The New Establishment 2026 Reveals the Players Shaping Power and Culture

Which leaves us to answer the question: What does it mean to wield power in this strange, at times terrifying, new world?

We set some ground rules: We would not present an idealized version of the world as we’d like to see it but rather document reality as it is. No heads of state, and no foreign actors whose influence can’t be felt acutely here in the United States. It would not be a ranking of net worth or follower count but a measure of hard power. The list would be subjective, eclectic, and discretionary. After all, it wouldn’t be, hasn’t been, written by a chatbot.

As such, this year’s entrants hail from across industries and disciplines, from Silicon Valley to DC. The most powerful people here are also some of the most controversial, who promise to conjure both boundless wealth and economic upheaval.

No matter your point of view, this list should inspire complicated feelings. From certain angles, it may spark optimism; from others, trepidation and perhaps even horror. Well, such are the times in which we live. Meet the new New Establishment. —Julia Black

Photographer Annie Leibovitz

The Oppenheimer

CEO, OPENAI

EXPECTED IPO VALUATION: Up to $1 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

Few people in history have amassed enough power to actually change the world. Altman is one of them. An ambitious founder since he was a teenager, by 28 he was running the renowned start-up accelerator Y Combinator.

By 37, as CEO of OpenAI, he had launched ChatGPT, the preeminent chatbot of an artificial revolution that threatens to upend the way we live. The explosion of innovation that followed ChatGPT’s 2022 debut thrust Altman to the fore of a nascent industry that has matured into one of the engines of the global economy. These days, OpenAI has plenty of competition, but Altman’s aggressive push to market meant his product is now a shorthand, the Scotch tape or Kleenex of large language models.

(OpenAI has an agreement with Condé Nast, the owner of Vanity Fair, which allows OpenAI to display its content in search results for a limited term.) Altman may one day be seen as the Oppenheimer of our time, a single person determining the reality we inhabit.

Achilles’ heel

His extraordinary power has made Altman a polarizing figure. To critics, he’s precisely the kind of amoral tech baron to whom “move fast and break things” really just means profit at all costs. OpenAI’s most threatening competitor, Anthropic, has cannily cast itself as the responsible guy, a company attentive to safety concerns and open to regulation.

As Anthropic objected to the Pentagon’s terms of use in its applications, Altman stepped in to announce that OpenAI would partner with the Defense Department on classified operations. The press has been appropriately tough, fueling a vibe shift against these AI companies, which have seen their reputation as exciting vehicles for civilizational advancement erode into something more sinister. OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO has been pushed back as the company faces safety concerns and struggles to keep revenues in line with spending, paving the way for Anthropic, whose own IPO is currently targeted at $2 trillion, to overtake Altman’s behemoth.

—Aidan McLaughlin

WHAT’S NEXT

Watch Mark Guiducci’s new two-part interview with Altman.

1 PHOTOGRAPHER ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

The Paradox

Dario Amodei

CEO, Anthropic

PROJECTED 2028 REVENUE: Closing in on $200 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Amodei has made Anthropic’s products—especially its programming tool Claude Code—so undeniable that even his most vehement opponents have had to grit their teeth and sign on the dotted line. After a bitter dispute over restrictions on the Department of Defense’s use of Anthropic’s systems, a federal court blocked a sweeping all-agency ban attempted by the Trump administration. Relations with Washington have since thawed: After Amodei dined with Trump at the White House in late September, the president delivered a warm review: “I liked him and his wife a lot,” Trump said.

“Very smart guy.” Meanwhile, Amodei himself has been hard at work convincing investors, influencers, and enterprise customers to overlook the paradox that Anthropic was founded by a group of rebels who departed OpenAI on the belief that AI might destroy the world. He even recently released a plan vowing to slow his own roll.

By the end of July, Anthropic had clocked an annualized revenue of over $65 billion, a jaw-dropping sevenfold increase from the end of the previous year. “The best way to describe Dario is that he’s very comfortable living in the gray,” says Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst and one of Anthropic’s most loyal investors. “I don’t think Dario thinks he has all the answers....

In every action of his, I see a sincere attempt to center this technology for good.”

Achilles’ heel

Amodei’s rise to the top has not been without consequences. The onetime war protester now must reckon with the idea that his tools may have contributed to the mistaken bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Iran. Last summer, his wife, Cami Clark, whom Amodei has long managed to keep out of the public eye, was the subject of a series of exposés, which revealed that she’d sought funding for a porn company from none other than Jeffrey Epstein.

And Amodei has raised eyebrows with his own idiosyncrasies, from biweekly “Dario Vision Quest” (known as DVQ) meetings to his choice of attire—a panda head—for the wedding of his sister, Anthropic cofounder Daniela Amodei, to fellow Anthropic exec Holden Karnofsky. The Amodeis’ peers have started to gang up against them, accusing the Anthropic founders of turning its concern about AI safety into a form of “fear-based marketing.”

WHAT’S NEXT

In August, rumors swirled in the tech industry that Dario had said that Anthropic could one day be “the only private company in the world.” Anthropic has denied these claims amid a hiring spree that has snapped up not only some of the industry’s most in-demand technical talent but also lawyers, creatives, and policy experts. With an approximately 2 percent stake in a company valued at nearly 1trillion—2 trillion if an IPO goes as predicted—Amodei’s net worth has likely catapulted well into 11 digits.

Along with his sister and Anthropic’s other five cofounders, Amodei has pledged to donate 80 percent of his wealth to charity. This could mean a flood of philanthropic dollars for effective altruist–aligned causes, from animal welfare to AI safety. If they keep their promises.

—Julia Black

Read Joe Hagan’s recent profile of Dario Amodei.

The Mad King

CEO, Tesla and SpaceX; father of at least 14 children

TESLA + SPACEX MARKET CAP: $3.3 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

Musk merged a money-losing social network with a cash-burning AI firm, attached the whole thing to an unprofitable rockets-and-satellites business, and—presto! One IPO later, Musk was briefly history’s first trillionaire. Little about his newly public SpaceX makes sense from a traditional accounting point of view.

But it is the purest example yet, says Slow Ventures’s Sam Lessin, of a kind of “alt capitalism,” where having a wild vision, easy access to capital, and a cultlike fan base can trump all the old-school business metrics. But Musk isn’t just putting on a “bread-and-circuses play,” adds Lessin, who put his personal money into SpaceX through a special-purpose vehicle in 2018 and figures he’s made at least 25 times his investment. Musk’s myth weaving allows him to attract top talent, who can then make some version of his far-out fantasies real.

The reusable rockets and electric auto fleets translate into big, tangible returns. Plus, Lessin adds, he’s “really good at always getting people paid.”

Achilles’ heel

Where to start? Musk’s attention is famously divided, but he spends an unnerving amount of his time stoking anti-immigrant pogroms and bleating about white “genocide.” That’s already dented Tesla’s sales, which should be surging in a time of fossil fuel panics. His signature rocket, Starship, is way behind schedule, but NASA is depending on it to beat China back to the moon. And if more investors start valuing SpaceX’s bad financials over owning a piece of Musk’s dreams, watch out. “The problem with bread and circuses is they can go bad,” Lessin says.

WHAT’S NEXT

Depends on the midterms. If Democrats win, Musk will likely be asked to raise his right hand in front of Congress over and over. Democrats have called for investigations into his alleged self-dealing as a member of the Trump administration; his DOGE team’s mishandling of sensitive Social Security records; his chatbot’s predilection for spreading nonconsensual nudes; even his alleged drug use.

A US appeals court has ruled that Musk doesn’t have to testify—for now—about his role in demolishing the US Agency for International Development, which by conservative estimates has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The new Alex Gibney doc will only add to the scrutiny. So Musk has all sorts of incentives to plow more of his wealth into this November’s races.

He spent nearly $300 million in 2024’s elections and reportedly plans another $100 million this time around.—Noah Shachtman

The Man Selling Picks and Shovels for the Gold Rush

Jensen Huang

CEO, Nvidia

NVIDIA MARKET CAP: $5.12 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

For most of its history, Nvidia made graphics-processing units for video games. Then, in the early 2010s, cofounder and CEO Huang bet big on a seemingly far-fetched vision: that his company’s technology could be adapted to power an AI future. His risky wager paid off.

Huang’s head start allowed Nvidia to capture the lion’s share of the GPU market—meaning no matter who wins the AI race, Huang and Nvidia will reap the rewards. Huang’s aw-shucks demeanor and fondness for gentle razzing have gained him a reputation as the goofy uncle of the tech industry, says one lobbyist. But don’t mistake him for a small-timer: Not only is his personal net worth estimated at nearly $200 billion, his company has helped create a new class of small-time millionaires who rode the exponential takeoff of the publicly traded stock.

He’s also developed enough of a cult following to inspire a collector to pay nearly a million dollars for one of his signature Tom Ford leather jackets at auction.

Achilles’ heel

Huang has drawn the ire of tech bros and America First types alike for his willingness to sell chips to China. In a tense interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel earlier this year, Huang pushed back on the allegation that his actions were akin to selling enriched uranium to a rogue nation and memorably snapped, “You’re not talking to somebody who woke up a loser.” Shifting power dynamics in Washington—including Nvidia advocate David Sacks’s departure from his role as AI czar—could continue to create headwinds for Huang. He could even be at risk of hitting the downswing of what the lobbyist calls “the president’s savior-villain cycles.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Nvidia is promising to turbocharge AI-powered personal computing with its new RTX Spark Superchip. And Huang is betting that robotics will become a $50 trillion market opportunity powered by his chips.—Julia Black

The Market Mover

KEVIN WARSH

Chairman of the Federal Reserve

ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT: $6.7 trillion on the Fed’s books; a $32 trillion American economy; and a $1.9 trillion annual budget deficit

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

Landing the gig, particularly after Republican senator Thom Tillis vowed to block Warsh’s appointment as long as the Justice Department persisted in investigating his predecessor as Fed chair, Jerome Powell. (The president’s perceived enemies on the Fed board seem to have a habit of getting probed by his DOJ.) Once the inquiry was dropped, Warsh secured confirmation along party lines, and now he can plausibly claim to be the most powerful man in world finance.

His words shape the value of the American dollar. He’s tasked with steering the economy away from the twin terrors of recession and inflation, all while fending off the man who put him in charge. Maybe his ties to the old establishment will help: Stanford, Harvard Law, Morgan Stanley, East Hampton’s tony Maidstone Club.

He’s married to Jane Lauder, daughter of Ronald, the cosmetics heir and Friend of Trump. If things go south, Warsh has a cushion: His financial disclosures indicate he’s worth more than $135 million.

Achilles’ heel

The man who appointed Warsh is the elephant in the Eccles Building. Trump has said that Warsh “will do what he has to do” but issued a baffling threat to block all trade with some countries if the Fed board chose not to lower interest rates. Warsh’s own performances in front of the cameras have so far been panned; markets and the financial media revolted after his first presser, when he delivered a muddled message on how he’ll deal with inflation. His Fed made a clearer statement in September: The board raised rates.

WHAT’S NEXT

“These are still calm times,” says John Cochrane, an economist and Warsh’s former colleague at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, amazingly. “The next great unexpected shock will come, and that will test him.” Warsh is already weathering a cloudy economic landscape that could turn into a dreaded stagflation storm. War in Iran is doing him no favors by driving up the cost of energy, and faith is fading that the United States will pay its massive debt bill. And there’s another risk: “He will not let a 1929 turn into a 1933,” Cochrane says, “but he also understands that the banking and financial system is way too dependent on constant bailouts.” Best of luck, Kev!—Jack Holmes

The MAGA Heir

Vice president of the United States

FAVORABILITY RATING: 35 percent

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

Vance had reason for optimism when he rode into Washington in January 2025. The presidential ticket he’d joined had just won the popular vote, and the veep seemed to revel in the so-called vibe shift that accompanied the start of the second Trump era. MAGA was considered, at least in Washington, to be something close to trendy, and Vance—with his buds in the podcasting world and his practiced populist disposition, deployed in the demotic of a 4chan shitposter—was its de facto prince.

Communion, Vance’s recent book about his conversion to Catholicism, allowed for a splashy media tour that brought him in front of hostile audiences like those of The View. Vance took some heat for embarking on that tour while in office (shouldn’t the vice president have better things to do during a war in the Middle East?), but his talk show appearances seem to have appealed to the viewer in chief: Trump, who, according to several reports, currently considers Vance his heir apparent.

Achilles’ heel

On the first day of his second term, Trump humiliated his VP, who had already done so much to prostrate himself. Vance had said just days before that those responsible for violence during the January 6 riot “obviously” should not be pardoned. Trump naturally signed sweeping clemency for everyone charged in connection with the attack. Wasn’t the first time he’d pull a Trump card: When Vance endorsed the president in 2024, he explained in an op-ed that he was doing so in part because Trump did not start any wars in his first term. So much for that.

WHAT’S NEXT

While on his book tour, Vance was asked if he plans to run for president in 2028—and didn’t deny a thing. He said he would sit down with his wife, Usha, after the midterms “and talk about what comes next for our family” (to which they recently added a fourth kid, jibing with the Vances’ interest in improving the birth rate). Vance remains one of the least popular figures in the entire Trump administration. Convincing Trump to deed the legacy is the first hurdle. Convincing the American people to like him looks, so far, like scaling a mountain.—Aidan McLaughlin

Read Chris Whipple’s new report on JD Vance's little known years at Yale Law.

The MAGA Spare

Marco Rubio

SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES

JOBS HELD THIS TERM: Four

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

You’ve seen the memes. Rubio, stone-faced on a sofa in the Oval Office, newly appointed to a role just vacated by an embarrassed or embattled official of some sort: Rubio as Venezuelan president, Rubio as manager of Manchester United, Rubio as supreme leader of Iran. We’ve come a long way from the 2016 campaign, when Trump dubbed the junior senator from Florida “Little Marco” (which Rubio countered with an even littler presidential penis joke).

Rubio’s role has afforded him vast powers over an administration that’s shaping the world at its whims. He took charge of USAID even as Elon Musk’s DOGE gutted the agency. He oversaw the raid that abducted Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and is now a modern-day viceroy of the nation.

He then turned his imperial eyes to Cuba, the white whale for this Miami-born son of immigrants. All the while, Rubio has telegraphed that he’s having fun with it. He’s been spotted behind the DJ decks at a wedding and popped up in the White House briefing room to take a blizzard of questions from reporters, dropping rap lyrics and one soliloquy about the wonders of America that sounded an awful lot like a stump speech.

Trump might be at his most unpopular moment in history, presiding over a war he can’t explain and prices he can’t bring down. Somehow, his man at state seems to be evading the worst of the blame while maintaining a sunny disposition that keeps his name in the 2028 conversation.

Achilles’ heel

Rubio may have cultivated an aura of upbeat competence, but it’s hard to see how he’ll emerge from Trump 2.0 unscathed.

WHAT’S NEXT

The president is hopelessly fixated on stomping around the globe, a tendency that’s created a sweeping portfolio of problems for Rubio to solve. There’s crisis in Cuba, saber-rattling at allies like Canada and Greenland, a besieged NATO alliance, regional war between Israel and its foes in the Levant, grinding bloodshed in Ukraine, devastation in Africa after Musk’s sabotage of USAID, the ever-simmering threat of China. Rubio, meanwhile, has been savvy about steering clear of obvious disasters and swooping in to handle the slam dunks.

After weeks of Trump attacking Pope Leo XIV (#18), it was Rubio who flew to the Vatican to smooth things over. And when it came to the Iran negotiations, America’s top diplomat was absent. Trump sent Vance instead.

—Aidan McLaughlin

Read Chris Whipple’s 2025 feature on the second Trump White House.

The Constant Gardener

Sundar Pichai

CEO, Alphabet and google

Alphabet MARKET CAP: $4.176 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

After looking like an AI has-been, Google stormed back last year. The success of its Gemini 3 model has made a noticeable dent in ChatGPT’s growth. Its cloud computing division has been powering the stock, making Alphabet one of the best performing tech giants in the past year. But Google is not the only thing we’re talking about when we talk about Pichai. Think of every other letter in the Alphabet: YouTube, Android, Waymo, Nest, and Fitbit, to name a few, along with stakes in, for two, SpaceX and Anthropic, making Alphabet the most profitable company in the world.

Achilles’ heel

Google’s AI team seems wobbly again. Google DeepMind’s longtime chief, Demis Hassabis, recently moved into a less prominent role, and Google chief scientist Jeff Dean exited. Meanwhile the knock on Google is that it is not among the frontier AI model makers. It has delayed its Gemini 3.5 Pro model, and the longer it takes, the greater the expectation will be for a release that puts DeepMind back in the running as a top AI lab.

WHAT’S NEXT

Sergey Brin is reportedly taking a more hands-on role with Google’s AI progress. It’s a big test for Pichai, who’s brought the company back before. But he will have to decide if Google wants to continue being a major player building the most powerful AI models or is content acting mostly as a data center provider.—Tom Dotan

Ted Sarandos

Co-CEO, Netflix

Netflix Global Paid Subscribers: 325 million and counting

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

Even when Netflix loses, it wins. After coming out as the champ in the initial bidding war against Paramount for Warner Bros., Netflix’s co-CEO went on a charm offensive, speaking to stakeholders and the government to defend the merger and promising to keep Warner Bros.’s films in theaters. But when David Ellison’s Paramount moved in with a hostile takeover, Netflix decided it wouldn’t increase its offer and walked away with a sweet $2.8 billion breakup fee. It also came out with its reputation intact, its stock price spiking back up, and the faith of its stockholders restored.

Achilles’ heel

Netflix has yet to win the best picture Oscar despite years of aggressive efforts.

WHAT’S NEXT

Despite Netflix’s longstanding disinterest in the traditional theatrical model, the streamer will nonetheless dip its toe into a more standard release with Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew in 2027. Its Oscar hopes rest on David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth and the Spanish-language Cannes breakout La bola negra.—Rebecca Ford

The New Hollywood Mogul

CEO, YouTube

Data point: YouTube users collectively watch more than 1 billion hours of video every day (your kids included).

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

While the streaming wars raged in Hollywood, Mohan quietly helped grow the platform that may have already won. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he argues that YouTube has become “the epicenter of culture” precisely because it eliminated traditional gatekeepers, allowing creators to “make a bet on themselves” rather than wait for “an exec in a boardroom” to decide whether their stories deserve an audience.

Achilles’ heel

Mohan tells VF that “human storytelling always has been, and always will be, at the heart of YouTube.” Delivering on that promise, however, means navigating the mess of the internet without choking off the openness that fueled YouTube’s rise.

WHAT’S NEXT

The Oscars! YouTube snagged the exclusive global rights to the Academy Awards from its longtime home ABC and will start streaming Hollywood’s biggest night, including the red carpet and the Governors Ball, for free starting in 2029.—Maxwell Adler

The Big Chop

CEO, Amazon

AMAZON MARKET CAP: $2.6 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

Jassy spent years as the technical adviser to Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos before inheriting the retail, computing, and now Hollywood conglomerate. After a sharp decline following the pandemic-era tech surge, the company’s stock has rebounded strongly under Jassy’s leadership. (He’s known for his signature meeting, “the Chop”—named for The Charterhouse of Parma, the novel by Stendhal, but you’ll have to ask him why—in which Jassy and his lieutenants quietly, ruthlessly edit company data and memos.) The company’s revenues rose more than 36 percent in the past quarter, and its bets in AI are paying off big.

Achilles’ heel

Amazon’s economic dominance makes the company a boogeyman to anti-capitalists and reformers, the latest of whom is New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.

WHAT’S NEXT

Amazon is hoping that AI will increase demand for cloud infrastructure the same way streaming increased demand for bandwidth. If that happens, Amazon Web Services will once again be there to collect the tolls. At this point the only part of Bezos’s Amazon legacy left for Jassy to inherit is his biceps.—Maxwell Adler

The Prodigal Son-in-Law and Favored Daughter

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

Founder and CEO, Affinity Partners; FIRST FIRST DAUGHTER

Ages: 45, 44

SIDE HUSTLE: Globe-trotting diplomat

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump swore they would leave politics for good after Trump’s first term. It was a whirlwind experience during which these young political novices wielded unprecedented sway with a president who shared their lack of understanding of Washington. Trump’s presidency may have ended in the disgrace of the January 6 riot, but they made it out (almost) unscathed, decamping for South Florida with heightened profiles and a fat contact book as the Oval Office became engulfed in infamy.

Do they miss the White House? Ivanka doesn’t hesitate. “I’m exactly where I want to be right now,” she tells Vanity Fair.

From their new Florida base, the couple plotted a more low-key future with ample time for raising the family—and amassing a fortune. Kushner launched Affinity Partners, a private investment firm whose coffers quickly filled with billions in foreign investments, including $2 billion from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince. But this balmy domestic bliss wouldn’t last long.

After storming back to the White House in 2024, Trump coaxed Kushner into the fold to serve as a freelance diplomat, taking on some of the world’s thorniest problems. Why did he agree to return, in an unofficial capacity this time? When it comes to Israel and Gaza, Kushner invokes a sense of duty.

“It was causing a black cloud over the world,” he tells VF. “It was leading to a rise in global antisemitism. I really felt for the Palestinian people who were stuck there really through no fault of their own.

And then I saw how it was just tearing people apart on college campuses. And for whatever reason, I felt very confident I knew how to solve it.” Yet the question of his motives remains an open one.

In a new exposé, CNN reports that Affinity is the largest shareholder in a firm invested in companies involved in “Israel’s war machine,” an iniquitous conflict given Kushner’s ambitions to determine the future of Gaza. (In a rare public statement, Kushner called CNN’s reporting “deeply misleading.”)

Achilles’ heel

It’s hard to think of a precedent for the position Kushner has carved out for himself. He’s operating like a modern-day Henry Kissinger, if Kissinger skipped decades of experience and simply married Nixon’s daughter. His bursting portfolio and unapologetic blend of personal enrichment and freelance diplomacy have drawn allegations of corruption and pulled Kushner into the fray he sought to flee when he moved to Florida.

Top Democrats could haul him to Washington to answer questions should they regain control of the House. Kushner, for his part, is clever about casting his connections as a diplomatic strength. “Having these deep friendships and relationships enables us to skip to the conclusion and not get caught in a lot of the bullshit that can happen in diplomacy,” he tells VF.

Ivanka’s own global ambitions have sparked separate controversy. She recently claimed on a podcast to have “found” an Albanian island on which she and Kushner plan to build a luxury resort community. The people of Albania are less enthusiastic about the couple’s interest in an island they discovered long ago (before Christ, to be precise).

The project, and the controversial way in which it was approved, has contributed to a wave of protests in the country, with outrage growing so intense that Prime Minister Edi Rama has been pressed to step down. Asked to ponder her legacy, Ivanka says: “I am highly conscious, daily, of trying to set a great example for my children.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Kushner is bullish on Kushner. “I do have a pretty good track record,” he says. “For the last decade, the three biggest deals in the Middle East I led, whether it was the Abraham Accords, solving the GCC dispute, and then solving the Gaza conflict.

So I have a lot of credibility in that region and obviously a lot of trust and a lot of friendships.” As violence and misery in Gaza show little sign of abating, Ukraine and Russia remain mired in a bloody battle, and the war in Iran proves intractable, Kushner might be overly optimistic in his powers of peacemaking. Meanwhile, the couple are juggling this high-stakes intermingling of business and diplomacy with a not-so-subtle quest to re-enter the social scene from which they were exiled.

They dined at Nobu with Kim Kardashian during the 2024 campaign, and Ivanka popped up at Michael Rubin’s white party in the Hamptons. She posts photos of her lavish life to millions of followers on social media, oftentimes serving as a tacit reminder of her improbable proximity to power; a recent Instagram dump included shots of sunset horseback riding, surfboarding, and her father hopping onto Marine One.—Aidan McLaughlin

Not Far From the Tree

John Ternus

TOTAL REVENUE LAST QUARTER: $109.4 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Apple is known to be hyper-selective when choosing products, boasting in one ad, “There are a thousand no’s for every yes.” But over the course of Ternus’s 25-year tenure at the company, “very few people would say no to him,” one former Apple executive tells VF. Since joining in 2001, the mechanical engineer has played a crucial role in the development of AirPods, iPads, and the company’s switch to homegrown Mac chips in 2020.

All the while, he made remarkably few enemies; two former Apple executives describe the new CEO, successor to Tim Cook, as patient, well-liked, and adept at gaining cross-team support. Now Ternus is inheriting a company at the top of its game. The iPhone still sells like wildfire, and Apple still collects hefty commissions on many purchases made through the App Store.

Unlike Cook, Ternus is a product expert, having spent the last five years of his career running Apple’s hardware engineering division.

Achilles’ heel

On any given day, Cook has had to flatter President Trump, navigate relations with Xi Jinping over Apple’s Chinese supply chain, and reassure shareholders to hang tight during escalating tariffs. “All of Apple’s real problems, [Ternus] is not incredibly deep on,” the former executive says. As for his first major product, the iPhone Duo, it remains to be seen whether a populace being told they’ll be smote by Big AI is interested in buying a $2,000 glorified flip phone.

WHAT’S NEXT

Apple has largely been on the sidelines of Silicon Valley’s AI wars. It turned to Google to underpin its next-generation Siri AI and refrained from the same massive data center build-out as its peers. It’s an inherent disadvantage because of its famously strict data-privacy policies. “Everything about AI or machine learning is sort of antithetical to Apple culture,” the former executive says. With famed Apple designer Jony Ive now working with OpenAI, where he’s racing to build an era-defining hardware product, Ternus had better be sure he has a plan to ward off competitors. —Margaux MacColl

The Merry Mayor

Zohran Mamdani

Mayor of New York City

DATA POINT: A nearly 70 percent favorability rating in a city where everyone is a little unfavoring

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Well, the election. Last year Mamdani emerged seemingly out of nowhere as the David to Andrew Cuomo’s Goliath, beating his better-financed foe to become the city’s first Muslim mayor. In the process, the democratic socialist gained a national profile and became the new, perpetually smiling face of progressive politics, giving the left a shot of adrenaline directly to the chest. His administration had filled 100,000 potholes by the time the mayor helped host the FIFA World Cup and provided free childcare for parents to have a night out. Mamdani seems to be the rare politician who’s largely genuinely well-liked. Shoot, he even charmed Donald Trump. And to top it all off, Knicks in five!

Achilles’ heel

Some would say it’s his affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America. Others would say it’s his divisive position on Israel. And still others, like Errol Louis in a column for New York magazine, would say it’s an almost Trumpian engagement with influencers (who are reportedly being paid, in some cases, by city agencies to plug Mamdani policies).

WHAT’S NEXT

Running the largest city in the country. Beyond that, Mamdani will be a key figure in the midterm elections even though his job is secure. The three New York congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed won their competitive primaries, practically ensuring their election in November. But November will be proving ground for Mamdani’s brand of democratic socialism on a national level. Until then, the worst news for him seems to be that he’s not eligible to run for president because he was born in Uganda, not the US of A.—Chris Murphy

Read Vanity Fair’s 2025 cover story “The Legend of Zohran.”

The Good Kush

Josh Kushner

CEO, Thrive Capital

ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT: $65 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

The youngest Kushner sibling is also the richest. He started his tech-centric venture capital fund Thrive while at Harvard Business School in 2009, making a series of prescient bets on social media and AI—including early investments in OpenAI, SpaceX, Instagram, Spotify, and Twitch—that minted billions and positioned him in his own lane compared to his brother Jared’s Trump-entangled rise. In turn, he’s gained powerful mentors like CAA’s Michael Ovitz and longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger, who now works for Thrive along with his son, Max Iger.

“Our founders are heroes,” Kushner tells Vanity Fair. “Our job is to enable their continued success. We do not seek the limelight ourselves.

We are service providers here to support them.”

Achilles’ heel

WHAT’S NEXT

In recent years, Kushner and his wife, supermodel (and vocal Democrat) Karlie Kloss, have expanded beyond tech with their joint media holding company Bedford Media. The couple acquired i-D magazine, relaunched the title, and are now working to revive Life magazine. He’s also made moves into Hollywood—investing in A24 (#37)—and into the realm of professional sports—first acquiring a minority stake in the Memphis Grizzlies, then the Miami Heat, and now, in a record-breaking $12.5 billion deal, agreeing to buy the LA Lakers with Iger. Kushner has long sought to avoid the spotlight, but that’s hard to do when you’re sitting courtside.—Clara Molot

The Adult in the Room

Gwynne Shotwell

President and COO, SpaceX

SPACEX IPO VALUATION: $1.77 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

Every time Elon Musk embarks on a late-night posting spree, political sideshow, or emotional bender, SpaceX investors, employees, and astronauts alike need to know there’s a steady hand at the helm of one of America’s largest and most ambitious companies. Unlike Tesla’s true founders, who were kicked to the curb, or Linda Yaccarino, who strolled smilingly off a glass cliff, Shotwell has proven her staying power over her 24-year tenure. When Shotwell rang the Nasdaq bell to launch SpaceX’s historic, monstrous trillion-plus IPO, she also rang in a 10-figure net worth for herself.

Achilles’ heel

Shotwell has sometimes come under fire for being an enabler of her erratic boss’s worst instincts and enforcing a despotic workplace. Now that SpaceX has gone public, she’ll have a broader obligation to shareholders outside of Musk’s ultra-loyal Silicon Valley friends. Some investors are already griping about the roller coaster that followed the company’s IPO, when its stock briefly spiked and then plunged more than 46 percent from its peak over the summer.

WHAT’S NEXT

Shotwell will be tasked with executing on Musk’s all-encompassing vision of a space-AI-comms company—and held accountable for his often-illusory projections. She’ll have to contend with everything from the xAI model’s shortcomings to SpaceX’s failed launches, and a possible Tesla merger would only complicate her role.—Julia Black

The Free Radical

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

US representative, 14th congressional district of New York

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress—taking the Democratic Socialists of America out of the nation’s dive bars and into the zeitgeist. Eight years after forming “The Squad,” AOC is an acronymic force and the standard-bearer for a progressive movement that’s been gaining steam as the midterms approach. Without her rise, it’s tough to imagine a Mayor Mamdani or the wave of young progressives—several of whom Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed—who have stamped out moderate Dems in primaries from Michigan to California to Florida this year.

Over the summer, she drew plaudits for posting publicly about her experience freezing her eggs—showing once again that she’s got an air of curated authenticity other Democrats just can’t seem to replicate.

Achilles’ heel

Can a firebrand pivot to a unifier? AOC’s certainly trying, though her initial attempts haven’t gone so smoothly. See, for instance, the brouhaha that erupted when she laughed off the notion that members of her movement took things too far in the George Floyd era: “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’ ” If she’s not careful, Ocasio-Cortez could find herself caught between a political Scylla and Charybdis: too radical for the centrists and too centrist for the radicals.

WHAT’S NEXT

“Anything is possible,” she told ABC’s This Week during that “Woke 1” interview—including a 2028 presidential run or perhaps primarying New York senator Chuck Schumer. If she goes for the former, we’ll soon learn if she’s the latest female candidate to toe the glass cliff: voters who say they would vote for a woman, but not this woman.—Hillary Busis

Read Vanity Fair’s 2020 cover story “AOC’s Next Four Years.”

His Holiness the Humanist

Pope Leo XIV

Head of the Catholic Church

WORLDWIDE CONGREGANTS: 17.8 percent of humanity (1.42 billion people)

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

The white smoke rising from Saint Peter’s Basilica was a W, though the man formerly known as Bob Prevost might keep score differently. He came up at Saint Mary of the Assumption Church on Chicago’s South Side, then went to seminary in greater Chicagoland and spent stints in Rome learning the ins and outs of the Holy See. But it was in South America that he learned to live the word.

“Lord, where have you brought me?” he reportedly asked when he arrived in a little town called Chulucanas in northwest Peru in 1985. Three years earlier, the area had been hit by a freakish natural disaster: It rained for six months straight.

The agricultural system collapsed and unemployment soared. Prevost found himself securing food for his new flock, according to a new book on his life, American Pope, hauling groceries for miles on “muleback, horses, or in jeeps.” It solidified a lifelong commitment to the poor (and to immigrants and refugees) that made his ascension to the papacy a victory for the Church’s progressive wing and a vindication of his predecessor, Pope Francis I.

Achilles’ heel

As he makes his feelings known on issues like immigration and artificial intelligence, the Holy Father might run into a different problem: His flock is shrinking. The percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic has dropped from 24 percent to 19 percent since 2007, and weekly attendance at Mass is down from 34 percent in 1973 to the teens nowadays. For every 10 new Catholics, according to a Pew Research report last year, 84 leave the Church.

The picture is rosier in Africa, where Roman Catholicism is on the rise. In his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas —“Magnificent Humanity”—Bob was not fooling around. He’s concerned himself with “SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,” and, rooting his arguments in Scripture, he’s declared that technology should serve us, not the other way around.

He even went a bit socialista: “Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective.” But has he seen the New Establishment list?

WHAT’S NEXT

For all that “magnificent humanity” business, il papa knows how to crack some heads. When two bishops associated with the ultraconservative Society of Saint Pius X freelance-consecrated four new bishops without Leo’s sign-off, all six were excommunicated the next day. “He’s no pushover,” says the Reverend James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of America magazine.

When Leo condemned the Iran war as unjust in April, he was told “Be careful” by Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism seven years ago. An American pope who prizes the dignity of immigrants and opposes the concentration of economic power in the hands of a select few? He’s bound to get in a few dustups.

—Jack Holmes

The Lady of the Gray Lady

Meredith Kopit Levien

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Under Kopit Levien’s stewardship, The New York Times has become so much more than all the news that’s fit to print: It’s still where you go for your White House Situation Room revelations and your jaw-dropping Cesar Chavez investigations; it’s now also where you get your Mississippi roast recipe (the cooking app has more than a million subscribers), decide what mattress you’ll sleep on for the next 10 years (Wirecutter drives over $1 billion in gross merchandise annually), find the details of Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton’s wee-hours showdown (The Athletic is a 450-journalist newsroom of its own), and above all, send your Wordle score to your dad.

(Her own favorite game? Connections.) The Times’s subscriber base has doubled since she took over as CEO in 2020, but Kopit Levien is particularly proud of the way she’s expanded the newsroom, which employs about a thousand more journalists than when she arrived.

“The Times has something relevant to people every single day and in lots of different ways,” she tells VF.

Achilles’ heel

No one said it would be easy to get into the influencer game. As Kopit Levien doubles down on reporter videos for the short-form content era, the Times’s new stars are increasingly its leading on-camera personalities. But this seems bound to create some tension inside the famously unionized newsroom. And what is the new star machine worth if its exponents leave as soon as they’re famous enough?

WHAT’S NEXT

The Times is as immune to AI as any media company could presently be—that is, not at all. The company is in ongoing litigation with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity about the use of its content, but the bigger fight will be the potential remaking of an AI-mediated landscape. Does the AI-era media consumer want their recipes and politics coverage in the same place? How does the great Times bundling play out when the unbundling possibilities are endless? Like everyone else, Kopit Levien is about to find out.—Dan Adler

19 PHOTOGRAPHER ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

Macro at Micro

Satya Nadella

Chairman and CEO, Microsoft

MICROSOFT MARKET CAP: $3.69 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

Nadella’s AI team launched a slew of products and tools this summer during their annual Build conference, including seven new AI models, seeking to prove that they are capable of competing in the artificial intelligence race without relying to the degree they once did on OpenAI.

Achilles’ heel

Despite the fast start in the AI era, Nadella has not been able to shake the image that Microsoft is an old-school company at its core. Its stock has bounced around as investors try to figure out the company’s place in the AI race.

WHAT’S NEXT

Nadella needs to convince more Microsoft customers to pay up for its AI workplace products.—Tom Dotan

The Son Also Rises

David Ellison

Chairman and CEO, Paramount Skydance

DATA POINT: Paramount will owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders roughly $7 million every day the deal remains unclosed after September 30.

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

With help from Dad, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, the equally ambitious son went from producing forgettable action movies to becoming a media mogul overnight when he took control of Paramount. He’s now a studio chief overseeing CBS, Paramount Pictures, streaming assets, and intense political scrutiny. But that’s not quite enough for Ellison the Younger. He’s trying to close a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which would bring HBO and CNN under his control. But the acquisition is facing backlash from the film and television industry, which—for good reason—detests consolidation.

Achilles’ heel

Having your dad buy you a media empire is easier than running one. Ellison already got drawn into a culture war with his decision to hire Bari Weiss (#42) to run CBS News after the network’s legal fight with President Trump, and it’s not clear whether his capitulation made him any new friends on the political right. Meanwhile, Hollywood is on edge because of his threats to move Paramount out of Los Angeles, perhaps to a red state like Texas or Tennessee. We can’t imagine that those Crossroads and Harvard-Westlake parents will go without making a stink.

WHAT’S NEXT

The real audition: turning the would-be Paramount–Warner Bros. company, which he now says will be called Skydance, from a deal story into a classic Hollywood comeback story.—Maxwell Adler

Read Tom Dotan’s new feature on Larry Ellison’s wide web of power, money, and politics.

The Californian

Gavin Newsom

Governor of California

NOMINAL GDP: $4.25 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

The September 30 Vanity Fair profile by Joe Hagan.

Achilles’ heel

The fact that he won’t hold an elected office when he (probably) launches his presidential bid. And perhaps also that he’s studying Bill Clinton—a president Representative Ro Khanna calls “center-right”—in order to (probably) prepare for 2028.

WHAT’S NEXT

Anyone’s guess. Will his party, and the people it represents, buy his brand regardless of whether he’s capable of the next gig? And if they do, can he offer a flavor distinct enough from the heir (#6) or the spare (#7) across the aisle to take a general election all the way home?—Joe Hagan

Read Joe Hagan’s new profile of Gavin Newsom.

22 PHOTOGRAPHER ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

The Edgelord

Marc Andreessen

General partner, Andreessen Horowitz

LAST MAJOR FUNDRAISE: $15 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Having helped turn Washington decisively in crypto’s favor with his lobbying efforts, super PAC donations, and frequent Mar-a-Lago schmoozing, Andreessen is now hard at work running the same playbook to secure a light-touch regulatory regime for AI. With David Sacks out of his White House AI czar role, Andreessen could be the most powerful pro-AI force whispering in Washington’s ear. Meanwhile, a16z raised another $15 billion across multiple funds in January—the largest raise in its 17-year history. The firm’s SpaceX stake was worth more than $10 billion following the company’s IPO, and there could be another handsome return on its OpenAI holding.

Achilles’ heel

Andreessen has become a leading face of Silicon Valley’s hard veer to the right—and a phenomenon some have called vice signaling. There is seemingly no sinister category he won’t touch, from meme coins to weapons of war, AI cheating tools to prediction markets. He’s espoused something he calls retardmaxxing, boasted about practicing “zero” introspection, and even written a manifesto naming such formidable enemies as “tech ethics,” “social responsibility,” and “trust and safety.”

Some in Silicon Valley feel these moves have cheapened the a16z brand. This spring, competitor General Catalyst appeared to troll Andreessen with an ad portraying itself as the more appealing alternative to an unnamed bald venture capitalist who thought it was a good idea to replace dogs with robots.

WHAT’S NEXT

Andreessen will continue to peddle his self-enriching influence in DC in new roles co-leading a Fed task force on AI and serving on a policy committee at the Department of Defense. But he’ll be the “first to be in trouble when Dems retake the House in the midterms,” says one Republican insider.—Julia Black

The Gamesman

Sheik Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan

National security adviser, United Arab Emirates; deputy ruler, Abu Dhabi; chairman, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority

ASSETS UNDER HIS CONTROL: $1.5 trillion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

When Tahnoon was young, he was reportedly so hooked on Age of Empires, the video game of civilizational conquest, that he hired an employee from its developer as a coach. The game of geopolitical influence proved only marginally more complex for the UAE’s top spymaster and business chief. Tahnoon’s AI company secretly bought up a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm cofounded by Donald Trump Jr.

(#44) and Eric Trump. Tahnoon’s fund also used World Liberty’s digital currency to make a $2 billion investment, giving the stablecoin much-needed credibility in the market. Not long after, the Trump administration undid years of export controls and greenlit the sale of thousands of advanced semiconductor chips to the UAE in general and to Tahnoon’s business in particular—a huge step toward realizing his dream of turning the tiny Gulf monarchy into an artificial intelligence superpower.

Funny how that works. He “basically figured out that the way to change foreign policy is to invest in the president’s family’s crypto business,” says Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who is looking to investigate Tahnoon’s deals with the Trumps.

Achilles’ heel

Data centers can go from assets to targets when there’s a war in your neighborhood, which is exactly what happened when Trump ordered the attack on Iran. Tehran responded by firing thousands of munitions at the UAE. Tahnoon has since emerged as a key intermediary between the US and Iran, trying to hammer out some sort of wind-down to the war. Even if there’s peace, Tahnoon’s AI plans could be under threat. The UAE has long had friends in both political parties. But that was before the open alliance with the Trumps.

WHAT’S NEXT

Even if companies decide to scale back on data centers in the emirates, Tahnoon is still poised to have a major piece of artificial intelligence’s next stage. His MGX fund has become a leading investor in Anthropic and OpenAI. And if AI is just a bubble, Tahnoon is working to build out a diversified portfolio with the help of the United States government: The New York Times recently reported that he’s part of an investor group pursuing a multibillion-dollar oil deal that Jared Kushner (#12) and Steve Witkoff, in their capacity as diplomats, are negotiating with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Ultimately, Tahnoon takes the long view. According to Wired, he’s on a “quest to live to 150.” If all else fails, maybe there’s money in a banana stand.

By “banana stand,” we mean some of London’s best-known members clubs, like Annabel’s and Harry’s Bar, which one of Tahnoon’s funds just bought up as part of a $1.8 billion deal.—Noah Shachtman

The Odds Couple

Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara

Founders, Kalshi

AgeS: 30, 30

KALSHI VALUATION: $22 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Betting on the 2024 election turned prediction platform Kalshi from an experiment led by two 20-something MIT grads into a multibillion-dollar betting machine, making markets from real-world events. After cutting their teeth through mere internships at Citadel, Goldman Sachs, and Bridgewater, the duo founded Kalshi in 2018. The concept is not without controversy.

Kalshi bets are essentially gambling, and the potential for insider trading worries more than just the regulators. Growth has been as yet unchecked: Kalshi increased its valuation 11-fold in less than a year, from $2 billion in June 2025 to $22 billion by May, making Lopes Lara the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world (a title once held by Elizabeth Holmes, and also Taylor Swift).

Achilles’ heel

Mansour, who grew up in Lebanon, doesn’t mince words about his and his fellow cofounder’s flaws. He’s late to our call, something he admits is common. “I’m very disorganized,” he says.

“Can confirm. Extremely disorganized,” his publicist chimes in. Lopes Lara, who trained as a ballerina in Brazil before moving to the US for college, is the opposite—“extremely organized,” he says.

“That’s why it works. Otherwise, it’d be crazy.” His strength comes from going deep.

In terms of Isaiah Berlin’s fox and the hedgehog, he’s the hedgehog—who knows one big thing—while Lopes Lara is the fox, who knows lots. He describes her strength as the ability to dive into details and drive to near-perfection while suggesting her weakness is in that “last mile” of execution.

WHAT’S NEXT

Mansour and Lopes Lara can’t help but keep tabs on their direct competitor and New York neighbor, Polymarket, led by 28-year-old Dimes Square bad boy Shayne Coplan (#43), whom Mansour accuses of copying Kalshi at every turn and cheapening the industry. “Why are you putting them on the list?” Mansour asks me.

(He’s right that Kalshi currently has double the trading volume as its competitor.) Kalshi wants to be regulated, Mansour says, and folded into the institutional mesh of society, while the Polymarket bros are more likely to lean into the fringe elements of prediction markets. Kalshi’s success could be a bellwether of Polymarket’s future.

Optics matter, as the industry may well be headed for a Supreme Court case over whether the CFTC can regulate prediction markets, as Mansour and Lopes Lara argue, or whether it is up to the states.—Clara Molot

Christopher Nolan

Director, producer, and president of the Directors Guild of America

TOTAL BOX OFFICE TO DATE (PRoducing and directing): $9.4 billion-plus

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

After winning best picture and best director Oscars for Oppenheimer, Nolan was elected DGA president during postproduction on The Odyssey, which grossed more than $1 billion and proved Nolan as box office king. No other director can assemble this many A-listers, shoot entirely on IMAX, and control marketing. Combine that with leading the DGA’s AI negotiations, and Nolan remains the most powerful creative force in Hollywood. Cillian Murphy chose these three words to describe working with Nolan: “rigor, focus, and excellence.” Also, says Murphy, “he has continued to prove that there is no ceiling to the intelligence of the cinema-going audience.”

Achilles’ heel

Nolan’s propensity to use practical effects as opposed to CGI can be expensive, and as AI asserts itself in a belt-tightening Hollywood, will that become an issue?

WHAT’S NEXT

“At this point, he’s become a genre all his own,” NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley (#45) says. “But if I had to pick,” she adds, “I wouldn’t mind seeing a Christopher Nolan horror film!”—John Ross

MacKenzie Scott

Net worth: $27 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

Is there any name more sainted in philanthropy right now than Scott’s? Jeff Bezos’s first wife offers a radical approach to giving—her donations come with no strings attached, allowing the recipients to use them as they see fit without her oversight—and that has changed the way the world sees charity. Since 2019 (the year of her divorce and the year she joined the Giving Pledge) she’s signed away more than $26 billion.

In 2025 alone, she donated $7 billion, amounting to a third of all US mega-gifts that year (nonprofit parlance for donations over $10 million). And her dollars go far and wide: Recent drops include Habitat for Humanity, Boys & Girls Club, California public schools, and HBCUs. Many organizations don’t even know her money is coming; they need not apply for a MacKenzie Scott gift.

Instead, Scott’s team at Yield Giving does its own quiet research process.

Achilles’ heel

Her writing career. The Princeton English major hasn’t found much esteem for her novels, the latest of which she published serially on Substack. (To be fair, it meant she didn’t have to sell it on Amazon.) And some of her gifts have fallen into controversial hands. Santa Barbara City College is experiencing infighting about the $20 million donation it received in 2021, with its Board of Trustees president saying that some of the money has been used without proper authorization.

WHAT’S NEXT

At some point, every leader needs followers. Can she turn a philosophy into a movement?—Elise Taylor

The Philosopher King

CEO, Palantir

SIZE OF LAST ARMY CONTRACT: Up to $10 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Falling

From your grocery store’s stockists to the military-industrial complex, you have Karp’s data analytics company Palantir to thank for much of how the world functions around you. Cofounded with billionaires Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings, Palantir and its data analytics technology are now integrated into many federal, state, and local agencies, closing the gap between the government’s ambitions and its capabilities—for better or much, much worse. With a law degree and a PhD in social theory, Karp is one of Silicon Valley’s most ideologically driven characters.

Last year, his book The Technological Republic (cowritten with Nicholas Zamiska) provided a manifesto for his worldview, arguing that America needs to embrace hard power, cultural discipline, and AI-powered weaponry to protect the superiority of Western culture—a governing paradigm that conveniently depends on hefty contracts with Palantir to function. According to one tech industry comms guru, Karp has been positioning himself as the “gatekeeper” between the government and other federal contractors. Palantir’s stock price has soared during the second Trump administration, allowing Karp to add to his net worth of $18.

3 billion and change and his sprawling real estate collection, which includes a mansion on Miami’s Venetian Islands; a $120 million former Trappist monastery in Colorado; a 500-acre estate in New Hampshire; and cross-country ski getaways in Alaska, Vermont, and Norway, among other locations.

Achilles’ heel

Karp is not exactly known for his winning personality. One venture capitalist described his company as “pretty odious,” and Karp isn’t necessarily known for his warmth: A sample sound bite from his book’s promo tour was “I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us.” To help smooth over some of Karp’s roughest edges, Palantir has enlisted DC social secretary Francesca Craig.

Meanwhile, Palantir has been vying for a spot as public enemy number one on the left, thanks to its work assisting ICE with deportations, building sophisticated surveillance software, supplying technology to the US and Israeli militaries, and helping identify targets for air strikes in Iran. (A picture of college-age Karp sporting a keffiyeh recently rocked the internet.)

WHAT’S NEXT

The tech lobbyist says there’s a sense that Palantir is on a “ticking clock” in the event that the White House and Congress change hands. In the next two years, the lobbyist believes Karp’s work is cut out for him: He’ll have to get Palantir’s “tentacles into every single company who wants to sell to the federal government” to make the firm indispensable to even the most fired-up Democrats.—Julia Black

Their Father’s Children

Delphine, Antoine, Alexandre, Frédéric, and Jean Arnault

Heirs to LVMH

Ages: 51, 49, 34, 31, 27

MARKET CAP OF LVMH: $200.37 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Rising

The spawn of Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury-goods conglomerate, parent company to the likes of Dior, Givenchy, and Louis Vuitton, have been much mythologized as fashion’s incarnation of Succession. Each of the five siblings holds a prominent executive role in the family business. Delphine is chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture.

She hired Jonathan Anderson to revamp the house, where he has stacked up win after win, including designing Taylor Swift’s wedding dress. Antoine is the director of image and environment for LVMH and CEO of holding company Christian Dior SE. He replaced Sidney Toledano, who has been one of his father’s closest advisers.

Alexandre is the deputy CEO of Moët Hennessy, tasked with revitalizing LVMH’s wine and spirits division after successful stints driving interest and performance at Rimowa and Tiffany & Co. Frédéric is the CEO of Loro Piana, while Jean is the director of watches at Louis Vuitton.

Achilles’ heel

The Arnault children have to keep up with their father’s legacy as fashion’s most aggressive and prolific businessman. The stakes have never been higher: Pop culture has an increasingly contentious view on elitism and its extravagant signifiers. Do the next-gen Arnaults really have what it takes to inspire young shoppers to invest in luxury? Each Arnault sibling has proven proficiency in this space, be that by managing a storied house, hiring the right designer, or conceiving the right marketing effort. But is that enough?

WHAT’S NEXT

LVMH recently raised the age limit for its CEO and chairman from 80 to 85. Bernard, 77, later told shareholders he plans to stay at the helm for at least another seven to eight years, as he has yet to name a successor. Sound familiar?—José Criales-Unzueta

Not Named Bob

Josh D’Amaro

CEO, the Walt Disney Company

DATA POINT: Disney Experiences including its amusement parks and cruises generated $36.2 billion in revenue for FY 2025.

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

D’Amaro rose through Disney’s most dependable fiefdom: experiences, the segment that kept printing money while streaming burned it. Now he has the whole empire. A parks guy taking over Disney is its own kind of corporate thesis. Even in the digital age, the things you can touch, ride, hug, and post are still the most valuable.

Achilles’ heel

He inherits all of Disney, even the parts that aren’t the happiest place on earth. And he’s got to fill the Mickey-sized shoes of Bob Iger, so adept at leading the magic kingdom that he’s boomeranged before (ask Bob Chapek how that went).

WHAT’S NEXT

Proving the parks playbook—franchise discipline, emotional nostalgia—can work across the entire company. So far that has involved belt-tightening and job cuts.—Maxwell Adler

The Fortunate Son

Lachlan Murdoch

CEO and executive chairman, Fox Corporation; chairman, News Corp

FOX MARKET CAP: $27 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

Fratricide. Since then, Fox had a stellar run with sky-high ratings (and revenue) for its World Cup coverage. Fox News remains dominant in cable news. Murdoch’s recent acquisition of Roku is seen as a savvy bet on the future of the company to scale up in the streaming wars. “This looks like it’s Lachlan’s deal, and it’s the biggest deal Fox has ever done. And when you put it in those terms, it’s the biggest deal the Murdochs have ever done,” says James Packer, Murdoch’s former business partner, noting Murdoch has been “underestimated” multiple times.

Achilles’ heel

Questions still linger about whether this Murdoch has the intestinal fortitude to become a political kingmaker in the tradition of his father.

WHAT’S NEXT

Will Murdoch take another run at reuniting Fox and News Corp? As Australian investor Angus Aitken tells VF, “If they came together in time, would it make sense? One hundred percent.”—Lachlan Cartwright

The Benevolent Billionaire

Laurene Powell Jobs

NET WORTH: $15.5 billion

YEAR AHEAD: Steady

The widow of Steve Jobs has made her own name taking big swings in an array of industries, some obvious (what billionaire doesn’t have skin in the AI game?) and some not so, largely through Emerson Collective, her venture capital and philanthropic investing firm. In 2017, Emerson took a majority stake in The Atlantic and by 2021 was the primary owner. Five years later, The Atlantic is a model for subscriber-based media brands, with more than 1.6 million subscribers, three Pulitzer Prizes, and annual