To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, Forbes magazine released the list of the “Top 250 Living Innovators” on the 12th, aiming to honor business leaders who uphold the ‘Edison spirit’ and transform breakthrough technologies into industrial revolutions.
Global richest man Elon Musk topped the list thanks to his outstanding achievements across multiple leading industries, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ranked 5th. Notably, this list was not only selected by human judges but, for the first time, also involved two leading AI models, ChatGPT and Gemini, to participate in the evaluation, showcasing the innovative spirit of technology-human collaboration.
Musk, who holds the top spot, is hailed as the only person in history to span five major fields—electric vehicles, aerospace, neural chips, artificial intelligence, and tunnel engineering—and to lead companies in each with valuations in the tens of billions of dollars. Following him are Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Famed Hollywood director George Lucas comes in at 4th, while 5th place goes to Jensen Huang, who successfully transformed Nvidia from a gaming graphics card company into the global AI economy’s core engine, with annual revenue soaring to $187 billion (RM733.263 billion) and sweeping global influence.
It’s worth noting that there are many entrepreneurs of Taiwanese descent in the list, such as Garmin founder Min Kao at 74th, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang at 124th, Kingston founder David Sun at 152nd, and Edwin Chen, founder of the AI data labeling company Surge, at 196th.
In addition, the scope of innovation covered extends to the finance and entertainment industries. In addition to “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett, who ranked 35th, pop diva Madonna and Taylor Swift were also included, ranking 100th and 250th respectively. Taylor Swift, ranked 250th, is recognized for reshaping the rules of the music industry, symbolizing that innovation is not limited to hardware technology, but also lies in business models and in the influence of popular culture.