2026 edition

Categories

Data power takes many forms. Here the list is broken down by where each leader’s influence comes from, ranked within each group by overall position.

Cloud & Compute

10
  1. 1 Jensen HuangCo-founder, President and CEO, Nvidia Corporation 98
  2. 3 Satya NadellaChairman and CEO, Microsoft 97
  3. 8 Sundar PichaiCEO, Alphabet Inc. and Google 96
  4. 9 Andy JassyPresident and CEO, Amazon 95
  5. 13 Lisa SuChair and CEO, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 94
  6. 36 Thomas KurianCEO, Google Cloud 88
  7. 39 Matt GarmanCEO, Amazon Web Services 87
  8. 40 Safra CatzExecutive Vice Chair, Oracle Corporation 87
  9. 42 Arvind KrishnaChairman and CEO, IBM 85
  10. 55 Michael DellFounder, Chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies 83

AI Labs

11
  1. 2 Sam AltmanCo-founder & CEO, OpenAI 98
  2. 4 Dario AmodeiCo-founder & CEO, Anthropic 96
  3. 10 Demis HassabisChairman & Chief Scientist, Google DeepMind / Alphabet 95
  4. 16 Elon MuskFounder and CEO, xAI; CEO, Tesla; CEO, SpaceX 93
  5. 17 Mark ZuckerbergFounder & CEO, Meta 93
  6. 29 Mustafa SuleymanCEO, Microsoft AI 89
  7. 33 Liang WenfengFounder and CEO, DeepSeek 88
  8. 46 Arthur MenschCo-founder and CEO, Mistral AI 84
  9. 48 Jack ClarkCo-founder and Head of Policy, Anthropic 84
  10. 59 Clément DelangueCo-founder and CEO, Hugging Face 82
  11. 65 Aidan GomezCo-founder and CEO, Cohere 81

Research Pioneers

10
  1. 5 Geoffrey HintonUniversity Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto; Nobel Laureate in Physics 96
  2. 6 Jeff DeanCo-founder, Discovery Loop 96
  3. 11 Ilya SutskeverCo-founder and CEO, Safe Superintelligence Inc. 95
  4. 14 Yoshua BengioFounder & Scientific Director, LawZero; Professor, Université de Montréal 94
  5. 19 Fei-Fei LiCo-Founder & CEO, World Labs; Sequoia Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University 92
  6. 22 Yann LeCunCo-Founder & Executive Chair, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs) 92
  7. 23 Andrew NgFounder & Executive Chairman, Landing AI; Managing General Partner, AI Fund 91
  8. 28 Andrej KarpathyAI Researcher leading pretraining research, Anthropic 89
  9. 41 Daphne KollerFounder and CEO, insitro 86
  10. 52 Sanjay GhemawatCo-founder, Discovery Loop 84

Data Platforms

10
  1. 7 Larry EllisonCo-Founder, Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Oracle Corporation 96
  2. 18 Ali GhodsiCo-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Databricks 92
  3. 25 Matei ZahariaCo-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Databricks 90
  4. 27 Alex KarpCo-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Palantir Technologies 89
  5. 31 Alexandr WangChief AI Officer, Meta Platforms (Meta Superintelligence Labs); Founder, Scale AI 88
  6. 43 Frank SlootmanChairman of the Board, Snowflake 85
  7. 44 Marc BenioffChairman and Chief Executive Officer, Salesforce 85
  8. 53 Sridhar RamaswamyChief Executive Officer, Snowflake 84
  9. 66 Benoît DagevilleCo-founder and President of Products, Snowflake 81
  10. 91 Dev IttycheriaInterim President and Chief Executive Officer, MongoDB 74

Global Power

10
  1. 12 Zhang YimingFounder and Chairman, ByteDance 95
  2. 15 C.C. WeiChairman and Chief Executive Officer, TSMC 93
  3. 20 Masayoshi SonChairman and CEO, SoftBank Group; Chairman, Arm Holdings and Stargate LLC 92
  4. 26 Pony MaChairman and CEO, Tencent Holdings 90
  5. 32 Eddie WuChief Executive Officer, Alibaba Group 88
  6. 35 Mukesh AmbaniChairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited 88
  7. 45 Nandan NilekaniNon-Executive Chairman, Infosys; Architect of India's Aadhaar digital identity system 85
  8. 58 Audrey TangAmbassador-at-Large; Accelerator Fellow, University of Oxford 82
  9. 63 Robin LiCo-founder, Chairman and CEO, Baidu 82
  10. 73 Kai-Fu LeeFounder and CEO, 01.AI; Chairman, Sinovation Ventures 79

Policy & Ethics

10
  1. 21 Tim Berners-LeeInventor of the World Wide Web; Professorial Research Fellow, University of Oxford 92
  2. 34 Margrethe VestagerFormer Executive Vice-President, European Commission (2014–2024); competition and digital policy adviser 88
  3. 50 Lina KhanHead, Center for Law and the Economy, Columbia Law School; Former Chair, US Federal Trade Commission 84
  4. 56 Timnit GebruFounder and Executive Director, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) 83
  5. 67 Shoshana ZuboffCharles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita, Harvard Business School 81
  6. 74 Max SchremsFounder and Chairman, noyb – European Center for Digital Rights 79
  7. 75 Meredith WhittakerPresident, Signal Foundation 79
  8. 79 Joy BuolamwiniFounder, Algorithmic Justice League; author and researcher 78
  9. 85 Kate CrawfordPrincipal Researcher, Microsoft Research; author of 'Atlas of AI' 76
  10. 100 John EdwardsFormer UK Information Commissioner (2022-2026) 58

Data Founders

10
  1. 24 Ion StoicaExecutive Chairman, Databricks; Professor of Computer Science, UC Berkeley 91
  2. 60 George FraserCEO and Co-founder, Fivetran 82
  3. 62 Paul CopplestoneCo-Founder & CEO, Supabase 82
  4. 70 Spencer KimballCEO and Co-founder, Cockroach Labs 80
  5. 71 Barr MosesCEO and Co-founder, Monte Carlo 79
  6. 76 Reynold XinCo-Founder & Chief Architect, Databricks 79
  7. 77 Edo LibertyFounder and Chief Scientist, Pinecone 78
  8. 83 Nikita ShamgunovCo-founder and CEO, Neon (a Databricks company) 77
  9. 89 Bob MugliaChairman, Fauna; Former CEO, Snowflake Computing 74
  10. 93 Tomer ShiranCo-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Dremio 73

Open Source

10
  1. 30 Soumith ChintalaChief Technology Officer, Thinking Machines Lab 89
  2. 37 Wes McKinneyPrincipal Architect, Posit PBC 88
  3. 38 Hadley WickhamChief Scientist, Posit PBC 87
  4. 47 Doug CuttingCreator of Lucene and Hadoop; formerly Chief Architect, Cloudera 84
  5. 54 Travis OliphantPresident, OpenTeams; Founder, Quansight 84
  6. 64 Tristan HandyPresident, Fivetran + dbt Labs (co-founder of dbt Labs) 82
  7. 69 Salvatore SanfilippoCreator of Redis; Redis Evangelist, Redis Inc. 80
  8. 78 Hannes MühleisenCEO & Co-founder, DuckLabs (formerly DuckDB Labs) 78
  9. 82 Maxime BeaucheminFounder & CEO, Preset 77
  10. 92 Jordan TiganiCo-founder & CEO, MotherDuck 73

Infrastructure & Analytics

9
  1. 49 Jay KrepsCo-founder, Confluent (acquired by IBM 2026); board member, Anthropic 84
  2. 57 Aravind SrinivasCo-founder and CEO, Perplexity AI 82
  3. 61 Michael StonebrakerAdjunct Professor, MIT CSAIL; co-founder of multiple database companies 82
  4. 80 Olivier PomelCo-founder and CEO, Datadog 78
  5. 86 Pat HanrahanCanon USA Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University; Chief Scientist and co-founder, Tableau Software 76
  6. 90 Christian ChabotCo-founder, Tableau Software; philanthropist 74
  7. 95 Arvind JainCo-founder and CEO, Glean 71
  8. 98 Mike OlsonCo-founder of Cloudera; technology investor and advisor 68
  9. 99 Amr AwadallahFounder and CEO, Vectara 65

Data Science Voices

10
  1. 51 Nate SilverFounder and Publisher, Silver Bulletin; Advisor, Polymarket 84
  2. 68 DJ PatilGeneral Partner, GreatPoint Ventures 80
  3. 72 Jeff HammerbacherCo-founder & Chief Scientist, Cloudera 79
  4. 81 Usama FayyadChairman, Oasis500; Founder, Open Insights 78
  5. 84 Cassie KozyrkovFounder & CEO, Kozyr 76
  6. 87 Hilary MasonCo-founder & CEO, Hidden Door 75
  7. 88 Bernard MarrFuturist, Author and Founder, Bernard Marr & Co 74
  8. 94 Claudia PerlichSenior Data Scientist, Two Sigma; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern 72
  9. 96 Kirk BorneChief Science Officer, DataPrime 71
  10. 97 Monica RogatiData Science & AI Advisor; Fractional Chief Data Officer 70