Follow the compute: the people behind AI's chips, power and data centers

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Every AI model depends on chips, power and the money to build data centers. A small group of people has an outsized say in all three, and The Information named them.

Our new 50 Most Influential People in Tech list names the people we think will shape the industry over the next decade. Among the people steering the compute behind AI are SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, plus a few names you might not expect.

We didn’t take applications or listen to PR pitches. The list draws on what The Information does best: the hundreds of conversations our reporters have with sources every week, which show us what these leaders are up to before they announce their moves.

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Elon Musk’s surprise pivot

Musk once rejected the idea of renting out his AI computing power. Now SpaceX’s AI unit has talked with Microsoft about leasing its capacity, with labs like Anthropic and Google already among its customers.

The Amodeis’ compute shopping spree

Dario and Daniela Amodei’s Anthropic has lined up computing deals with cloud giants, chipmakers and even SpaceX. We added up the deals, and the total is likely far higher than what Anthropic told investors last year.

Jensen Huang is tracking the world’s power

Nvidia sees power as a key barrier to getting its chips online. Huang says the company knows where the world’s available power is, and Nvidia is going further, investing in energy companies and even leasing data centers on its customers’ behalf.

Mark Zuckerberg’s data center hits a debt snag

A data center being built for Meta, an investment-grade customer, had to sweeten its debt deal to land investors, one of the clearest signs yet that financing AI’s buildout is getting harder.

The neocloud Nadella and the Amodeis rely on

Nscale counts Microsoft and Anthropic among its biggest customers and Nvidia among its backers. But its IPO pitch rests on contracts that nearly all depend on data centers it hasn’t finished building.

The people shaping AI’s chips, power and money rarely announce their next move. To know where they’re headed, you have to be in the conversations before the press release, which is where our reporters are every week.

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