The Information

Art by Mike Sullivan

The 17 People Crucial to AI Shopping

By Ann Gehan · Feb 25, 2026 6:00am PST

The AI shopping race is shifting quickly. In less than six months, AI companies have mostly stopped trying to make agents that browse and shop directly on retail sites and have focused instead on putting checkout features inside AI chatbots. That’s elevated the importance of the engineers who have been building these shopping features as well as... The AI shopping race is shifting quickly. In less than six months, AI companies have mostly...

Left to right, Mike Lewis, Ethan Perez, Summer Yue, Ronen Eldan, Rafael Rafailov, Evan Hubinger, Tengyang Xie. Images courtesy of subjects

20 Rising Stars at OpenAI and Its Rivals

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Kalley Huang, Rocket Drew, Aaron Holmes and Jon Victor · Mar 10, 2025 11:43am PDT

Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence leaders dominate headlines as they raise unprecedented funds. But talent, not capital, has separated the winners and losers in generative AI. We’ve identified 20 up-and-coming researchers who have been at the forefront of their firms’ successes but whose names typically aren’t found in news... Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence leaders dominate headlines as they raise...