A structured reference to the individuals shaping artificial intelligence across research, industry, governance, ethics, and public discourse. Curated as a resource for professionals navigating the AI landscape. For more see the full list at AI People.

Industry Builders and AI Infrastructure Leaders

Demis Hassabis | AI Research, Scientific AI | United Kingdom Co-founded DeepMind and led teams that created AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and AlphaGeometry. AlphaFold's solution to protein folding-a fifty-year grand challenge-demonstrated AI's potential to accelerate scientific discovery. Co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Key works: AlphaGo, AlphaFold, AlphaGeometry

Sam Altman | AI Deployment, Policy | United States CEO of OpenAI who led the deployment of ChatGPT, bringing AI capabilities to hundreds of millions of users. Navigates the tension between rapid deployment and safety concerns while advocating for AI governance. The November 2023 board crisis and his return highlighted governance challenges in frontier AI. Key works: ChatGPT deployment, policy testimony, AI governance advocacy

Dario Amodei | AI Safety, Frontier Models | United States CEO of Anthropic, which he co-founded after leaving OpenAI over safety concerns. Former VP of Research at OpenAI who now leads a lab explicitly focused on AI safety research alongside capability development. Advocate for responsible scaling policies. Key works: Constitutional AI, scaling laws research, responsible scaling

Daniela Amodei | AI Operations, Governance | United States President of Anthropic, overseeing operations of one of the leading safety-focused AI labs. Previously at OpenAI and Stripe. Her leadership in building organisational structures for responsible AI development influences how the industry approaches governance. Key works: Anthropic organisational leadership

Jensen Huang | AI Hardware, Computing Infrastructure | United States CEO of NVIDIA, whose GPUs became the essential infrastructure for training neural networks. Bet the company on AI acceleration a decade before it became obvious, creating the CUDA ecosystem that now powers virtually all deep learning research and deployment. Key works: CUDA platform, GPU computing for AI

Jeff Dean | Large-Scale Systems, ML Infrastructure | United States Google Senior Fellow who led the development of TensorFlow, TPUs, and large-scale machine learning infrastructure. Co-authored papers on MapReduce, BigTable, and deep learning systems that defined how AI operates at scale. Key works: TensorFlow, TPU development, large-scale ML systems

Satya Nadella | Enterprise AI, Platform Strategy | United States Microsoft CEO who repositioned the company around AI through the OpenAI partnership and Copilot integration across Microsoft products. His strategy of embedding AI into enterprise tools is reshaping how organisations adopt AI capabilities. Key works: Microsoft AI strategy, OpenAI partnership, Copilot

Mustafa Suleyman | AI Products, Governance | United Kingdom Co-founded DeepMind, then led Google's conversational AI efforts, now heads Microsoft AI. Author of "The Coming Wave," which argues that AI and biotechnology create governance challenges unlike any humanity has faced. Bridges technical development and public policy. Key works: "The Coming Wave" (2023), DeepMind Applied, Microsoft AI leadership

Andrew Ng | AI Education, Applied AI | United States Made AI education accessible to millions through Coursera's machine learning course and DeepLearning.AI. Co-founded Google Brain. His focus on practical AI adoption and workforce development complements the research-focused community. Key works: Coursera ML course, DeepLearning.AI, Google Brain

Mira Murati | AI Research Leadership | United States Former CTO of OpenAI who oversaw the development and launch of GPT-4 and ChatGPT. One of the most senior technical leaders at a frontier lab, navigating the challenges of deploying advanced AI systems responsibly. Key works: GPT-4, ChatGPT technical leadership

Greg Brockman | AI Infrastructure, Lab Building | United States Co-founder and former President of OpenAI who built the engineering organisation behind GPT models. His work scaling AI research infrastructure enabled OpenAI's transition from research lab to deployment-focused company. Key works: OpenAI co-founding, engineering leadership

Arthur Mensch | Efficient Models, Open Source | France CEO of Mistral AI, leading European efforts to build competitive open-weight language models. Advocates for European AI sovereignty and demonstrates that frontier capabilities don't require American big tech scale. Key works: Mistral models, European AI leadership

Clem Delangue | Open Source AI, Model Distribution | United States CEO of Hugging Face, which became the central hub for sharing and accessing AI models. Built infrastructure that democratised access to AI, enabling researchers and companies worldwide to use and build on each other's work. Key works: Hugging Face platform, Transformers library

Lisa Su | AI Hardware Competition | United States CEO of AMD, driving competition in AI chips against NVIDIA's dominance. Her leadership in developing AI accelerators affects the infrastructure costs and availability that shape who can build frontier AI systems. Key works: AMD AI strategy, MI300 chips

How to Use This Directory

For research: Each entry includes key works and affiliations for deeper investigation.

For event planning: Filter by geographic base, domain, or public engagement experience.

For understanding the field: The categorisation reveals how different communities, from technical researchers, ethicists, policymakers, industry leaders all shape AI development.

For identifying perspectives: Note whose voices are included and whose might be missing from any particular AI conversation.

This directory is maintained as a resource for the AI age. Last updated: 2026.

Curated by Rahim Hirji for thesuperskills.com.

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