--- description: Find out why Ravi Kumar S made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Ravi Kumar S image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50ee3f7ce7140e30/6998c92a47fe51811f55bff9/Ravi-Kumar-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Ravi Kumar S CEO, Cognizant by [Aimee Groth](/author/aimee-groth/) ## Aimee Groth Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) AI-led organizations will eventually become sentient enterprises, says Ravi Kumar S—less hierarchical, more networked systems designed to continuously evolve, powered by agentic AI and guided by a “[human in the loop](https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/ravi-kumar-cognizant-future-technology/ "undefined").” Think of it as a supercharged [Hollywood model](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/magazine/what-hollywood-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-work.html "undefined")—a temporary, project-­based business structure where agile teams assemble around a shared mission and reconfigure as priorities shift. At Cognizant, a roughly $35 billion, 350,000-employee firm long known for IT outsourcing across sectors like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, Kumar has placed a billion-dollar bet on generative AI to accelerate his vision. Also in the plan: context engineering, or the practice of teaching AI agents to absorb a team’s culture, workflows, and decision logic. A key question for Kumar is “How do I teach AI to be a member of my team?” he says. Under his leadership, Cognizant has launched its Agent Foundry platform for enterprises to build AI agents at scale, secured 59 AI-led patents, and joined the White House’s [AI education initiative](https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/60-organizations-sign-white-house-pledge-to-support-americas-youth-and-invest-in-ai-education/ "undefined"). While some CEOs have indicated they expect AI will eliminate jobs, Kumar argues it will [democratize expertise](https://www.businessinsider.com/cognizant-ceo-entry-level-hiring-job-market-grow-ai-2025-6 "undefined") and expand access, especially for early-career talent. Cognizant’s innovation program Bluebolt has surfaced more than 500,000 employee ideas for AI use cases. And its upskilling initiative, Synapse, which aims to train people in generative AI, recently doubled its goal to 2 million trainees. Meanwhile, this summer, Cognizant hosted a huge online generative AI hackathon event for vibe coding, whereby users provide instructions in plain language and an AI model writes the code to execute the desired output. A total of more than 50,000 employees and contractors participated in the event, which won a Guinness World Record for number of participants, the company said. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305789/ravi-kumar-s/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305789/ravi-kumar-s/"},"headline":"Ravi Kumar S","datePublished":"2025-08-26T18:43:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:40.254Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305789/ravi-kumar-s/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50ee3f7ce7140e30/6998c92a47fe51811f55bff9/Ravi-Kumar-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Aimee Groth","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/aimee-groth/"}],"creator":"Aimee Groth","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50ee3f7ce7140e30/6998c92a47fe51811f55bff9/Ravi-Kumar-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305789/ravi-kumar-s/","name":"Ravi Kumar S"}}]}] ```