TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year: The Architects of AI

TIME magazine picked “The Architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year. This group includes leaders like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. They earned the spot for driving AI’s rapid growth and its effects on society, technology, and world events this year. Read the full story in TIME’s announcement.

Who Are the Architects?

These are the tech executives steering AI’s rise:

Jensen Huang (Nvidia): Turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company at $5 trillion, fueled by chips for AI. President Trump called him out for “taking over the world.”
Sam Altman (OpenAI): ChatGPT hit 800 million weekly users and became the fastest-growing consumer app ever. OpenAI now trains on TIME’s archives through a licensing deal.
Elon Musk (xAI): Built data centers fast and won big defense contracts.
Mark Zuckerberg (Meta): Added chatbots to Instagram and WhatsApp, hired top talent with huge pay packages.
Others like Anthropic’s team and Google’s leaders pushing models like Gemini.

Why AI Leaders in 2025?

AI went from debate to full deployment this year. Huang told TIME in November: “Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it. This is the single most impactful technology of our time.”

Key changes:

Coding tools like Cursor hit $1 billion in annual revenue. Engineers at Nvidia, Anthropic, and AMD use AI to write most of their code—up to 90% at Anthropic.
ChatGPT usage doubled to 10% of the world’s population, with tools for search, memory, and real work.
Trump’s administration poured in $500 billion for Stargate data centers, $25 billion for AI defense like Golden Dome, and eased chip export rules. They dropped Biden-era limits and prioritized AI over other spending.
Geopolitics heated up: China’s DeepSeek matched U.S. models quickly, prompting U.S. acceleration. Trump used AI for diplomacy in the Middle East and trade with China.

AI also raised alarms. It spread misinformation, deepfakes, and risks like deception. Polls show Americans worry it harms creativity and relationships. Pope Leo XIV warned of manipulation. Yet leaders bet on abundance—Huang predicts world GDP jumping from $100 trillion to $500 trillion.

The Bigger Shift

Trump hosted tech CEOs at his inauguration. They lobbied for fewer rules, built factories like Nvidia’s in Arizona, and integrated AI into government. Energy Secretary Chris Wright called AI the top priority, even as data centers burn fossil fuels. Critics like Sen. Josh Hawley push back on risks to kids.

AI now shapes jobs, economies, and power struggles like nuclear tech once did. TIME reported this across three continents, talking to execs, scientists, and families.