Pat Grady and Alfred Lin Are Among TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI

Aug 27, 2026Co-stewards, Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalThe most storied venture capital firm in Silicon Valley has new bosses. In late 2025, Sequoia Capital appointed Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as its new “co-stewards,” marking only the fourth leadership transition in the firm’s 54-year history. The pair have wasted no time in doubling down on investments in AI, with bets on startups across verticals including law, health, and cybersecurity. One of their key theses is that there is plenty of opportunity for startups to use AI to outcompete legacy software incumbents. Sequoia also holds significant stakes in frontier model companies, including OpenAI, in which it first invested in 2021. Since taking the top jobs, Lin and Grady have helped raise $10 billion across multiple funds and made a $2.5 billion investment in OpenAI competitor Anthropic. Meanwhile, SpaceX—which was merely a rocket company when Sequoia first invested—has moved into the AI race via its acquisition of xAI, in which Sequoia was already an investor. That gives Sequoia exposure to a total of three competing frontier AI labs—a break from the venture tradition of only backing one horse per race. As each of these compani...