Several executives across the artificial intelligence (AI) sector have been named as Time’s 2025 Person of the Year. Here's a look at why AI took over the annual list and who the "architects of AI are."
Time Person of the Year
Time Magazine has released its annual person of the year since 1927 and has expanded to include several other lists, including the most influential names in the AI sector.
Some of those figures from the AI list earlier this year have been upgraded to Person of the Year.
"This was the year when artificial intelligence's full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out," Time said in their reasoning for the selections.
Time said that for whatever the question was, "AI was the answer."
"We saw it accelerate medical research and productivity, and seem to make the impossible possible. It was hard to read or watch anything without being confronted with news about the rapid advancement."
For the Person of the Year list, Time made two different covers. One of the cover features the titans selected appearing to sit on a steel beam, paying tribute to the famous "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" picture from 1932. Digital artist Jason Seiler created the image.
The architects of AI named by Time as Person of the Year for 2025 are:
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
- Lisa Su, CEO Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)
- Elon Musk, CEO xAI
- Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
- Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI
- Demis Hassabis, CEO DeepMind Technologies
- Dario Amodei, CEO Anthropic
- Fei-Fei Li, Computer Scientist, Stanford University
"Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it," Huang told Time when speaking of AI. "This is the single most impactful technology of our time."
Why It's Important
Anyone in the investing world who has read an earnings report or listened to a conference call from a technology company likely heard about AI in 2025. The emerging technology continues to be one of the biggest talking points globally.
Big tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to grow their AI businesses, AI platforms and AI-related products.
Time pays tribute to some of the biggest names in the AI space with its annual honor and also highlights some other companies in its report.
The company names the following companies as tops among three key areas of the world of AI:
Chip Builders: Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM), ASML Holding (NASDAQ:ASML)
Computing Providers: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Model Builders: OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Anthropic, xAI
The list shows some stocks for investors to watch and may also show the importance of the model builders, with all four of those companies represented among the architects of AI list.
The 2025 award marks a second Person of the Year for both Musk and Zuckerberg, who also won the award in 2021 and 2010 respectively.
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