On June 9, The Boston Globe released its 2026 “Tech Power Players” list, recognizing 50 influential local leaders in technology and business across Massachusetts. The list includes eight MIT affiliates including President Sally Kornbluth, Prof. Daniela Rus (director of CSAIL), Prof. Regina Barzilay, Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang, Prof. Max Tegmark, Ana Bakshi (executive director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship), Katie Rae CEO and Managing Partner of Engine Ventures), and Senior Lecturer Brian Halligan, together with numerous MIT alumni.
Along with recognizing individual leaders, the Power Players coverage highlights MIT’s research labs, its culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, industry connections, recent AI initiatives, and the Institute’s deep commitment to maintaining Massachusetts’ technological leadership.
“Massachusetts can absolutely lead on this next wave,” says President Kornbluth, noting that the longer term is vivid with burgeoning opportunities to advance technologies in fields from manufacturing, life and health sciences to quantum technologies and energy in service of Americans across the country.
Advancing AI and entrepreneurship
In the case of AI, MIT is “working to drive artificial intelligence forward in sectors where the region is strongest, from biotechnology and robotics to defense and clean energy. It’s also attempting to broaden entrepreneurship through a ‘dorm-to-startup’ push, making a pipeline of support services — from hack-a-thons to enterprise funding — to assist students to begin firms between classes,” writes Robert Weisman for The Globe.
Looking ahead, The Globe highlights how MIT goals to stay a central driver of AI advancement inside higher ed.
“President Sally Kornbluth is reinvigorating the varsity’s support of the local innovation ecosystem,” writes Aaron Pressman, noting how MIT is “unveiling recent online classes dedicated to AI — with free entry-level classes for anyone — and inspiring more entrepreneurship on campus.”
MIT’s free, online AI courses could help local tech leaders of their challenge “to make sure people, not only corporations, profit from the technology,” writes Pressman.
And in the case of applying AI technologies to real-world problems, MIT goals to make sure the greater Boston area stays a frontrunner.
“Some schools in Massachusetts, including MIT, are carving out a specialty in applied AI — sometimes called ‘AI+X’ — deploying the technology to assist businesses, hospitals, and research institutions to supercharge productivity, innovation, and scientific breakthroughs,” explains Weisman.
Aman Narang ‘04, CEO of Toast, adds: “The superpower has at all times been the university system. The perfect thing Boston can do is keep these people around.”
MIT startups are a key driver of the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. To make sure the greater Boston area stays a hub for innovators and to answer growing student interest, MIT is seeking to construct upon its existing entrepreneurship resources for college kids, including the greater than 150 courses and 85 centers and programs dedicated to fostering an entrepreneurial community. Moreover, President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Anantha Chandrakasan recently formed the Committee on Accelerating Translation and Entrepreneurship (CATE) to explore anew how the Institute can best support, remove barriers to, and speed up the movement of ideas from MIT’s research and modern discoveries into recent ventures.
Further, reflecting on the optimism surrounding the Greater Boston tech scene, The Globe describes how applications for The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s startup accelerator program have doubled from last 12 months, and nearly one-fifth of MIT undergraduates — about 800 students — attended a recent startup profession fair.
Innovating change beyond MIT
The straightforward worm could drive the longer term of AI. This might sound like a squishy premise, but that’s the thought behind MIT startup Liquid AI, which is developing AI models inspired by the brain structure of an easy worm and will significantly reduce AI energy consumption. Liquid AI’s models, “which may uncover financial fraud and pilot autonomous drones, require far less electricity to operate than large language models, saving energy and water, which is used to chill data centers,” Pressman explains.
The Globe highlights how Liquid AI recently signed a take care of Mercedes-Benz to include its technology into the onboard systems of cars sold in North America.
To power recent AI technologies – and ensure Americans across the country can have reliable and inexpensive energy sources – researchers at MIT and numerous alumni are also turning their attention to the longer term of energy.
In Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang’s lab, researchers are developing batteries that may store more electricity over longer periods, creating “more opportunities for wind, solar, and other clean energy sources.”
Weisman highlights how “Chiang’s lab and other MIT research centers are also working on innovations in microchips, critical minerals, fusion technology, and defense tech. All are examples of ‘tough tech’ projects combining science and engineering, which Chiang says ‘are within the sweet spot of the Boston ecosystem.’“
Soon, 80 MIT students will work as summer interns and employees at GE Vernova, because of the MIT-GE Vernova Climate and Energy Alliance, a collaboration geared toward advancing research and education that can speed up the worldwide energy transition.
GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik wanted his organization to “plug into the town’s innovation culture,” particularly the MIT campus and community. The corporate announced it might dedicate $50 million over five years to fund internships and research projects by which students and college work alongside GE Vernova engineers and technicians.
Essentially the most promising area for the Greater Boston tech scene
The Globe concludes by asking each Power Player what essentially the most promising thing in regards to the Greater Boston tech scene is at once.
For Rus, the reply is: “talent. Boston has the very best AI researchers on this planet, and so they’re producing genuinely recent ideas, not incremental ones,” she explains.
In the case of realizing the potential of fusion energy, Bob Mumgaard SM ’15, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, explains that he couldn’t have built the corporate anywhere but Massachusetts because of the region’s expertise in engineering, designing, and manufacturing hardware and equipment and access to school researchers.
“The ecosystem has the constructing blocks,” says Mumgaard. “Massachusetts is the strongest within the nation in innovation in energy.”
President Kornbluth points to quantum.
“There isn’t a more vital technological field at once than quantum science and technology, and the Boston area has the best concentration of quantum talent anywhere on this planet,” Kornbluth emphasizes.