Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving faster than any major technology shift in recent memory, and women innovators are leading some of the most important breakthroughs.
These founders and CEOs are reshaping everything from generative AI and robotics to enterprise automation and search technology—setting the direction for how AI will influence business, society, and everyday life.
Here are 10 female entrepreneurs transforming the AI landscape today—and why the world is watching their work.
1. Mira Murati — Founder & CEO, Thinking Machines Lab
Mira Murati is one of the most influential voices in modern AI. After studying engineering through a joint program at Colby College and Dartmouth, she built early experience at Goldman Sachs, Zodiac Aerospace, Tesla on the Model X team, and later at Leap Motion.
Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and eventually became Chief Technology Officer (CTO). There, she guided the development of ChatGPT, DALL·E, Codex, and Sora. She oversaw research, product, and safety during a period of rapid global adoption, helping shape how advanced AI systems are built and deployed.
Her leadership also became visible during OpenAI’s brief executive transition in 2023, reinforcing her influence across the industry. In 2025, she founded Thinking Machines Lab, a public benefit corporation focused on creating more customizable and transparent frontier models.
2. Sophia Deluz-Bhan — COO & Co-Founder, Search Atlas Group
Few leaders in applied AI have matched Sophia Deluz-Bhan's operational mastery. As Chief Operating Officer (COO) and co-founder of Search Atlas Group, she has scaled the company from $2 million to $30 million in annual recurring revenue—all while running a fully remote operation and without leaning on massive venture capital rounds.
Sophia built a multi-brand ecosystem—LinkGraph, Search Atlas, and Signal Genesys—that now sits at the forefront of Answer Engine Optimization, a fast-emerging field helping companies adapt to AI-driven search results and LLM-generated answers.
She spearheaded the launch of OTTO SEO and LLM Visibility, platforms created by practitioners who understand how AI systems surface content, not by engineers guessing from a distance.
At a moment when many AI companies chase valuation over fundamentals, Sophia built one of the fastest-growing AI search marketing groups by focusing on sustainable economics, strategic product timing, and solving real customer problems.
3. Fei-Fei Li — Co-Director, Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute
Fei-Fei Li is one of the most influential computer scientists of the last two decades and a central figure in the evolution of modern AI. She is best known for creating ImageNet, the large-scale visual dataset that unlocked rapid progress in computer vision and helped ignite the deep learning boom of the 2010s.
As Chief Scientist of AI and ML at Google Cloud, she helped broaden access to AI tools for businesses and developers, including early work on AutoML. She also co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit dedicated to improving diversity and inclusion in the field by supporting students who have historically been underrepresented in technology.
In 2024, Li entered the startup world by helping launch World Labs, a company focused on building AI systems with spatial intelligence. The technology aims to help machines understand and interact with the physical world in more human-like ways.
4. Chip Huyen — CEO & Co-Founder, Claypot AI
Chip Huyen has become a leading voice in how machine learning systems move from prototypes to production. After studying at Stanford, she returned to teach ML Systems, and her lectures became the bestselling book Designing Machine Learning Systems.
Huyen’s career spans NVIDIA, Snorkel AI, and Netflix, where she helped advance toolchains, weak supervision techniques, and streaming ML. She also founded and sold an AI infrastructure startup, an experience that informs her ongoing mentorship of early-stage founders working on applied AI and LLM-driven products.
Alongside her engineering work, Huyen is known for her writing and public speaking. Her 2025 book AI Engineering became the most-read title on O’Reilly.
5. Lisa Su — CEO, AMD
Lisa Su is one of the most respected leaders in high-performance computing and AI hardware. Su joined AMD in 2012 and became CEO in 2014. She reshaped the company around high-performance chips, leading the development of the Zen architecture and Ryzen processors.
Under her leadership, AMD expanded into datacenters, gaming consoles, and custom silicon, growing its market value from about 3 billion dollars to more than 200 billion. Her work has earned recognition across the industry, including Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders, the IEEE Robert Noyce Medal, and Time’s CEO of the Year.
6. Elena Poughia — Founder and CEO, Data Natives
Elena Poughia is a founder, ecosystem builder, and community leader known for creating one of Europe’s most influential data and AI platforms. In 2015, Poughia launched Data Natives, a conference and media network focused on AI, data science, and emerging technologies.
The annual event in Berlin has grown into a global community that brings together thousands of attendees and hundreds of founders, researchers, and practitioners. Poughia is also recognized for her commitment to diversity in tech. She frequently speaks about data ethics, unconscious bias, and the societal impact of AI, advocating for greater representation of women and marginalized groups in data-driven fields.
7. Selina Tirtajana — Co-Founder and CEO, SØVN
Selina Tirtajana is the co-founder of SØVN, a healthtech company developing an AI-enabled sleep hearable designed to detect and address bruxism. The idea emerged during the pandemic, when her own experience with teeth grinding led her to research sleep disorders and the existing solutions that only focused on symptoms rather than root causes.
Since founding SØVN, she has led the company through extensive product validation, including clinical testing and multiple hardware and algorithm iterations. Tirtajana’s approach reflects disciplined early-stage execution: proving demand through presales, building a scalable MVP without a large team, and refining the model based on both clinical partners and volunteer testers.
8. Nanxi Liu — Co-Founder and CEO, Blaze Technology
Nanxi Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Blaze Technology, a no-code platform that uses AI to help teams build internal tools, web apps, and mobile applications without engineering heavy lifting. Before Blaze, she co-founded Enplug, a global digital display software company that scaled internationally and was successfully acquired.
Liu has a long record of founding and scaling companies across multiple sectors. While at UC Berkeley, she co-founded Nanoly Bioscience, a biotech company developing polymers that remove the need for vaccine refrigeration.
Her work at Blaze positions her at the forefront of accessible AI-driven software development, helping companies accelerate product creation while reducing reliance on traditional engineering teams.
9. Daphne Koller — Founder & CEO, Insitro
Daphne Koller is a leading researcher and entrepreneur whose work has shaped modern AI and its applications in science. In 2012, Koller co-founded Coursera, helping launch one of the world’s largest platforms for online education.
She served as co-CEO and then president during a period of rapid global adoption. Since 2018, Koller has led Insitro, a drug discovery company that integrates machine learning with automated lab systems to advance treatments for complex diseases.
By combining genomics, in vitro models, and large-scale experimental data, Insitro aims to accelerate the discovery and validation of new therapies. Koller’s career continues to bridge AI research, entrepreneurship, and high-impact applications in healthcare.
10. Rana el Kaliouby — Co-Founder, Affectiva
Rana el Kaliouby is a leading figure in human-centered AI and one of the pioneers of emotion recognition technology. After completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge and conducting postdoctoral research at MIT, she co-founded Affectiva, an MIT Media Lab spin-off that helped create the Emotion AI category.
Under el Kaliouby’s leadership, Affectiva raised more than 50 million dollars, deployed its technology in over 90 countries, and expanded into major markets including automotive safety, mental health, and media analytics. The company was acquired by Smart Eye in 2021, where she serves as Deputy CEO, helping scale AI systems used by global automakers, research institutions, and Fortune 500 brands.
