AI Figures You Should Start Following
The AI industry moves fast —breakthrough announcements drop daily, new tools launch weekly, and perspectives shift constantly. For marketers, writers, and business owners trying to stay ahead, following the right voices really makes a difference. Here are AI figures and influencers worth adding to your feed right now.
Matt Shumer
Matt Shumer is the CEO of HyperWrite and an active investor in the AI space. He’s known for pushing boundaries with experimental AI projects and sharing unfiltered takes on where the technology is headed. His background includes founding OthersideAI and investing in companies like Groq and Rork.
You should follow Shumer because he doesn’t shy away from bold predictions or controversial demonstrations. In October 2025, he posted an AI-generated video game demo that sparked massive discussion across the tech community.
Sam Altman
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, which makes him one of the most influential figures in AI. Under his leadership, OpenAI released ChatGPT, which fundamentally changed how millions of people interact with AI. He’s also deeply involved in discussions about AI safety, governance, and the path to artificial general intelligence.
Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li is a Stanford professor, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and the creator of ImageNet, which helped launch the modern deep learning revolution. She’s now the CEO and co-founder of World Labs, a startup focused on spatial intelligence AI.
Li brings a refreshing focus on responsible AI development alongside technical innovation. In X, she shares news like an exciting behind-the-scenes moment: she appeared as herself in the new Tron Ares movie, filming a scene where she interviews the character played by Greta Lee about AI.
Demis Hassabis
X: https://x.com/demishassabis
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demishassabis/
Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind and a 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for his work on AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures. He oversees some of the most ambitious AI research happening today, from healthcare applications to artificial general intelligence.
Andrew Ng
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewyng/
Andrew Ng is the founder of DeepLearning.AI, co-founder of Coursera, and former head of Google Brain and Baidu AI. He’s dedicated his career to democratizing AI education and making machine learning accessible to developers and businesses worldwide.
Follow Ng if you are interested in practical AI implementation. He regularly shares new courses and learning resources through DeepLearning.AI, helping professionals upskill in AI without needing advanced degrees.
In recent LinkedIn discussions, he’s emphasized that AGI will arrive gradually rather than overnight, pushing back against hype and helping people understand that AI progress looks smooth and continuous in hindsight.
Yann LeCun
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yann-lecun/
Yann LeCun is Meta’s Chief AI Scientist and a pioneering researcher in deep learning and neural networks. His foundational AI work gave him the Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. He’s also a vocal advocate for open-source AI development. So why should you follow LeCun? Well, he provides a counterbalance to AI doom scenarios and closed development models.
Steve Nouri
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenouri
Steve Nouri is an AI educator, advisor, and one of the most-followed AI voices on LinkedIn. He creates accessible content that explains complex AI concepts and regularly shares insights on AI trends, tools, and business applications. Plus, he curates AI news, highlights emerging tools, and provides context around major announcements that might otherwise overwhelm busy professionals.
Andrej Karpathy
Andrej Karpathy is one of the founding members of OpenAI and a former director of AI at Tesla. He’s known for his technical depth, teaching ability, and also his willingness to share honest assessments of AI’s capabilities and limitations. He recently founded Eureka Labs and continues to release educational AI projects.
Karpathy is crucial to follow for grounded perspectives on AI progress. He recently released Nanochat, an open-source project that provides a complete ChatGPT-style training pipeline you can run for around $100 in about four hours.
Soheil Feizi
Soheil Feizi is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, specializing in machine learning, deep learning, and AI robustness. His research focuses on understanding and improving the reliability and security of AI systems.
Feizi brings rigorous academic research to practical AI challenges. His contributions to understanding how AI models can be fooled or manipulated are particularly relevant for businesses considering AI adoption.
Greg Brockman
Greg Brockman is the co-founder and former president of OpenAI, where he played a key role in developing GPT models and shaping the company’s technical direction. His background includes being CTO of Stripe, bringing both AI expertise and product development experience.
Following Brockman provides insider perspectives on building and shipping AI products, as well as how technical decisions are made at leading AI companies and the trade-offs teams face when bringing AI products to market.
Sebastian Raschka
Sebastian Raschka is a machine learning researcher, educator, and author focused on deep learning and AI model development. He’s known for making complex ML concepts accessible through his books, courses, and social media presence.
Raschka is worth following for clear, educational content about how AI actually works under the hood. He regularly breaks down research papers, explains new techniques, and provides practical coding examples.
Allie K. Miller
Allie K. Miller is one of the most-followed AI business influencers with around 1.5 million combined social media followers. She previously led AI initiatives at Amazon Web Services and IBM, and now advises Fortune 500 companies on AI strategy.
Miller makes AI approachable for business audiences. Her content ranges from practical demonstrations of emerging AI tools to thoughtful discussions about AI adoption challenges. She also addresses ethical concerns and cultural shifts around AI implementation.
Final Thoughts
From technical innovation and business application to ethical considerations, these AI figures and influencers represent different angles on AI. And, gaining insights directly from them enables you to make more informed decisions about when and how to adopt AI in your own projects.