Where they are building now
Roles and career updates checked on 5 November 2026. These women are building models, shaping how AI behaves, developing products and helping research reach people. Follow their current work and the next steps they have announced, from new labs to board and advisory roles.
Daniela Amodei: Leading Anthropic
Daniela Amodei is Anthropic's co-founder and president, and chair of its board. She leads the executive team and work across research, engineering, product, governance and commercial operations. Her contribution is building the organisation around the science, connecting the people developing Claude with the teams responsible for putting it into use.
Mira Murati: Building Thinking Machines Lab
Mira Murati leads Thinking Machines Lab as co-founder and CEO, following her work as OpenAI's chief technology officer. The lab develops models and tools that people can adapt to their own expertise. Its 15 October 2026 Tinker update described work to make model customisation more accessible, with users keeping control of their data and training code.
Fei-Fei Li: Spatial intelligence and a proposed AMD role
Fei-Fei Li leads World Labs, developing spatial intelligence models that work with interactive 3D environments. AMD announced an agreement to acquire the company on 28 September 2026. Li remains World Labs' co-founder and CEO: her proposed AMD role as executive vice president and chief scientist would begin only after closing. AMD's 4 November filing still lists the acquisition as pending.
Lila Ibrahim: Preparing people for more capable AI
Lila Ibrahim is Google DeepMind's Chief AI Readiness Officer, following her work as its founding chief operating officer. Her remit includes preparing people and institutions for more capable AI. On 15 October 2026, she co-authored Google's announcement of partnerships in India spanning crop science, agricultural resilience and education, showing how research can reach communities through practical collaboration.
Joelle Pineau: Research leadership at Cohere
Joelle Pineau is Cohere's Chief AI Officer, bringing research leadership to AI for businesses and governments. Cohere announced her appointment on 14 August 2025, and its current executive directory confirms the role. Previously the leader of Meta's Fundamental AI Research team, she now advances Cohere's research and product development, connecting scientific progress with tools organisations can put to work.
Ami Vora: Turning Claude's capabilities into products
Ami Vora is Anthropic's Chief Product Officer, responsible for turning advances in Claude into useful product experiences. On 13 January 2026, Anthropic announced that she would lead Product as Mike Krieger moved into Labs. Her current role centres on scaling the products people rely on, working alongside the company's engineering leadership as the models' capabilities develop.
Amanda Askell: Shaping Claude's character
Amanda Askell leads Anthropic's work on Claude's character, including how it approaches values, judgment and interactions with people. She is the primary author of Claude's constitution, whose new version was published on 22 January 2026. That work makes the company's intended model behaviour explicit, giving researchers and users a clearer basis for discussing what helpful, responsible AI should do.
Cat Wu: An announced move to OpenAI
In an announcement posted on 5 November 2026 UTC, Cat Wu said she is joining OpenAI to lead product management for Core Products. She previously led product for Claude Code at Anthropic. Her stated ambition is to build agents that support people and teams while keeping users in control. The announcement does not specify her start date.
Lauren Tan, known as poteto: Engineering with coding agents
Lauren Tan, known online as poteto, builds Grok Bot and Cursor at SpaceX Super Intelligence and contributes to the React Compiler core team. She created pstack to share engineering workflows for coding agents. Her work brings attention to the practical foundations of agent-assisted development: investigating the task, structuring the work and checking that changes behave as intended.
Ashley Alexander: Building OpenAI's consumer products
Ashley Alexander leads consumer products at OpenAI, a responsibility confirmed by an OpenAI spokesperson in reporting on 5 November 2026. Earlier, she led the company's work on health products and helped introduce ChatGPT for Clinicians. Her own account of that launch describes building with clinicians around their daily work. She now brings that product experience to OpenAI's broader consumer offering.
Joy Jiao: Bringing AI into life sciences
Joy Jiao is OpenAI's Head of Life Sciences, developing AI capabilities for scientific research. A 21 October 2026 announcement with PerturbAI described agents that help researchers interpret experimental data, connect findings with scientific literature and identify hypotheses to test. Her work connects model development with the tasks of discovery, turning complex biological data into questions that researchers can investigate.
Jill Hazelbaker: An incoming voice for public understanding
Jill Hazelbaker is OpenAI's incoming Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, with her appointment announced on 3 November 2026. She will lead global communications and corporate positioning, with a focus on public understanding and trust. Previously president and chief corporate affairs officer at Uber, she brings experience helping a technology company communicate through growth and change. Her start date was not specified.
Fidji Simo: AI infrastructure and continuing advice
Fidji Simo joined Nscale's board as an independent director on 11 September 2026 and continues to advise OpenAI. The former OpenAI CEO of AGI Deployment brings experience taking consumer technology to scale. Her new board role connects that product background with Nscale's work on AI computing infrastructure, while her advisory role keeps her involved in OpenAI's next chapter.
Kate Rouch: A new board role in creative entertainment
Kate Rouch joined Spin Master's board in an appointment announced on 29 October 2026. OpenAI's former chief marketing officer brings experience building technology brands at OpenAI, Coinbase and Meta. Her contribution now includes board service at a company spanning toys, entertainment and digital games, extending her work with global brands into another creative sector.
Denise Dresser: Following her next chapter
Denise Dresser helped build OpenAI's revenue team and strengthen relationships with major customers. On 13 August 2026, OpenAI announced that she would leave after a transition period. Her own message celebrated the team's work and looked ahead to new opportunities. As of 5 November, her next destination has not been confirmed in the sources reviewed.
Sarah Friar: Financing AI's development
Sarah Friar remains OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer, leading financial strategy and operations. In her 10 August 2026 article, she described her team's work on AI-assisted forecasting and financial analysis, with people retaining responsibility for decisions. Her 21 October Masters of Scale appearance confirmed her continuing CFO role and explored the company's growth and investment choices.