Nvidia Corporation CEO Jensen Huang was omitted from Time’s 100 AI 2026 list after appearing in its first three editions, beginning in 2023. Tech analyst Dan Ives has called Huang the "Godfather of AI," underscoring his standing in the industry. The list includes entertainers and public figures such as Ben Affleck, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paris Hilton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, alongside Elon Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Time says the ranking recognizes 100 people representing the year’s key AI storylines and exerting the greatest influence on those developments. The omission comes as Nvidia remains central to the AI sector, with the article arguing that the company may be at least as relevant now as in previous years. Musk’s absence from the 2024 list provides a recent precedent: he returned to the ranking last year and appears again in 2026. This year, Musk is the only CEO of a Magnificent Seven company included, while executives from Amazon.com and Google are listed without the parent companies’ CEOs. The article concludes that consistently including Huang and Musk might be the safest approach for a list that cannot satisfy every audience.