Each December, TIME Magazine names a Person of the Year, an individual or group who has most influenced the news and the world, for better or worse. Last year, TIME chose President Donald Trump for the second time. The previous year, the honor went to Taylor Swift, who many credited with saving the economy from a recession through her massively successful Eras Tour. In a historical example from 1938, the magazine selected Adolf Hitler.
This year, TIME has chosen to bestow the award not on a single person, but on a collective: the “Architects of AI.” This group comprises the CEOs who are shaping the global artificial intelligence race from the United States. With AI dominating public discourse, representing hope for a small minority and economic anxiety for a majority according to recent data, this selection aligns with the moment.
The magazine’s article states, “For decades, humankind steeled itself for the rise of thinking machines. Leaders striving to develop the technology, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, warned that the pursuit of its powers could create unforeseen catastrophe. This year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible.”
Based on one of TIME’s two cover photos, some of those recognized individuals include 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’s Fei-Fei Li. TIME notes these figures have raced both beside and against each other.
The magazine writes that these individuals, through their multi-billion-dollar investments in what it calls “one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time,” have reshaped government policy, intensified geopolitical competition, and accelerated the adoption of artificial intelligence.
TIME’s coverage states, “This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.”
TIME officially announced the news on Thursday morning, but images of the cover photo were reportedly leaked on the prediction market Polymarket on Wednesday evening.