Time magazine revealed the third annual TIME100 AI list on Sunday, recognizing the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, DeepSeek's founder Liang Wenfeng, Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing all made the list.

Liang Wenfeng

On Jan 20, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released R1, the first open-weight model that challenged rival OpenAI's then-newest release. (Unlike closed models favored by top US firms, an open-weight model's parameters, known as weights, can be accessed publicly.) 

Headlines seized upon DeepSeek's modest $6 million training cost, casting doubt on mega-projects like OpenAI's $500 billion development venture known as Project Stargate. Frantic investors dumped shares of Nvidia and American tech stocks, driving a brief but astounding $1 trillion market drop. Meta and OpenAI would later capitalize on the panic, urging the White House to block state-level AI regulations and approve training on copyrighted material.

Wang Xingxing

When dozens of robots danced in perfect synchrony on China's most-watched TV show in January, it was a star turn for their maker, Unitree Robotics. But founder and CEO Wang Xingxing sees less flashy, more useful possibilities on the horizon. "Our hope is that robots will truly help people in all aspects of life — whether in households, industrial scenarios, or agricultural environments," he tells TIME.

Unitree claims to control two-thirds of the market share for robot dogs and have the bestselling humanoid on the globe. Its affordable and durable bots have made them popular among roboticists outside China, with 50 percent of the company's sales coming from abroad. "The fewer parts a product has and the simpler its structure, the easier it is to produce, and the stronger and more durable it will be," Xingxing says. His focus on simplicity, he adds, was forged when, as a first-year university student, he built his first robot on a shoestring budget.

While Xingxing says Unitree is a hardware company at its core, he believes progress in AI will allow robots to tackle more tasks without preprogramming, such as cleaning a room they have never seen before. "To truly put AI to work and help solve real-world problems for humanity, we need robotics," he says. "That's why I believe AI and robotics are inseparable."