English Top 100 AI Influencers List
- Core Insight: XHunt has released the English-speaking world’s Top 100 AI Influencers list based on its proprietary metric "AI KOL Followers" (follower count within the core AI circle). This list aims to filter out information noise and identify the most influential core figures who hold genuine consensus within the industry. The ranking is based on data as of May 15, 2026, and will be updated in real-time.
- Key Elements:
- Rankings: Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) tops the list with 4,221 AI KOL Followers, surpassing Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
- Coverage: The Top 100 predominantly consists of tech executives and leading-edge scientists (e.g., @karpathy, @sama, @jeffdean), considered the epicenter of the AI storm.
- Evaluation Criteria: The list employs "AI KOL Followers" as a stringent metric, only counting accounts where AI-related tweets account for ≥ 40% of their total posts, thereby eliminating noise from general follower counts.
- Core Value: By tracking genuine followership within the core circle, the list helps users filter out 90% of the noise and connect directly with the source of industry changes.
- Upcoming Preview: XHunt will release the "Chinese-speaking World’s Top 100 AI Influencers List" tomorrow, focusing on practitioners in the fields of applications and monetization.
Original Author: XHunt Operations Team
Original Editor: Denise, Core Contributor at Biteye
In today's age of information overload, mere follower counts can no longer measure a person's true influence. To identify genuine industry consensus, XHunt has exclusively released a brand-new AI influence ranking list.
Using the hardcore metric of AI KOL Followers (core circle follow count), the list updates in real-time with influence, helping you filter out 90% of the noise and get straight to the source of change.
*To view the full list of the Top 100 AI social influencers,
please visit the XHunt website and switch to the AI category in the navigation bar: https://kol.xhunt.ai/
👇 Below is the complete list of the Top 100 influential accounts in the English-speaking world (ranked based on a snapshot from May 15, 2026).
This is the epicenter of the AI storm. The Top 100 seats are mostly held by tech company executives and leading scientists. There's @karpathy, who excels at explaining large model principles clearly; @sama, who sets the industry's pace; and @jeffdean, who drives Google's AI roadmap. In their information feeds, a tweet sent late at night by a researcher could very well evolve into industry-wide consensus six months later.
🏆 Complete List of Top 100 Influential Accounts in the English-Speaking World
1. Andrej Karpathy @karpathy
AI KOL Followers: 4221 | Followers: 2,455,804
Founder of Eureka Labs, former founding member of OpenAI, former Head of AI at Tesla. The man who breaks down large model training, AI coding, and agents into digestible pieces. The ultimate evangelist that makes engineers want to open their IDE at midnight after listening to him.
2. Sam Altman @sama
AI KOL Followers: 3841 | Followers: 4,822,283
CEO of OpenAI, absolute master of GPT and Codex. The cosmic figure whose single update makes half the AI circle start highlighting key points automatically.
3. Greg Brockman @gdb
AI KOL Followers: 3202 | Followers: 975,960
President and Co-founder of OpenAI. The man who hands you hardcore updates on products, research, developer ecosystem, and infrastructure progress like an official construction log every day.
4. Jeff Dean @jeffdean
AI KOL Followers: 3133 | Followers: 438,941
Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind/Google Research, Head of Gemini. The hardest-core navigator of where Google's AI technical route comes from and where it's going.
5. Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut
AI KOL Followers: 3083 | Followers: 674,642
Co-founder of SSI, former Chief Scientist of OpenAI. One of the most watched researchers in the large model era; a deep-thinking master whose casual remarks can be dissected by the whole industry for days.
6. Yann LeCun @ylecun
AI KOL Followers: 2992 | Followers: 1,159,418
Co-founder & Executive Chairman of AMI Labs, former Chief AI Scientist at Meta. One of the "Big Three" in deep learning, Turing Award winner. A seasoned debater constantly engaging on AI roadmaps, open source, world models, and the nature of intelligence.
7. Demis Hassabis @demishassabis
AI KOL Followers: 2931 | Followers: 917,939
CEO of Google DeepMind. Super promoter of AlphaFold, AI for science, and the AGI narrative. Nobel laureate. The man who took AI from the chat box to genuine scientific discovery.
8. Andrew Ng @andrewyng
AI KOL Followers: 2710 | Followers: 1,526,147
Professor at Stanford University, previously led Google Brain and Baidu AI team. Long-time evangelist for AI education and application deployment. Master of turning lofty technologies into accessible courses, methodologies, and roadmap blueprints that entrepreneurs can directly implement.
9. Elon Musk @elonmusk
AI KOL Followers: 2559 | Followers: 239,786,568
Super amplifier behind xAI, Tesla, SpaceX. The cosmic player who wants it all – models, robots, compute power, and platforms – a single tweet can sometimes be more explosive than a press conference.
10. François Chollet @fchollet
AI KOL Followers: 2392 | Followers: 663,386
Creator of the Keras deep learning framework, former Chief AI Researcher at Google. Author of "Deep Learning with Python," renowned for his pragmatic perspective and deep insights into the essence of neural networks.
11. Mira Murati @miramurati
AI KOL Followers: 2378 | Followers: 528,503
Founder of Thinking Machines, former CTO of OpenAI. The practical filter that brings cutting-edge models, AI products, and next-gen intelligent systems from esoteric theory back to products and code.
12. Jim Fan @drjimfan
AI KOL Followers: 2377 | Followers: 406,748
Core figure in NVIDIA's robotics direction. The hardcore project commentator who pulls Agents, simulation, embodied intelligence, and Physical AGI out of the screen for you to see.
13. Geoffrey Hinton @geoffreyhinton
AI KOL Followers: 2319 | Followers: 590,509
One of the founding fathers of deep learning. Nobel laureate in Physics. A clear-sighted elder statesman concerned with AI risk, neural networks, and the long-term impact of machine intelligence, acting as an anchor in safety discussions.
14. Fei-Fei Li @drfeifei
AI KOL Followers: 2314 | Followers: 662,302
Professor at Stanford, CEO of World Labs. Long-term proponent of visual intelligence and human-centered AI. A real-world understanding expert who builds infrastructure while marking the path.
15. Logan Kilpatrick @officiallogank
AI KOL Followers: 2307 | Followers: 306,018
Important figure in the Google AI Studio/Gemini API ecosystem. The practical link pulling developer tools from magic back to products, code, and revenue.
16. AK @_akhaliq
AI KOL Followers: 2300 | Followers: 492,866
The AI paper radar within the Hugging Face/Gradio ecosystem. Frequently shares models, papers, and open-source projects. Widely recognized as the most powerful and influential "top information hub" in the AI developer community.
17. Patrick Collison @patrickc
AI KOL Followers: 2293 | Followers: 852,722
CEO of Stripe, Co-founder of Arc Institute. A macro-vision player who places AI within the broader framework of research organizations, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship.
18. hardmaru @hardmaru
AI KOL Followers: 2242 | Followers: 405,741
CEO of Sakana AI, former head of the Google Brain Tokyo team. An exponent of nature-inspired intelligence, focusing on agents, evolutionary algorithms, and swarm intelligence. A hardcore research interpreter with high information density.
19. Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp
AI KOL Followers: 2208 | Followers: 228,237
Host of the top-tier tech podcast, Dwarkesh Podcast. Known for incredibly deep, high-quality long-form interviews with core AI scientists and hardcore scholars, regarded as one of the best conversationalists in the global tech scene.
20. Noam Brown @polynoamial
AI KOL Followers: 2194 | Followers: 106,294
Top AI researcher at OpenAI. Led the development of landmark AIs (Pluribus, Cicero) that dominated human-level poker and the diplomacy game. A leading figure in global game theory and compute-time reasoning for large models.
21. Lilian Weng @lilianweng
AI KOL Followers: 2191 | Followers: 218,811
Co-founder of Thinking Machines, former Head of Research at OpenAI. Her blog and notes serve as essential study material for developers and researchers, providing a systematic understanding of the field.
22. John Schulman @johnschulman2
AI KOL Followers: 2172 | Followers: 74,482
Co-founder & Chief Scientist of Thinking Machines Lab, Co-founder of OpenAI. First author of the PPO algorithm and core lead in ChatGPT's development. A titan in the global field of reinforcement learning and AI alignment.
23. clem @clementdelangue
AI KOL Followers: 2167 | Followers: 292,471
CEO of Hugging Face. Long-term, ambitious driver of open-source models and the developer community. The infrastructure builder who nurtured the open AI ecosystem.
24. Jack Clark @jackclarksf
AI KOL Followers: 2165 | Followers: 129,669
Core figure in policy and communications at Anthropic, Author of Import AI. A calm guide providing direction on AI safety, policy, and industry dynamics.
25. Soumith Chintala @soumithchintala
AI KOL Followers: 2126 | Followers: 300,733
Co-creator of PyTorch, former core leader at Meta AI, CTO of Thinking Machines Lab. A hands-on practitioner pulling underlying tools, robotics, and AI engineering culture back into products, code, and business value.
26. Alexandr Wang @alexandr_wang
AI KOL Followers: 2115 | Followers: 454,990
Founder of Scale AI, Head of Meta AI. The executor handling the grunt work in data, labeling, and training infrastructure.
27. Jeremy Howard @jeremyphoward
AI KOL Followers: 2068 | Followers: 293,506
Co-founder of fast.ai/Answer.AI, former founding President of Kaggle. The king of deconstructing tutorials, teaching AI to ordinary developers. An Alpha player focused on making tools truly user-friendly and efficient.
28. Garry Tan @garrytan
AI KOL Followers: 2062 | Followers: 804,098
CEO of top accelerator YC. Views AI from the perspective of entrepreneurs and early-stage companies. An idea hunter who turns demos into companies.
29. Thomas Wolf @thom_wolf
AI KOL Followers: 2000 | Followers: 117,486
Co-founder of Hugging Face. Long-term visionary for open-source models, developer ecosystems, and AI moonshots.
30. Chris Olah @ch402
AI KOL Followers: 1992 | Followers: 143,978
Interpretability researcher at Anthropic. An explorer inside models, reverse-engineering the black box of neural networks for you to see.
31. Oriol Vinyals @oriolvinyalsml
AI KOL Followers: 1990 | Followers: 201,743
Research VP at Google DeepMind, one of the leads for Gemini. The on-site commentator for DeepMind's model roadmap, including the AlphaStar, AlphaFold, and AlphaCode series.
32. Jan Leike @janleike
AI KOL Followers: 1961 | Followers: 129,811
Head of Alignment Science at Anthropic, former head of the Alignment team at OpenAI. A long-term thinker addressing the more serious aspects of AI safety.
33. David @davidsholz
AI KOL Followers: 1953 | Followers: 99,340
Founder & CEO of Midjourney. The driver pushing generative imagery into the realm of mass creative creation and aesthetic evolution.
34. Miles Brundage @miles_brundage
AI KOL Followers: 1933 | Followers: 70,891
Founder of AVERI, former Senior Advisor for AGI Readiness at OpenAI. An AI policy and governance researcher, and a calm observer of institutional design, working to install braking systems on the AI juggernaut beyond the technical frenzy.
35. John Carmack @id_aa_carmack
AI KOL Followers: 1926 | Followers: 1,608,322
Founder & CEO of Keen Technologies, Founder of id Software, former CTO of Oculus. An old-school engineer now working on AGI, fiercely dragging AI from magic back into products, code, and practical value.
36. Aravind Srinivas @aravsrinivas
AI KOL Followers: 1907 | Followers: 509,159
CEO of Perplexity. The practical transformer who is rewriting the search entry point with AI-powered search and answer engines.
37. Jason Wei @_jasonwei
AI KOL Followers: 1867 | Followers: 107,565
AI Researcher at Meta, formerly at OpenAI/Google. A model capability hunter who thoroughly explains large model reasoning, emergent abilities, and the boundaries of scaling.
38. Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai
AI KOL Followers: 1851 | Followers: 6,768,992
CEO of Google/Alphabet. The captain steering the giant towards integrating Gemini, AI Search, and full-stack AI across all products.
39. Sara Hooker @sarahookr
AI KOL Followers: 1847 | Followers: 61,061
Researcher background at Cohere/Google Brain/DeepMind. An explorer of the alternative path of open models and continuously evolving intelligent systems.
40. swyx @swyx
AI KOL Followers: 1827 | Followers: 157,451
Host of the Latent Space newsletter and podcast, core curator of the AI Engineer Summit, and long-term driver of the AI Engineer community. The on-site vibe detector for what builders are *actually* talking about, connecting developers, entrepreneurs, and the tool ecosystem.
41. Sarah Guo @saranormous
AI KOL Followers: 1818 | Followers: 141,702
Founder of Conviction, investing exclusively in AI-native companies. An Alpha investment hunter watching which new workflows capital and entrepreneurs are betting on.
42. Robert Scoble @scobleizer
AI KOL Followers: 1815 | Followers: 580,237
Silicon Valley tech observer, former executive at Microsoft, Rackspace, and Fast Company. Author of eight books on future tech. A long-time radar (with a built-in filter) tracking the next wave of cool things in AI, robotics, spatial computing, and new hardware.
43. Lex Fridman @lexfridman
AI KOL Followers: 1796 | Followers: 4,818,744
Host of a long-form interview podcast, Research Scientist at MIT. A thinker weaving AI, robotics, science, and humanity into a single tapestry of technology and life.
44. Eric Jang @ericjang11
AI KOL Followers: 1778 | Followers: 126,619
Former Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind Robotics, researcher in robotics and machine learning. An engineering thought engine outputting how AI moves from papers to the hands and feet of robots.
45. Ethan Mollick @emollick
AI KOL Followers: 1727 | Followers: 353,712
New York Times bestselling author, Professor at Wharton. A boss-forward tool turning AI, innovation, and entrepreneurship into "how ordinary people and organizations can actually use AI."
46. Christopher Manning @chrmanning
