Silicon Valley Business Review Ranking Selection Committee
December 2024

On Behalf of the Silicon Valley Business Review Ranking Selection Committee,

We are proud to present the 2024 Global AI Leaders List, a curated ranking of the top 30 visionaries shaping the future of artificial intelligence. This year’s honorees represent a diverse array of innovators, from tech CEOs to academic pioneers and groundbreaking entrepreneurs driving transformative advancements in AI.

Key Highlights of the 2024 List:

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has redefined natural language processing with GPT models and remains a vocal advocate for ethical AI deployment.

• Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, continues to integrate AI into autonomous vehicles, robotics, and space exploration, while advancing AI safety through xAI.

• Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, leads the revolution in GPU technology, enabling deep learning breakthroughs and high-performance computing.

This year's list also includes:

• Corporate Visionaries like Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Lisa Su (AMD), who drive global AI adoption and infrastructure development.

• Academic Pioneers like Fei-Fei Li (Stanford) and Geoffrey Hinton, whose foundational research underpins today’s AI innovations.

• Entrepreneurial Trailblazers such as Alex Wang and Zhilin Yang, charting new frontiers in AI research and applications.

Reflecting a truly global perspective, the 2024 list showcases leaders not only from Silicon Valley but also from China and other innovation hubs worldwide, celebrating their contributions to the next decade of AI advancements.

We invite you to explore the full release, where we delve into the remarkable achievements of each leader and their pivotal role in defining the future of artificial intelligence.

Sincerely,
Bill W.
Co-Chair, Editor-in-Chief
Silicon Valley Business Review

Fei M.
Co-Chair, Founder & CEO
Beta University

2024 TOP 30 Global AI Leaders List

Sam Altman
Position: CEO of OpenAI
Contribution: Sam Altman leads OpenAI, overseeing the development of advanced AI models like GPT-4 and advocating for the ethical deployment of AI technologies.

Elon Musk
Position: CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI
Contribution: Elon Musk integrates AI into autonomous vehicles and robotics, and through xAI, he focuses on AI safety and ethical considerations.

Jensen Huang
Position: CEO of NVIDIA
Contribution: Jensen Huang's leadership in developing GPUs has been crucial for AI research, enabling advancements in deep learning and high-performance computing.

Sundar Pichai
Position: CEO of Alphabet Inc. and Google
Contribution: Sundar Pichai oversees AI advancements in search, cloud computing, and other services, integrating AI across Google's products.

Satya Nadella
Position: CEO of Microsoft
Contribution: Satya Nadella drives AI integration across Microsoft's products and services, including Azure AI, Copilot, promoting AI accessibility. Also spearheaded a significant investment in OpenAI.

Mark Zuckerberg
Position: CEO of Meta Platforms
Contribution: Mark Zuckerberg has integrated AI into Meta's platforms, enhancing content recommendation systems and developing AI-driven products, especially hardware like Quest.

Lisa Su
Position: CEO of AMD
Contribution: Lisa Su has driven AI capabilities in AMD's hardware, contributing to advancements in AI processing power.

Dario Amodei
Position: CEO of Anthropic
Contribution: Dario Amodei leads Anthropic, a company focused on AI safety and research, developing interpretable and aligned AI systems for the benefit of humanity.

Demis Hassabis
Position: Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind
Contribution: Demis Hassabis has pioneered breakthroughs in deep reinforcement learning, notably with AlphaGo, and applies AI to healthcare and scientific research.

Yann LeCun
Position: Chief AI Scientist at Meta
Contribution: A Turing Award laureate, Yann LeCun's contributions to deep learning and convolutional neural networks are pivotal in modern AI applications.

John J. Hopfield
Position: Emeritus Professor at Princeton University
Contribution: John Hopfield developed the Hopfield network, a form of recurrent artificial neural network that has influenced associative memory models. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024 for his contributions to artificial neural networks.

Geoffrey Hinton
Position: Emeritus Professor at the University of Toronto
Contribution: Known as the "Godfather of Deep Learning," Geoffrey Hinton's work on neural networks and backpropagation algorithms has significantly advanced AI research.

Yoshua Bengio
Position: Professor at the University of Montreal; Founder of Mila
Contribution: Yoshua Bengio is a pioneer in deep learning research, advancing neural network algorithms and advocating for ethical AI development. As the founder of Mila, he focuses on creating AI systems that benefit humanity.

Andrew Yao
Position: Dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University
Contribution: A Turing Award laureate. Andrew Yao has significantly influenced China's AI landscape, mentoring students who have founded successful AI startups and leading AI research initiatives.

Fei-Fei Li
Position: Co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute
Contribution: Fei-Fei Li's work in computer vision, particularly the development of ImageNet, has been foundational. She emphasizes human-centered AI and ethical considerations.

Andrew Ng
Position: Co-founder of Google Brain; Founder of Landing AI
Contribution: Andrew Ng is instrumental in AI education and democratization, co-founding Coursera and promoting AI adoption across various industries.

Jeff Dean
Position: Google's Chief Scientist
Contribution: Jeff Dean leads AI research at Google, contributing to the development of machine learning algorithms and AI infrastructure.

Liang Rubo
Position: Chairman and CEO of ByteDance
Contribution: Liang Rubo has driven ByteDance's leadership in AI innovation, including advancements in chatbot technology and AI-powered platforms like TikTok.

Robin Li
Position: Founder and CEO of Baidu
Contribution: Robin Li leads AI research and applications in China, focusing on autonomous driving and conversational AI.

Kai-Fu Lee
Position: Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures
Contribution: Kai-Fu Lee has been influential in AI development and investment, particularly in China, and authored AI Superpowers, analyzing AI's global impact.

Harry Shum
Position: Chairman of the Council at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Former Executive Vice President at Microsoft
Contribution: Harry Shum has led significant AI research and development initiatives, including creating conversational AI systems. As Chairman of the Council at HKUST, he continues to drive innovation in AI applications.

Shou Zi Chew
Position: CEO of TikTok
Contribution: Shou Zi Chew oversees TikTok’s use of AI in content recommendation systems, revolutionizing user engagement and bringing joy to users on TikTok.

Zhilin Yang
Position: Founder of Moonshot AI
Contribution: Zhilin Yang has significantly contributed to natural language processing and AI research, advancing the understanding of language models. He led Moonshot AI to become China's highest-evaluated and leading AI-LLM company.

Tekedra Mawakana
Position: Co-CEO of Waymo
Contribution: Tekedra Mawakana leads Waymo in advancing self-driving technology, pushing boundaries in autonomous vehicle innovation.

Ilya Sutskever
Position: Co-founder & Chief Scientist of Safe Superintelligence
Contribution: Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, now leads Safe Superintelligence's efforts to develop superintelligent AI systems safely and ethically.

Alex Wang
Position: CEO of Scale AI
Contribution: Alex Wang has revolutionized data labeling and infrastructure for AI development, enabling faster and more accurate machine learning model training.

Clement Delangue
Position: CEO of Hugging Face
Contribution: Clement Delangue leads Hugging Face, the central hub for open-source AI models and tools, fostering collaboration in the AI community.

Bill Jia
Position: Vice President of Engineering at Meta
Contribution: Bill Jia leads AI infrastructure development at Meta, enhancing the company's capabilities in machine learning and AI applications.

Noam Shazeer
Position: CEO of Character.AI
Contribution: Noam Shazeer co-founded Character.AI, bringing conversational AI to the forefront with advanced, personalized AI interactions.

Michael Truell
Position: Co-founder and CEO of Anysphere (Cursor AI)
Contribution: Michael Truell leads Anysphere, developing Cursor, an AI tool that enhances software development efficiency.