Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO whose GPUs power the training infrastructure behind virtually every frontier AI model, is absent from the 2026 TIME100 AI list published last week. So is AMD chief executive Lisa Su. The omission stands out because both lead the two companies that dominate the AI GPU market, and because names such as Ben Affleck, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Paris Hilton all secured spots on the roster.
Huang had appeared on every prior edition of the TIME100 AI, and TIME had previously named him one of eight “Architects of AI” as well as a joint Person of the Year for 2025. His absence comes shortly after Nvidia posted one of the largest quarterly earnings reports in American corporate history. This year, the company’s only representative on the list is Josh Parker, its head of sustainability.
Who Made the 2026 List Instead
The 2026 lineup includes several major players from across the semiconductor and AI infrastructure landscape. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, SMIC co-CEO Liang Mong Song, and Huawei HiSilicon president He Tingbo all appear. They are joined by Cerebras’ Andrew Feldman, CoreWeave’s Michael Intrator, and Nscale’s Josh Payne.
Taken together, the selections span Nvidia’s HBM supplier, two of its largest GPU cloud customers, its custom-accelerator competitors, and China, which continues to work toward replacing Nvidia but has so far struggled to do so.
Parker’s profile falls under TIME’s Thinkers category and centers on data center energy and water use. It also notes that Nvidia tripled its Scope 3 emissions over two years and highlights the shift to 100% liquid cooling on the company’s Rubin platform. “Nvidia is at the center of the AI revolution,” Parker told TIME.
How the Selections Were Made
TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote that the selection process was led by editor Ayesha Javed, and that the 100 honorees reflect the year’s key storylines and the individuals the publication views as most influential in driving current developments. Now in its fourth year, the list appears to have emphasized new additions to TIME’s community of AI leaders. Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassabis, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella were among four other prominent figures who did not make the cut.
Su’s exclusion is particularly striking given her record with the outlet. The magazine named her its 2024 CEO of the Year, placed her on the 2024 AI list, included her on the main TIME100 in 2025, and counted her among the December Architects of AI.
Nvidia’s Financial Backdrop
The context makes the snub notable. Nvidia’s second-quarter results, reported August 26, reached EUR 83 billion in revenue, including EUR 76 billion from data centers, a 117% increase year over year. In October, the company became the first to surpass a EUR 4 trillion market capitalization, and three weeks later it posted a record EUR 49 billion quarter.</
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