The AI startup founders to follow are the people who started the labs and tools you already use: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at OpenAI, Aravind Srinivas at Perplexity, Clem Delangue at Hugging Face and Amjad Masad at Replit. Their posts are often where launches and product changes appear first. TechTwitter IO's free who-to-follow list for tech Twitter collects them with a line on each, and this article sorts the founders by what they build.
Founders of the big model labs
| Founder | Company | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Sam Altman (@sama) | OpenAI, CEO | Launches often show up on his feed first |
| Greg Brockman (@gdb) | OpenAI, co-founder and president | Demos of what the team just shipped |
| Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) | Google DeepMind co-founder, Isomorphic Labs CEO | Research news, from a 2024 chemistry Nobel winner |
| Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleyman) | DeepMind co-founder, now CEO of Microsoft AI | Microsoft's consumer AI plans |
| Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) | Safe Superintelligence, co-founder | Rare posts that get read closely |
| Mira Murati (@miramurati) | Thinking Machines Lab, founder | News from a former OpenAI CTO's new lab |
Founders of AI products developers use
These matter if you pay for AI tools each month. Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas), Perplexity's co-founder and CEO, answers user complaints himself, so you see what breaks and what gets fixed. Amjad Masad (@amasad) runs Replit and reposts what people build with its agent. Clem Delangue (@ClementDelangue) co-founded Hugging Face and keeps track of which open models are winning, which is handy when you want a cheaper model for a task.
Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) founded Scale AI and now leads AI at Meta. David Ha (@hardmaru) co-founded Sakana AI after Google Brain.
Founders who teach as they build
Two founders stand out for explaining their work. François Chollet (@fchollet) created Keras and the ARC-AGI benchmark and co-founded Ndea. Jeremy Howard (@jeremyphoward) co-founded fast.ai and Answer.AI and teaches deep learning for free. If you want to understand why a model behaves the way it does, these two are a better follow than another launch feed.
Making the feed work
A short list beats a long one. Follow the founders whose tools are in your stack, then like and reply to the posts you want more of. TechTwitter IO's guide says the For You tab picks this up within a week or two. Mute launch hype words if they wear you out.
For a lighter read on the same people, the TechTwitter IO paper is a free daily that turns AI launches, outages and feuds into satire, with puzzles like Twordle and Real or Satire. Treat it as comedy: the site says that unless a post links to its source, the people and quotes are parody. For the real announcement, go to the company's own blog.
When is a founder's feed the wrong source? When you need exact model limits or prices. Those change often, and the vendor's docs page is the place to check them, not a post.
FAQ
Which AI founder posts launches first? Sam Altman's feed is often where OpenAI launches appear first, according to TechTwitter IO's notes.
Should developers follow AI researchers or AI founders? Both. Founders show what is shipping. Researcher-founders like François Chollet and Jeremy Howard explain how it works.
Is the TechTwitter IO list free? Yes. The list and the satirical daily paper are both free to read.