Benzinga | Sep 15, 2021 09:09PM EDT

Musk, Cook, Buterin And More: 5 Names Investors Would Recognize On This Year's Time List Of 100 Most Influential People

On Wednesday, the Time 100 Most Influential People list was published. The list divides 100 people into the categories of Icons, Pioneers, Titans, Artists, Leader and Innovators.

The Time 100 List: The 2021 Time 100 Most Influential People list featured the latest two presidents, with both Joe Biden and Donald Trump making it to the list as influential people of 2021. The list also included several CEOs of publicly traded companies and the co-founder of one of the most well-known cryptocurrencies worldwide.

Tim Cook: The CEO of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) makes the Time 100 list as a Titan. The description of Cook was written by Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE) co-founder Phil Knight.

"When we first talked to Tim Cook about becoming a member of the Nike board, we were hoping to add a good decisionmaker to the team," Knight said. "He also offered the most valuable attribute of any leader in any field: wisdom."

Knight says what separates Cook from other leaders are the intangibles of character, compassion and courage.

Knight praises the way Cook took over Apple after Steve Jobs passed away and announced his plan for Apple.

"I am not the second Steve Jobs. I am the first Tim Cook," Cook said at the time.

Jensen Huang: The CEO of NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) enters the Time 100 Most Influential People list as an Innovator.

Coursera Inc (NYSE:COUR) CEO Andrew Ng describes the transformation of artificial intelligence in the world and hardware that makes this possible, led by Huang.

"In 2003, amid great skepticism, Huang direct his company Nvidia to adapt chips designs to paint graphics on computer screens," Ng said. "In the process, he has helped enable a revolution that allows phones to answer questions out loud, farms to spray weeds but not crops, doctors to predict the properties of new drugs."

Related Link: 5 Things You Might Not Know About Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin

Elon Musk: Well-known Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk joins the Time 100 list in 2021 as an Innovator.

"It's hard to think of a person less able to be summed up in 150 words than Elon Musk, Arianna Huffington wrote.

Huffington praised the efforts by Musk to break free of limits and constraints and create companies changing the world like Tesla, Paypal Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), SpaceX and The Boring Company.

"Musk isn't just changing how we transport ourselves, he's augmenting human possibilities."

Mary Barra: In the Innovator category is General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) CEO Mary Barra.

"With fewer than 10% of Fortune 500 companies helmed by women, Mary Barra is a standout," former International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty wrote.

Rometty praised Barra's career being spent at General Motors from line inspector all the way up to CEO in 2014.

Barra is pushing GM forward and spearheading an effort for 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2035 as "the right thing to do."

Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin is listed as an Innovator on the Time 100 list.

"Thanks to Reddit's r/Ethereum community, I've had the privilege of following Vitalik Buterin's career from early on," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said.

Ohanian credits Buterin for having the idea to launch Ethereum and for helping push the growth of NFTs, an area where the entrepreneur has invested in.

"No one person could've come up with all of the uses for Ethereum, but it did take one person's idea to get it started."

Photo: By NVIDIA Corp. on Flickr