TIME Magazine names 'Architects of AI' as Person of the Year

Every December, TIME Magazine names a “Person of the Year,” identifying the individual or group who has most influenced the news and the world, for good or ill.

After naming U.S. President Donald Trump for the second time last year (2024), and pop icon Taylor Swift the year prior for boosting the economy with her Eras Tour, TIME has turned its focus to technology for 2025.

This year, TIME Magazine has named the “Architects of AI” as its award recipients, recognizing the CEOs from the U.S. who are driving the global AI competition. This decision reflects the current public focus on AI, which, according to recent Edelman data, evokes both hope for a few and economic concern for most.

The accompanying article notes a shift from the decades-long preparation for “thinking machines”—and warnings of “unforeseen catastrophe” from leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk—to a rapid deployment race.

The individuals identified as key figures in this race, who are competing both with and against each other, include prominent CEOs and leaders such as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AMD’s Lisa Su, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and World Labs’ Fei-Fei Li.

TIME reports that these people, through their multibillion-dollar bets on “one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time,” have reshaped government policy, intensified geopolitical competition, and accelerated AI adoption.

The news was officially announced on Thursday morning, though images of the cover photo were reportedly leaked on the forecast market Polymarket on Wednesday evening.