Artificial Intelligence
Asia Leaders
Arvind Krishna Rebuilt IBM Around Software. Now He Has to Make the AI Stack Outrun the Mainframe Cycle
Arvind Krishna made IBM smaller, more software-led and more profitable. A second-quarter shortfall now tests whether Confluent, Red Hat and watsonx can produce growth independent of the mainframe cycle.
Asia Leaders
Nikesh Arora Made Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity’s Consolidator. Now He Has to Make the Stack Work as One
Nikesh Arora turned Palo Alto Networks into cybersecurity’s leading consolidator. CyberArk and Chronosphere now make integration—not another acquisition—the defining test of his platform strategy.
Asia Leaders
Sanjay Mehrotra Turned Micron’s Memory Shortage Into Long-Term Contracts. Now He Has to Stop the Boom From Rebuilding the Glut
Sanjay Mehrotra has used AI-driven scarcity to secure five-year customer commitments and record margins at Micron. The harder task is expanding supply without financing the next memory glut.
Asia Leaders
Forrest Li Has Sea Growing at 47 Per Cent. The Portfolio Must Hold Together as Investment Rises
Forrest Li has returned Sea to fast growth with positive earnings. The next question is whether commerce, finance and gaming form a compounding portfolio or a costly truce.
Asia Leaders
Min-Liang Tan Is Spending More Than $600 Million on AI for Gaming. Developers Must Become Razer Customers
Razer’s distribution comes from gamers, not enterprise software buyers. Min-Liang Tan’s AI strategy will work if studios adopt its tools because they improve quality and testing, rather than because generative features add another slogan to devices.
Asia Leaders
Anthony Tan Is Taking Grab Beyond Southeast Asia. Taiwan Must Prove the Super-App Can Travel
Anthony Tan has made Grab profitable and faster-growing. Taiwan will test whether its mobility, delivery and financial-services operating system is portable beyond Southeast Asia.
Asia Leaders
Neal Mohan Turned YouTube Into a $60 Billion Media System. Now He Has to Keep AI From Breaking Its Trust
Neal Mohan transformed YouTube from a video platform into a diversified global media economy. Artificial intelligence will determine whether its scale remains an advantage or becomes a crisis of trust.
Asia Leaders
Tan Su Shan Inherited DBS at Its Peak. Now She Has to Prove the Franchise Is Bigger Than the Rate Cycle
Tan Su Shan did not inherit a bank in need of rescue. She inherited one at its peak—and must now show that deposits, wealth, technology and regional connectivity can outlast the rate windfall.
Asia Leaders
Thomas Kurian Put Google Cloud on a $70 Billion Run Rate. Enterprise Agents Must Now Earn the Capacity Behind It
Thomas Kurian has made Google Cloud a credible enterprise AI platform. The economics now depend on whether agents create repeatable workloads rather than another burst of subsidised experimentation.
Asia Leaders
Jayshree Ullal Made Ethernet the Language of the Cloud. Now She Has to Make It the Fabric of AI
Jayshree Ullal turned Arista into the cloud era’s most disciplined networking challenger. AI now requires a broader systems company without the complexity Arista was built to defeat.
Asia Leaders
For Demis Hassabis, Gemini’s Leap Into Action Makes Scientific Proof the Hard Part
Demis Hassabis has turned Google DeepMind into the research engine behind products used at vast scale. Its next challenge is to preserve scientific credibility while delivering on Alphabet’s historic AI investment.
Asia Leaders
Daphne Koller’s $800 Million AI Bet Is Reaching Its First Human Trial Test
Daphne Koller has financed insitro with roughly $800 million in capital and collaboration revenue. Its first AI-discovered MASH programme is nearing the point where patients, not models, set the valuation.
Asia Leaders
Amnon Shashua Is Recasting Mobileye for Physical AI. He Must Protect the Core While Funding the Leap
Mobileye’s automotive business is regaining momentum, but Amnon Shashua is extending its technology into physical AI. The strategic leap needs firmer financial proof.
Asia Leaders
Aravind Srinivas Is Turning Perplexity Into a Product Portfolio. Focus Is the Next Breakthrough
Aravind Srinivas has expanded Perplexity far beyond search. The next leadership test is turning product velocity into a focused, repeatable business system.
Asia Leaders
Alexandr Wang Delivered Meta's First Superintelligence Model. A $145 Billion Build-Out Demands Returns
Alexandr Wang's first model at Meta is already spreading across its apps and glasses. Its commercial value must now catch up with a vast infrastructure budget and a high-priced talent reset.
Asia Leaders
Andrew Ng Is Building AI Companies Faster Than Frontier Models. The Returns Must Catch Up
Andrew Ng has assembled an ecosystem that teaches AI, tests applications and co-founds companies in months. Its advantage is speed and distribution; its next test is producing businesses with defensible margins after models become cheaper and easier to use.
Asia Leaders
Noubar Afeyan Is Exporting Flagship’s Venture Factory to Sovereign Health Systems
Flagship Pioneering is extending its venture-creation model through Saudi, Singaporean and British institutions. Noubar Afeyan must convert privileged data and regulatory access into investable companies without compromising privacy, ownership or speed.
Asia Leaders
Sridhar Ramaswamy Committed $6 Billion to AWS. Snowflake’s Multi-Cloud Promise Must Still Hold
Snowflake is growing quickly under Sridhar Ramaswamy and has made a six-year, $6 billion commitment to AWS. The economics may be compelling, but customers will judge the company by its freedom across clouds.
Asia Leaders
Liang Rubo Put AI at ByteDance’s Centre. Seedance Has Made Governance the Harder Problem
Liang Rubo has made artificial intelligence ByteDance’s central priority. Seedance’s rapid progress now tests whether the company can govern copyright, safety and global trust at equal speed.
Asia Leaders
Thomas Kurian Closed Google’s $32 Billion Wiz Deal. Now He Must Preserve the Multi-Cloud Trust Google Bought
Google Cloud has completed its acquisition of Wiz, giving Thomas Kurian a rare chance to make security the connective tissue of a fast-growing cloud business. The return will depend on keeping customers’ rival-cloud estates visible and trusted.
Asia Leaders
Safra Catz Has Become Oracle’s AI Balance-Sheet Steward. A $638 Billion Backlog Must Fund the Build
Oracle’s cloud infrastructure revenue is rising sharply, but free cash flow turned deeply negative under heavy investment. Safra Catz’s next leadership role is to impose financing discipline on growth that arrives before the cash.
Asia Leaders
Mustafa Suleyman Is Giving Microsoft Its Own AI Model Stack. The Bill Demands More Than Strategic Independence
Mustafa Suleyman has moved Microsoft from relying primarily on a partner’s frontier models towards a broader in-house portfolio. Strategic control matters, but customers and shareholders need evidence that another model stack earns its substantial cost.
Asia Leaders
Melanie Perkins Is Taking Canva Upmarket. Enterprise Distribution Must Catch Up With Product-Led Scale
Canva grew through individual users and teams. Melanie Perkins now has to turn that bottom-up reach into governed, company-wide deployments without sacrificing the accessibility that created the platform’s advantage.
Asia Leaders
Shantanu Narayen Started Adobe’s CEO Search. The Handover Must Preserve an AI Transition He Will Not Finish
Shantanu Narayen will remain Adobe’s chair after a new chief executive is appointed. His final operating duty is to make the succession clear enough that the next leader can reshape the company without inheriting a shadow CEO.
Asia Leaders
Thomas Kurian Made Google Cloud an AI Growth Engine. Now He Has to Turn Scale Into Trust
Thomas Kurian has turned Google Cloud into a fast-growing AI and data business. The next test is whether infrastructure scale, security and enterprise trust can advance together.
Asia Leaders
Lisa Su’s Multi-Gigawatt Breakthrough Leaves AMD With a Taiwan-Sized Delivery Challenge
Lisa Su has secured multi-generation AI infrastructure commitments that could change AMD’s position. Its MI450 and Helios ramp will determine whether those contracts become a durable second platform.
Asia Leaders
Jensen Huang Turned Nvidia’s Chip Lead Into National Infrastructure. Japan Will Test the Economics
Nvidia’s record growth has given Jensen Huang the power to define whole AI systems. Japan’s new national physical-AI infrastructure will show whether that platform can create industrial value beyond the data centre.
Asia Leaders
Demis Hassabis Raised $2.1 Billion to Industrialise AI Drug Design. The Clinic Has Yet to Validate the Engine
Demis Hassabis has given Isomorphic Labs the capital and computing ambition of a technology platform. The harder test is whether its drug candidates can survive the slower economics of human biology.
Asia Leaders
Eric Yuan Is Turning Zoom Into an AI Revenue Platform. Common Room Must Make the Expansion Credible
Zoom’s enterprise revenue is growing modestly while margins remain strong. Eric Yuan is using AI and an acquisition to pursue a larger share of sales work, but customers will demand measurable pipeline results and disciplined data use.
Asia Leaders
Prabhakar Raghavan Is Guiding Google’s Technology After Running Search. AI Is Rewriting the Business He Helped Scale
Prabhakar Raghavan moved from leading Google’s Knowledge and Information organisation to advising the company as Chief Technologist. His technical judgement now matters as AI turns search from a list of links into an answer and action layer.
Asia Leaders
Yejin Choi Is Challenging AI’s Scale-at-All-Costs Economics. Smaller Models Must Win Beyond the Lab
Yejin Choi’s work questions the assumption that the largest model should perform every task. Her alternative—smarter algorithms, specialised systems and pluralistic design—could lower AI costs if it proves robust in real organisations and languages.
Asia Leaders
Jay Chaudhry Bought Red Canary to Move Zscaler Into Security Operations. Integration Must Justify the Margin Cost
Zscaler’s annual recurring revenue is growing 25 per cent with help from Red Canary. Jay Chaudhry now has to prove that acquiring a people-intensive security service strengthens the platform rather than complicating its economics.
Asia Leaders
Ong Ye Kung’s S$2.5 Billion Research Bet Must Connect to Healthier SG
Singapore is committing S$2.5 billion to translational and clinical research while expanding Healthier SG and ageing capacity. Ong Ye Kung must link discovery, primary-care incentives and measurable reductions in hospital demand.
Asia Leaders
Fei-Fei Li’s $1 Billion Spatial-AI Bet Runs Into the Physics Problem
Fei-Fei Li has raised $1 billion to commercialise spatial intelligence. World Labs’ harder task is moving from compelling 3D output to reliable simulation.
Asia Leaders
Sundar Pichai’s $185 Billion Gemini Push Depends on Reinventing Search Without Weakening It
Sundar Pichai has distributed Gemini across Google’s largest products at extraordinary speed. He must now convert conversational search and cloud demand into returns that justify Alphabet’s capital bill.
Asia Leaders
Anima Anandkumar Joined the UN’s Science Board. AI for Science Needs Standards the World Can Afford
Anima Anandkumar’s 2026 appointment to the UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board puts a technical researcher inside a global governance debate. The commercial and policy test is whether AI-assisted science can be verified, reproduced and made accessible across unequal computing markets.
Asia Leaders
Satya Nadella Is Building a $190 Billion AI Utility, With Scarcity as Both Proof and Warning
Satya Nadella is committing utility-scale capital to Microsoft’s agentic AI platform while reducing headcount. The return will depend on capacity allocation, product usage and disciplined pricing.
Asia Leaders
Masayoshi Son Is Steering $64.6 Billion Towards OpenAI. SoftBank’s Balance Sheet Is the Constraint
Masayoshi Son’s latest OpenAI tranche makes SoftBank a more concentrated AI holding company, with its financial policy and Japan execution under scrutiny.
Asia Leaders
Jitendra Malik Is Putting Sensorimotor Learning Before Language. Robotics Must Build Its Own Data Economy
Jitendra Malik helped shape modern computer vision and now presses AI toward embodied learning. The next advance will depend on shared benchmarks, useful simulation and fleets that turn physical experience into reliable generalisation.
Asia Leaders
Natarajan Chandrasekaran Is Wiring Tata From Chips to AI Agents. Capital Discipline Must Hold the Stack Together
Natarajan Chandrasekaran is positioning Tata across the physical and software layers of artificial intelligence. The strategy could deepen India’s technology capacity, but only if demand, energy and execution keep pace with investment.
Asia Leaders
Daphne Koller Is Turning Insitro’s AI Platform Into Drug Candidates. Biology Still Sets the Clock
Daphne Koller has spent years building a machine-learning company around human biology. In 2026, insitro’s partnerships and preclinical programmes are beginning to test whether its data advantage can produce medicines rather than promising hypotheses.
Asia Leaders
Rajesh Magow Is Turning MakeMyTrip From a Booking Site Into India's Travel Operating Layer
Rajesh Magow is using AI and selective acquisitions to widen MakeMyTrip's role. The test is whether one platform can improve every stage of Indian travel.
Asia Leaders
Aravind Srinivas’s Browser Ambition Depends on Winning the Enterprise Trust Search Never Required
Aravind Srinivas is pushing Perplexity from answer engine to action layer. Comet Enterprise must prove that autonomous browsing can be governed at scale.
Asia Leaders
Satya Nadella Made Microsoft the Corporate World’s Default Route Into AI
A FigureAsia examination of how Satya Nadella turned Microsoft’s enterprise franchise into the world’s most powerful distribution system for artificial intelligence, and why his next test is trust rather than reach.