Every era is defined by the individuals who shape it—and the year 2026 is no exception. The ranking published by Time magazine in March identifies the ten personalities whose influence extends beyond their respective fields. At the forefront is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, whose company has just completed a $40 billion funding round and now employs 6,000 people. His project for a 'beneficial superintelligence' divides the scientific community but captivates markets: OpenAI is valued at $340 billion, more than Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley combined.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, realized his vision in 2026 with AlphaFold 3, capable of predicting interactions between proteins, DNA, RNA, and small molecules with 92% accuracy. The technology has already enabled the identification of 14 drug candidates for rare diseases, three of which have entered clinical trials. Hassabis embodies a rare model of the scientist-entrepreneur: one who produces both fundamental knowledge and economic value.
On the political scene, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emerges as the pivot of post-Macron Europe. His €500 billion 'rearmament plan,' adopted in February, caused a political earthquake in Germany but repositioned Berlin as a credible military power against Moscow. At the antipodes, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues his balancing act: an ally of the United States on trade, a partner of Russia on energy, and a competitor to China in Southeast Asia. India, now the world's fifth-largest economy, plans to surpass Germany by 2028.
The world of finance has its own guiding figures. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, saw his company's market capitalization exceed $4 trillion in March 2026, making Nvidia the second most valuable company in the world behind Apple. Every data center, every AI lab, every autonomous vehicle relies on his GPU processors: Huang controls the physical infrastructure of the artificial intelligence revolution. His statement at CES 2026—'Software is eating the world, but hardware is eating software'—has become a mantra in Silicon Valley.
Finally, emerging figures are redefining the contours of power. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, has transformed the platform into an integrated logistics conglomerate—mobility, delivery, freight, fintech—with revenues exceeding $50 billion. Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, founded her own AI startup, Thinking Machines, with a $2 billion seed funding round—a record. And Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO, is negotiating the first multilateral agreement on taxing artificial intelligence services, a dossier that could bring $120 billion annually to developing countries. Power in 2026 is no longer solely political: it is technological, economic, and algorithmic.
