TIME100AI List features more hardware leaders
TIME’s 2026 TIME100 AI list reflects a bigger focus on hardware manufacturing as a major focal point of the AI revolution. Included this year are leaders and innovators across all facets of the physical supply chain, including chips, advanced packaging, and memory, including:
- Andrew Feldman (CEO of Cerebras): Recognized for the Wafer-Scale Engine, which has become a formidable alternative to traditional GPU clusters from Nvidia – with the Cerebras CS-3 chip holding 4 trillion transistors and 900,000 AI-optimized cores carved from a single 300mm wafer (and a newly released CS-4 that stacks 3 upgraded WSE-3 Turbo chips into a single rack).
- He Tingbo (Director at Huawei): China’s “chip queen,” responsible for spearheading Huawei’s massive push into semiconductor architecture, scaling their Ascend AI hardware to compete directly with Western tech.
- Sanjay Mehrotra (CEO of Micron Technology): Recognized because Micron manufactures the HBM critical for next-generation AI servers.
- Hock Tan (CEO of Broadcom): Seen as somewhat of an “unsung giant” in the realm of AI hardware infrastructure, he’s recognized for custom ASICs and networking chips.
- Liang Mong-Song (Co-CEO of SMIC): Recognized for his role in pushing the boundaries of chip fabrication and advanced packaging under heavy geopolitical constraints.
- Deng Taihua (CEO of AgiBot): He sits at the intersection of hardware and robotics, honored for advancing humanoid robots meant to house future AI models.
These and other profiles in the current list demonstrate how important physical tech is, with data centers and custom AI chips increasingly considered as strategic national assets.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
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