Who’s Who In AI: A curated directory of influential builders, researchers, founders, engineers, investors, writers, and public figures shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
About This Directory
Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, driven by a relatively small group of individuals whose ideas, research, products, and companies influence the direction of the industry.
This directory serves as a practical reference guide for anyone seeking to understand the people behind today’s most important AI breakthroughs, businesses, platforms, and conversations.
Whether you’re researching industry leaders, discovering influential voices, following emerging startups, or simply learning who’s shaping the future of AI, this directory provides a structured place to begin.
Who’s Who in AI
Showing 3 most recent names in this directory.
Andrej Karpathy
Pre-training Research Lead, Anthropic (formerly Senior Director of AI, Tesla; Co-founder, OpenAI)
Andrej Karpathy was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford, where he studied under Fei-Fei Li. He was a founding member of OpenAI in 2015, left to lead AI at Tesla, returned to OpenAI in 2023, then departed in early 2024 to found Eureka Labs, an AI-powered education startup.
At Tesla, he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot — building one of the most consequential real-world deployments of deep learning ever undertaken.
< br /> Two phrases have etched him into the popular AI lexicon. In February 2025, Karpathy coined "vibe coding" — describing a new kind of programming where you simply describe what you want in plain language and let the model do the work. His YouTube series "Neural Networks: Zero to Hero" surpassed one million subscribers in early 2026, making him the field's most effective technical educator by reach.
On May 19, 2026, Karpathy joined Anthropic to lead a new team using Claude to accelerate pre-training research, reporting to Nick Joseph, Anthropic's head of model development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative," he wrote — a post that drew nearly 3 million views within one hour.
Submitted by: AdminAndrej Karpathy was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford, where he studied under Fei-Fei Li. He was a founding member of OpenAI in 2015, left to lead AI at Tesla, returned to OpenAI in 2023, then departed in early 2024 to found Eureka Labs, an AI-powered education startup.
At Tesla, he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot — building one of the most consequential real-world deployments of deep learning ever undertaken.
< br /> Two phrases have etched him into the popular AI lexicon. In February 2025, Karpathy coined "vibe coding" — describing a new kind of programming where you simply describe what you want in plain language and let the model do the work. His YouTube series "Neural Networks: Zero to Hero" surpassed one million subscribers in early 2026, making him the field's most effective technical educator by reach.
On May 19, 2026, Karpathy joined Anthropic to lead a new team using Claude to accelerate pre-training research, reporting to Nick Joseph, Anthropic's head of model development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative," he wrote — a post that drew nearly 3 million views within one hour.
Fei-Fei Li
Inaugural Sequoia Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University; Co-founder and CEO, World Labs
Born in China, Li moved to the US at age 15 and went on to study physics at Princeton before earning her PhD in electrical engineering from Caltech. She is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and a founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, and served as Director of Stanford's AI Lab from 2013 to 2018.
Her foundational contribution to the field is ImageNet — a massive labeled image dataset whose creation in 2009 became the catalyst for the deep learning revolution. Without ImageNet, the breakthroughs of the 2010s happen differently, if at all.
In October 2025, Li released RTFM, a real-time generative world model capable of generating video while interacting with users, built around three principles: efficiency, scalability, and persistence. In February 2026, she disclosed the technical details of World Labs' first spatial intelligence product, Marble, at the Cisco AI Summit.
Her recognition has been extraordinary even by the standards of this field. Li received the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and was named TIME's 2025 Person of the Year. She was also named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 list.
Her framing of the work is consistent: "Human-centered AI is about augmenting human intelligence, not replacing it. I believe in AI that benefits people in positive and benevolent ways, and which reflects the diversity of the human experience."
Submitted by: AdminBorn in China, Li moved to the US at age 15 and went on to study physics at Princeton before earning her PhD in electrical engineering from Caltech. She is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and a founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, and served as Director of Stanford's AI Lab from 2013 to 2018.
Her foundational contribution to the field is ImageNet — a massive labeled image dataset whose creation in 2009 became the catalyst for the deep learning revolution. Without ImageNet, the breakthroughs of the 2010s happen differently, if at all.
In October 2025, Li released RTFM, a real-time generative world model capable of generating video while interacting with users, built around three principles: efficiency, scalability, and persistence. In February 2026, she disclosed the technical details of World Labs' first spatial intelligence product, Marble, at the Cisco AI Summit.
Her recognition has been extraordinary even by the standards of this field. Li received the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and was named TIME's 2025 Person of the Year. She was also named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 list.
Her framing of the work is consistent: "Human-centered AI is about augmenting human intelligence, not replacing it. I believe in AI that benefits people in positive and benevolent ways, and which reflects the diversity of the human experience."
Dan Maloney
CEO, LandingAI
Dan Maloney is a technology executive with over 25 years of experience across AI, SaaS, and enterprise applications, having built and scaled multiple high-growth companies to successful exits.
His path to LandingAI runs through several notable stops. At SAP, he played a pivotal role in expanding its ecosystem business to over $500 million in annual revenue. He then founded Zepl, selling it to DataRobot, where he subsequently served as EVP. Before that, he led Perspica as CEO, successfully selling the company to Cisco.
Maloney joined LandingAI — Andrew Ng's enterprise AI company — initially as COO, before being elevated to CEO in 2024 as Ng transitioned to Executive Chairman.
His focus is on what LandingAI calls agentic vision: combining advanced computer vision with agentic AI to solve complex visual problems for enterprises. A flagship application is automated manufacturing quality control — AI-powered inspection tools that can automatically flag defective parts on a production line or verify assembly components in real time. The company has built deep integrations with Snowflake, making its tools deployable across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments with minimal friction for security-conscious enterprise customers.
LandingAI raised a further Series B round in September 2025, with Maloney now leading the commercial scale-up of the platform Ng built — translating foundational AI research into production-grade enterprise infrastructure.
Submitted by: AdminDan Maloney is a technology executive with over 25 years of experience across AI, SaaS, and enterprise applications, having built and scaled multiple high-growth companies to successful exits.
His path to LandingAI runs through several notable stops. At SAP, he played a pivotal role in expanding its ecosystem business to over $500 million in annual revenue. He then founded Zepl, selling it to DataRobot, where he subsequently served as EVP. Before that, he led Perspica as CEO, successfully selling the company to Cisco.
Maloney joined LandingAI — Andrew Ng's enterprise AI company — initially as COO, before being elevated to CEO in 2024 as Ng transitioned to Executive Chairman.
His focus is on what LandingAI calls agentic vision: combining advanced computer vision with agentic AI to solve complex visual problems for enterprises. A flagship application is automated manufacturing quality control — AI-powered inspection tools that can automatically flag defective parts on a production line or verify assembly components in real time. The company has built deep integrations with Snowflake, making its tools deployable across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments with minimal friction for security-conscious enterprise customers.
LandingAI raised a further Series B round in September 2025, with Maloney now leading the commercial scale-up of the platform Ng built — translating foundational AI research into production-grade enterprise infrastructure.
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