20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford University

How common is it for the people shaping AI to hold a university post and a company job at the same time? Among the 6,766 people we track with a known current organization, we estimate that 539 (8%) currently hold roles at both a university and a company. They account for 20% of the 2,692 people currently at a company, 13% of the 4,047 at a university, and 31% of the 1,728 who hold positions at two or more parent organizations. Across current employers, Google leads all companies with 90 dual-role people, and Stanford University leads all universities with 29.

Key findings

• 539 people (8% of the 6,766 with a known current employer) hold both a university role and a company role now, including 20% of current company people (539 of 2,692) and 13% of current university people (539 of 4,047). Among the 539, 410 (76%) hold non-founder company roles and 129 (24%) are founders or co-founders of one of their current companies.
• In dated career histories across decades with at least 500 placed people, the share who held both roles in the same calendar year rose from 5% in the 1970s (34 of 754) to 19% in the 2020s (1,153 of 6,139). Single-year overlap peaked in 2021 at 618 people (12% of 5,298 placed people and 36% of 1,725 company people) and stood at 534 (10% of placed people and 30% of company people) in 2025.
• Google employs 90 current dual-role people (20% of 446 current people), followed by NVIDIA with 27 (22% of 125) and Amazon with 24. On the campus side, Stanford University leads with 29 (28% of 104), ahead of Carnegie Mellon University (24, 19%) and the University of Washington (24, 35%), and the University of California, Berkeley (18, 29%).

Dual roles by decade

Across all placed people, the same-year dual-role share rose from 5% (34 of 754) in the 1970s to 18% (1,063 of 5,783) in the 2010s and 19% (1,153 of 6,139) in the 2020s. Among people at universities, the share who also held a company role in the same year rose from 5% (34 of 622) in the 1970s to 26% (1,153 of 4,434) in the 2020s, reaching its highest level in the 2020s.

Three lines show the share of people holding overlapping university and company work positions in the same calendar year across 6 decades from the 1970s to the 2020s: among all placed people (5% to 19%), among people at universities (5% to 26%), and among people at companies (29% to 44%, peaking at 53% in the 2000s).

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026. Education stints are excluded; labs roll up to their parent organizations.

Data table

Decade	Placed people	At a university	At a company	Both in same year	Share of all placed	Share of university people	Share of company people	Leading company in dual roles	Leading university in dual roles
1970s	754	622	117	34	5%	5%	29%	AT&T (9)	University of Edinburgh and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4 each)
1980s	1,577	1,300	312	128	8%	10%	41%	IBM (26)	Stanford University (16)
1990s	2,752	2,312	628	304	11%	13%	48%	AT&T (44)	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (35)
2000s	4,239	3,612	1,014	539	13%	15%	53%	Microsoft (99)	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (43)
2010s	5,783	4,562	2,112	1,063	18%	23%	50%	Google (252)	Stanford University (74)
2020s	6,139	4,434	2,621	1,153	19%	26%	44%	Google (255)	Stanford University (78)

Among people working at companies, the dual-role share rose from 29% (34 of 117) in the 1970s to a peak of 53% (539 of 1,014) in the 2000s, stood at 50% (1,063 of 2,112) in the 2010s, and then fell to 44% (1,153 of 2,621) in the 2020s. Year by year across complete calendar years with at least 500 placed people (1976–2025), the number of people with overlapping university and company roles rose from 5 (1% of 524 placed people) in 1976 to a peak of 618 in 2021 (12% of 5,298 placed people and 36% of 1,725 company people), and fell to 534 (10% of 5,265 placed people and 30% of 1,782 company people) in 2025.

Across all 2,576 dated transitions from a university work role to a company, 1,154 (45%) kept the university post alongside the new company job and 1,422 (55%) ended it; in the reverse direction from companies to universities, 692 of 1,617 transitions (43%) kept the company role. Among decades with at least 50 work-origin university-to-company transitions, the share that kept the university post peaked at 57% in the 2010s (510 of 894) and fell to 30% in the 2020s (283 kept the university role and 652 left it).

Among companies, the decade leader in dual university-company roles was AT&T in the 1970s (9), IBM in the 1980s (26), AT&T in the 1990s (44), Microsoft in the 2000s (99) and Google in the 2010s through the 2020s (252–255). Among universities, the decade leader was the University of Edinburgh and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s (4 each), Stanford University in the 1980s (16), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1990s through the 2000s (35–43) and Stanford University in the 2010s through the 2020s (74–78).

Which companies have the most dual-role people now?

Today, 1,728 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (26%) hold positions at two or more parent organizations. Pairing a university role with a company role is the most common cross-sector combination (539 people, 31% of everyone at multiple parent organizations), ahead of university and nonprofit (415), university and research lab (234) and university and government (217); 248 people hold roles at two or more universities with no other sector and 77 hold roles at two or more companies with no other sector.

Across the 329 companies where at least one current person also holds a university post, Google leads with 90 people (20% of its 446 current people), including 58 at Google DeepMind and 26 listed directly at Google. NVIDIA follows with 27 (22% of 125), ahead of Amazon with 24. Together, the top 5 companies (Google, NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta) account for 175 of the 539 dual-role people (32%), counting each person once across the group.

Horizontal bars rank the 10 companies with the most people who currently hold both a company role and a university role, led by Google with 90.

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026. Subsidiaries and labs count under their parent company.

Data table

Company	Dual-role people	Current people at company	Dual share	Company founders in dual group	Most common university partner(s)
Google	90	446	20%	1	University of Washington (8)
NVIDIA	27	125	22%	0	Stanford University (4)
Amazon	24	63	38%	0	Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, Berkeley (3 each)
Microsoft	18	139	13%	0	University of Washington (6)
Meta	17	133	13%	0	Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, University of California, Berkeley and University of Washington (2 each)
Anthropic	12	117	10%	1	Stanford University (2)
OpenAI	10	93	11%	0	Harvard University (2)
Apple	8	31	26%	0	8 universities (1 each)
Alibaba	7	52	13%	0	7 universities (1 each)
Samsung	5	6	83%	0	5 universities (1 each)

Across all 539 current dual-role people, 410 (76%) hold non-founder company roles and 129 (24%) hold a founder or co-founder role at one of their current companies. At the 5 companies with the most dual-role people, 171 of the 175 dual-role people (98%) hold non-founder roles and 4 (2%) are founders or co-founders. Across all 329 companies with a current dual-role person, 291 (88%) have one dual-role person, and those 291 companies account for 110 of the 129 dual-role company founders (85%).

Which universities and university–company pairs lead?

On the academic side, 208 universities have at least one current person who also holds a company role. Stanford University leads with 29 dual-role people (28% of its 104 current people, including 10 company founders), followed by Carnegie Mellon University with 24 (19% of 124, 9 founders) and the University of Washington with 24 (35% of 69, 2 founders), the University of California, Berkeley with 18 (29% of 63), and University College London with 16.

Horizontal bars rank the 12 universities with the most people who currently hold both a university role and a company role, led by Stanford University with 29.

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026. Campus institutes and labs count under their parent university.

Data table

University	Dual-role people	Current people at university	Dual share	Company founders in dual group	Most common company partner(s)
Stanford University	29	104	28%	10	Google and NVIDIA (4 each)
Carnegie Mellon University	24	124	19%	9	Amazon and Google (3 each)
University of Washington	24	69	35%	2	Google (8)
University of California, Berkeley	18	63	29%	5	Google (5)
University College London	16	29	55%	2	Google (7)
New York University	14	50	28%	5	AMI Labs, Meta and Roche (2 each)
Harvard University	13	52	25%	4	Google (3)
McGill University	13	38	34%	1	Google (6)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	12	113	11%	1	Google (3)
University of Toronto	12	72	17%	2	Google (2)
Université de Montréal	12	38	32%	0	Google (6)
University of Texas at Austin	12	27	44%	1	Google (2)

Among the 12 universities in the chart, the share of current people who also hold a company role ranges from 11% at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (12 of 113) to 55% at University College London (16 of 29). Across all 532 current university–company pairings, the University of Washington and Google (Hamid Palangi, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, Kristina N. Toutanova, Marco Tulio Ribeiro, Natasha Jaques, Richard Szeliski, Sameer Agarwal and Steven Seitz) is the most common with 8 people, followed by University College London and Google (Arthur Gretton, Edward Grefenstette, Marc Deisenroth, Nicolas Heess, Sebastian Riedel, Simon Schmitt and Zeb Kurth-Nelson) with 7 and McGill University and Google; Université de Montréal and Google; and the University of Washington and Microsoft with 6 each.