Fans of Elon Musk were upset with his exclusion from the TIME100 AI list last year with the xAI founder noticeably absent. The 2025 list finds Musk returning after his 2024 absence.
Musk Makes The Cut
As the founder of xAI, Musk has been instrumental in the advancement of artificial intelligence, including the integration of Grok on the X social media platform.
In two of the three years since the TIME100 AI list debuted in 2023, Musk has been included as one of the 100 individuals chosen for their influence on the AI sector.
Time says the list is an "annual look at the most influential people in artificial intelligence."
"This year's list further confirms our focus on people," the media outlet said.
Musk makes the list in the "Leaders" category.
"It's been a big year for Elon Musk, even by Musk standards," Time reporter Harry Booth writes of Musk.
Booth highlights the launch of Grok 3 and Grok 4 in his write-up on Musk. The integration of Grok into X has led to 35.1 million monthly active users, the article says. xAI landing a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense is also highlighted in the report.
Other AI Leaders
While Musk's xAI remains privately owned, the CEO is well-known to the public markets thanks to his leadership at publicly traded EV company Tesla.
Several other public CEOs make this year's TIME100 AI list, including:
- Matthew Prince, CEO Cloudflare (NYSE:NET)
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
- Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA)
- Andy Jassy, CEO Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)
- Cristiano Amon, CEO Qualcomm Inc (NASDAQ:QCOM)
- C.C. Wei, CEO Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM)
- Masayoshi Son, CEO Softbank Group Corp (OTC:SFTBF)
- Rene Haas, CEO Arm Holdings PLC – ADR (NASDAQ:ARM)
- Amnon Shashua, CEO Mobileye Global (NASDAQ:MBLY)
- Steve Huffman, CEO Reddit Inc (NYSE:RDDT)
Along with public company CEOs, this year's TIME100 list also includes many well-known names in the AI sector including Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and David Sacks. Leaders from private companies Anthropic, OpenAI, Deepseek and Midjourney are also included.
Pope Leo XIV makes this year's list, as well as several senators helping to push AI forward in Congress. Last year, actress Scarlett Johansson made the list with Musk missing out. Imagine if the 2025 list included the Pope, while excluding Musk. Social media might've boycotted TIME.
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