Peniley Ramírez

AI has minted a new power structure. A handful of private companies command the might and wealth of small nation-states and are mostly left alone to self-govern. A few hundred employees are on the brink of becoming centimillionaires and considering which causes and presidential candidates they will funnel their vast resources toward. One way to tell the story of how AI is changing our world is through some newly familiar names: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang. But an astonishing amount of power rests in the hands of a few dozen other people, some virtually anonymous. For this year’s annual “Power” issue, we are surfacing 26 people whose influence on the AI landscape far outstrips their fame. We partnered with @ReadTransformer, a publication with a command of the politics within transformative AI, whose team drew on its years of reporting, as well as new interviews with more than 50 high-ranking industry leaders, to help articulate what makes these people powerful. The AI scene is small. Many are remarkably intertwined, sharing offices, homes, and funding. The list’s average age is 36. It is also overwhelmingly male. Read about the few dozen power brokers who will decide how AI shakes out, refashioning the world for the rest of us in the process: nymag.visitlink.me/AgEtqI