carry out Microsoft’s “superintelligence mission” to build state-of-the-art frontier models. 

Having co-founded DeepMind and later Inflection AI, Mustafa is a central figure in the industry, known for advocating for AI safety and championing a design-led approach where AI models act as digital companions. 

Mustafa is foundational to Microsoft’s success, underscoring its commitment to owning the AI stack base layer and driving the “agentic revolution”.

6. Mark Zuckerberg

Company: Meta
Title: CEO
Head Quarters: Menlo Park, US

Mark views AI as the underlying engine that will power the next generation of social connection, from smart glasses that see the world to AI personas on Instagram and WhatsApp.

As CEO of Meta, Mark released the Llama series of models for free, upending the business models of closed-sourced competitors and establishing Meta’s architecture as the industry standard for developers. 

Mark argues that open ecosystems are safer and more innovative than walled gardens, positioning Meta’s strategy as a democratising force against AGI.

5. Liang Wenfeng

Company: DeepSeek
Title: CEO​​​​​​​
Head Quarters: Hangzhou, China

Liang is the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, known globally for its DeepSeek-v3 model.

He led the now-popularised Mixture-of-Experts architecture, proving that top-tier performance could be achieved with a fraction of the energy used by US hyperscalers. 

Despite strict US export controls on chips, his team’s efficiency breakthroughs have kept China competitive in the AGI market. 

Liang is a quantitative trader by background and founder of the hedge fund High-Flyer.

4. Demis Hassabis

Company: Google DeepMind​​​​​​​
Title: CEO
Head Quarters: London, UK

Once a child chess prodigy and the 2024 Novel Laureate in Chemistry, Demis now leads Google DeepMind, which is responsible for the Gemini model family. 

Demis believes in using AI to solve almost anything, from fundamental scientific problems like protein folding to material science and clean energy. 

He believes in a future where AI can eventually cure major diseases.

Isomorphic Labs, his drug discovery spin-off, very well may be in that future.

3. Dario Amodei

Company: Anthropic​​​​​​​
Title: CEO
Head Quarters: San Francisco, US

As the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario has brought the Claude model series to millions. 

Dario has successfully positioned Claude as the top choice for enterprise and coding, especially following the 2025 release of Claude 4. 

He is a pragmatic leader, often contributing to the open discussion of AI.

For example, he has predicted that models could exceed human capacity before. 

Dario strongly advocates for people to understand how AI systems work before entrusting them with critical decision-making.

2. Jensen Huang

Company: NVIDIA​​​​​​​
Title: CEO​​​​​​​
Head Quarters: Santa Clara, US

Jensen is one of the most well known technology leaders of this century, associated with the supply of chips and software for AI and accelerated computing.

He views NVIDIA not just as a chipmaker, but as a full-stack computing platform that builds large-scale AI factories for companies like OpenAI to train their frontier models. 

Without Jensen, NVIDIA may not have as much of a focus on physical AI as it does now, having integrated advanced silicon into robotics and heavy industry to automate the physical world. 

He also champions the concept of sovereign AI, arguing that every nation must own and operate its own domestic intelligence infrastructure. 

By leading an agile corporation, Jensen is contributing to an ever-increasing competitive hardware landscape.

1. Sam Altman

Company: OpenAI
Title: CEO
Head Quarters: San Francisco, US

Sam believes in the power of AI so much that he believes it could run his company one day: “I think there will come a time when AI can be a much better CEO of OpenAI than me – and I will be nothing but enthusiastic the day that happens.”

As CEO of OpenAI, Sam has guided the organisation behind some of the world’s most widely used Gen AI models. 

Under his leadership, he pushed AI from research labs into boardrooms, classrooms and daily life. 

He combines technical literacy with sharp strategic instinct, positioning AI as foundational infrastructure for the global economy. 

Visionary, undeniably influential and, at times, controversial, Sam is setting the agenda for how AI will reshape business, society and the future of work.