TIME’s AI 100 asks who represents the year’s storylines. Ours asks a different question: if this person, company or model were removed, would the AI we have today be different, would we interact with it differently. That test fills the list with the people who take the decisions, the companies everything runs through and the models people run.
Three ranked lists. The people, 100 for 2026 and 100 for all time by era, each tagged Doer, Thinker or Shaper, the top twenty with their declared stance on AI. The companies, ranked by the humans they reach and the purchasing power they touch. The models, by usage and task on OpenRouter, by intelligence and price, and on Humanity’s Last Exam. Plus a watch list of the people too new to rank, by region.
How it was made. Florin set the method, the stance and every editorial call; his Claude agent did the research, the drafting and the build. Then models from twelve AI houses reviewed the list through OpenRouter, eight rounds, and every finding is on the page, kept or rejected, with the reason. The panel threw out our own Nvidia reach figure because it exceeded the internet population. The review record and the Structural Reliance Matrix are published alongside.
Filter by role, stance and region, reorder by impact, humans reached or purchasing power, and summarise it with the model of your choice. In English and Spanish, updated monthly.
If you would move a name, up or down, tell us where and why: florin@datainnovation.io.
Human+AI: Florin Armasu with his Claude agent (Fable 5.1); reviewed by models from twelve AI houses. Not sponsored.