TIME crowns the power players behind AI’s breakout year
What the magazine is really saying with this choice is that AI’s rise is no longer hypothetical
TIME has named “the architects of AI” its 2025 Person of the Year, a move that says a lot about how central artificial intelligence has become to politics, business and everyday life. Instead of picking one individual, the magazine focused on the executives and labs it says lit the fuse on the global AI boom.
At the centre of the group is Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, alongside other familiar figures such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk. TIME’s argument is simple: decisions made by a relatively small number of people over the past couple of years have reshaped entire industries, redrawn geopolitical lines and forced governments to rethink infrastructure at speed.
Huang did not shy away from the scale of what is happening. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time,” he told TIME. The numbers back up the hype. The magazine reported that Nvidia became the world’s first $5tn company, driven by insatiable demand for the chips that power modern AI systems. At the same time, ChatGPT surged to around 800m weekly users, a figure that would have sounded absurd not long ago.
Once growth reached that level, politics inevitably followed. TIME pointed to a multiyear $500bn US initiative known as Stargate, alongside looser chip export controls and a wave of new federal funding and contracts flowing towards AI companies. In other words, AI stopped being just a tech story and became a national strategy issue.
The magazine also stressed that this is not a purely American tale. Advances from Chinese startups and tech groups have intensified international competition, pushing governments and investors around the world to move faster. That pressure has helped accelerate policy decisions, investment plans and infrastructure build-outs well beyond Silicon Valley.
The people designing models, building chips and deciding how aggressively to deploy them are now shaping everything from energy grids to military planning. By naming the architects rather than a single face, the magazine is underlining that AI’s impact comes from an ecosystem of power, not a lone genius.
The Recap
- TIME named AI leaders as 2025 Person of the Year.
- Nvidia became the world's first five trillion-dollar company.
- The U.S. launched a $500 billion Stargate initiative.
