From Sarvam AI co-founder to IBM CEO, meet the 10 Indians and people of Indian origin on TIME100 AI 2026

Ten Indians and people of Indian origin feature on TIME's 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence. They span founders, researchers, CEOs and policymakers working across foundational AI, enterprise technology, semiconductors, healthcare and AI governance.

TIME published the fourth edition of TIME100 AI on August 27, naming 100 people across four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers.

Among them are Sarvam AI co-founder Vivek Raghavan, Adalat AI co-founder Utkarsh Saxena, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and Caltech professor Anima Anandkumar. Together, the names offer a snapshot of the growing Indian imprint on the global AI ecosystem, from foundational models and enterprise technology to healthcare, semiconductors and AI governance.

Building from India

Vivek Raghavan, Co-founder of Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, is listed under Innovators. Raghavan spent over a decade working on Aadhaar before moving to AI, and co-founded Sarvam in August 2023 with Pratyush Kumar after both worked on open-source Indian-language AI at AI4Bharat, the research lab at IIT Madras.

TIME's profile focuses on his case for AI sovereignty. Raghavan has argued that Indians are exporting data and importing intelligence, a trade he compares to the country exporting cotton and importing cloth a century ago. Sarvam released its 30B and 105B open-weight models in March, and introduced Sarvam Vision, a vision language model covering 22 Indian languages, in February. In August, Nvidia joined an extension that completed Sarvam’s $300 million Series B, which valued the company at about $1.5 billion.

Utkarsh Saxena, Co-founder and CEO of Adalat AI, is also listed under Innovators. Adalat AI builds speech and language tools for Indian courtrooms, working on the transcription and case-management bottlenecks that slow the judicial system.

The diaspora

Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM, appears under Leaders and is one of 17 listmakers on TIME's worldwide cover. Born in Andhra Pradesh and an IIT Kanpur graduate, Krishna has led IBM since 2020.

Arvind Raman is listed under Leaders as acting head of the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation and director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, placing him at the centre of American AI standards-setting.

Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech, is under Innovators. An IIT Madras alumna with a PhD from Cornell, she previously served as senior director of machine learning research at Nvidia.

Suchi Saria, Founder and CEO of Bayesian Health, is under Innovators for her work applying machine learning to clinical decision-making and patient deterioration prediction.

Sanjay Mehrotra, Chairman, President and CEO of Micron Technology, is under Innovators. Micron's high-bandwidth memory has become one of the constrained inputs in the AI hardware supply chain.

Sunny Gandhi, Co-executive Director of Encode, is under Shapers. Encode is a youth-led organisation that works on AI policy and advocacy in the United States.

Meetali Jain, Executive Director of Tech Justice Law, is under Shapers. Her organisation litigates on technology harms, including cases involving AI chatbots and minors.

Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant, is under Thinkers. Cognizant is also a signature partner of the 2026 TIME100 AI programme. Deloitte is the premier sponsor, while Booking.com is another signature partner.

Across the AI stack

The 10 names span a wide cross-section of the AI economy. Raghavan is building foundational models, Saxena is applying AI to the justice system, Krishna and Ravi Kumar lead global technology companies, and Mehrotra operates in the semiconductor layer underpinning the AI boom.

Anandkumar and Saria represent research and healthcare applications, while Raman, Gandhi and Jain are working on standards, policy and questions around how AI should be governed.

A note on the count: TIME does not categorise honourees by nationality or origin, so Indian-origin tallies can vary. We have included names whose Indian or Indian-origin background could be independently established. Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient and also on the list under Leaders, has not been included because his Indian origin could not be established from a primary source.

The full list is at time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026.