It’s been a remarkable news year in the global technology industry. From the continued rise of artificial intelligence to the disruption that has swept through the semiconductor industry, 2024 was a year of immense change and disruption.
These are the men and women who were at the forefront of it all on the global stage. Presenting TechCentral’s Global Newsmakers of 2024…
5. Sundar Pichai
This year could have turned out a lot worse than it did for Google (and Alphabet) CEO Sundar Pichai. Google started the year looking like a laggard in artificial intelligence as the world focused its attention on the innovations coming out of ChatGPT developer OpenAI. But by the end of the year, Google had caught up – and through it all, Pichai never seemed to panic, exuding a calm confidence that his company had the technical nous to compete at the cutting edge of AI. It did.
On Pichai’s watch, Google launched Gemini 2.0, an AI model that has won praise for its speed and advanced capabilities. AI answers are now also baked into search results – and much of the time are useful (even if it’s bad news for publishers that depends on click-throughs from the search giant).
Read: Google says it has cracked a major challenge in quantum computing
Google also this year made significant strides in quantum computing, unveiling a new quantum chip called “Willow”, capable of solving complex problems way beyond the reach of classical computers, demonstrating again that the company has some of the best brains in the business.
Of course, it wasn’t all positive news for Google and Pichai in 2024: the company is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the US government that could see it forced to sell its Chrome web browser or even face a potential breakup. It’s the biggest antitrust case against a tech company since the US sued Microsoft in the late 1990s – and it could end badly for Google.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
Last year was not one Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg will remember with fondness. His US$50-billion bet on the metaverse was a dud, and the sky-high cost sent Meta’s share price into freefall as investors questioned the strategy. The tide turned in 2024, however, with Meta eschewing the virtual world-building for artificial intelligence.
Read: Mark Zuckerberg’s shirt puts him in the company of Roman emperors
Zuckerberg also underwent a major personal brand overhaul (just look at his radical new hairstyle). Whereas last year he was looking morose much of the time – who wouldn’t have as billions in shareholder wealth evaporated? – he now looks more like the cat that got the cream. The rise in Meta’s share price means Zuckerberg is now the third richest person in the world with a net worth of $211-billion – behind only Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. All in all, it was a banner year for Zuckerbucks, as US President-elect Donald Trump likes to call him.
3. Lisa Su and Pat Gelsinger
What a year it’s been in the chip industry. There’s Nvidia, of course, which continued to ride the AI wave to a $3-trillion market cap (see our number 2 newsmaker), but there was plenty of other activity in the semiconductor space in 2024.
US chip maker Intel, arguably at its weakest in decades, made the headlines this year for all the wrong reasons: huge financial losses, dwindling market share, the rise of ARM-design processors in personal computers and an inability to compete in AI chips with Nvidia. In the end, it cost CEO Pat Gelsinger – the Prodigal Son who returned to the fold and who had been touted at the best person to lead the troubled company’s turnaround – his job. But can anyone save Intel at this point? All eyes are now on Intel’s board, who must pick a capable successor. It may be Intel’s last shot at saving itself from an ignominious breakup.
Read: How Lisa Su built AMD into a chip powerhouse
Then there’s AMD and its CEO Lisa Su, who showed that with determined hard work, even a relative minnow can achieve great things. AMD’s power-efficient CPU designs, including those built on the new Zen 5 architecture, have become the preferred choice of gamers and those who demand high-performance desktop computing. This, combined with the move to ARM-based chips by Apple and some PC vendors, is piling the pressure on Intel.
Read: Intel board lost confidence in CEO Pat Gelsinger
Su, who many don’t know is a (distant) cousin of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, was named by Time magazine as its CEO of the Year for her pivotal role in transforming AMD into a leading semiconductor company. She’s pushing hard to compete directly with Nvidia for AI data centre business while keeping its rival on its toes in the GPU market.
The net result? AMD, whose market capitalisation was once dwarfed by Intel’s, is now worth more than twice as much.
2. Jensen Huang
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang is arguably the face of the AI revolution. Nvidia’s share price was at a low of $47.32 on 2 January but rose steeply for much of the year, fuelled by the industry’s insatiable demand for AI chips, reaching a record high in November of $152.89, giving it a market valuation north of $3.5-trillion.
Read: The trillion-dollar man: who is Nvidia’s Jensen Huang?
Compared to other Big Tech founders, Huang’s 3.5% stake in Nvidia is comparatively tiny, but his net worth has still surged to an estimated $113-billion at the time of writing. Nvidia is now one of only three companies in the world – the others are Apple and Microsoft – to surpass a $3-trillion market cap, a feat it also achieved in 2024.
1. Elon Musk
In some years, it’s difficult to pick the global newsmaker in tech, but in 2024 the choice couldn’t have been more obvious: Elon Musk is TechCentral’s Global Newsmaker of the Year. The world’s richest person – at the time of writing, he had amassed a personal fortune of a staggering $458-billion – has rarely been out of the news this year.
From backing Donald Trump to win the US presidency to becoming the co-head of the US department of government efficiency (Doge), the South African-born Musk is now, without doubt, the world’s most powerful and influential businessman.
Of course, if Musk was operating in Africa and sponsored an African government leader’s election to high office, he’d be accused of crony capitalism at best – and naked corruption at worst.
Read: Musk, Ramaswamy to lead US department of government efficiency
Where Musk finds the time for everything he does is a mystery. Not only was he on the stump for Trump for much of the second half of 2024, but he also has a large number of complex – and fast-growing – businesses to oversee.
Among his many achievements in 2024, these were among the standouts:
- SpaceX’s valuation topped $350-billion for the first time, making it the world’s most valuable start-up. And did you see the successful catch of the Starship rocket booster on its launch pad? Remarkable stuff, and a key step in Musk achieving his burning desire to get to Mars and make humans a multiplanetary species.
- xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up, achieved a valuation of $50-billion. He’s determined to win the AI race, even though he’s chasing well-funded rivals like OpenAI/Microsoft and Google for the crown. Could he (ab)use his newfound political power to gain an unfair advantage – and stick it to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, with whom he feuded for much of the year?
- Tesla’s valuation hit a new record high above $1.5-trillion, making all other car makers look like minnows in comparison. Whether that kind of valuation is in any way warranted is open to much debate.
- Musk’s personal wealth exceeded $400-billion (and nearly topped $500-billion), making him the first person in history to amass a personal fortune that large. Of course, much of it is on paper only, tied up in Tesla stock.
Whatever you think of Musk – and views are sharply divided – he really is the only choice for the top spot in TechCentral’s Global Newsmakers of 2024. Will he top the list again next year? We won’t bet against it. — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media
TechCentral will publish its South African Newsmakers of 2024 on Friday.
