The women rewriting AI’s power map

What you probably already know: Daniela Amodei is co-founder and president of Anthropic, a leading AI lab and a Time100 honoree. Mira Murati is founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Labs, a San Francisco company that last year raised a $2 billion seed round considered the largest seed funding round in history. Tekedra Mawakana is co-CEO of Waymo, the San Francisco-based autonomous driving company. Amodei, Murati and Mawakana are just three women on the 2026 “100 Women in AI list” compiled by early-stage VC startups Flybridge and XFactor Ventures, both of whom primarily invest in companies with at least one female founder.

Why it matters: Though countless studies rightfully point out the inherent AI biases against women, top women executives are embracing AI and setting the setting the tone for its use in their workplaces. A survey of more than 1,000 senior women leaders by women’s networking organization Chief found that, rather than viewing AI as a replacement for top talent, women in leadership positions are embracing it as a tool to enhance and support their workforce. The survey notes that 80% of women leaders are actively involved in their organizations' AI implementation efforts, and most are intentionally engaging employees at every level even as AI begins to automate entry-level tasks.

What it means: In a LinkedIn post, Cherae Robinson, head of platform and marketing at New York-based Flybridge, says she and General Partner and Co-founder Chip Hazard created the list with one main goal in mind: to ensure that “women are seen for the trailblazers they are during the most consequential transformations in technology since the dawn of the internet.” More than 1,000 women were nominated. She notes that this year’s honorees represent researchers cited more than 1.5 million times; founders who have raised more than $5 billion (not including Amodei’s $135 billion for Anthropic); and include four MacArthur Fellows.

What happens next: There are actually 102 women on the list, including journalist Kara Swisher; Dipanwita Das, CEO and co-founder of Sorcero, an AI-powered intelligence platform for Life sciences based in Washington, D.C.; and Gig Yuen-Reed, chief data and AI officer at Boston-based Cohere Health. “This moment highlights the importance of developing AI that is not only innovative but also trustworthy,” Reed says. “I hope this recognition help create even more visibility for women in data and AI and encourages the next generation of leaders.” As Robinson notes, the list can “help turn visibility into opportunity and opportunity into power. More capital, more platforms, more decision-making seats for the women shaping how AI shows up in all of our lives.”