Tech billionaire, Elon Musk, has been named America’s top living innovator by Forbes, leading the magazine’s newly released ranking of the 250 greatest innovators.

The ranking, unveiled on Thursday, forms part of a year-long series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Forbes said the list highlights people who not only invent new ideas but also transform them into businesses that reshape industries and markets.

According to the publication, its reporters initially nominated nearly 1,000 candidates, and a panel of judges assessed them using criteria including creativity, breadth of impact, engagement, disruption, and commercial success.

The judging panel included venture capitalist Jim Breyer, technology journalist Kara Swisher, and innovation strategist Rita McGrath.

Forbes also employed artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT and Gemini, to evaluate nominees using the same metrics before editors finalized the rankings.

The magazine noted that over one-third of those on the list are women and people of colour, and many innovators are immigrants who became Americans.

Elon Musk, 54, topped the list for founding and leading multiple industry-changing companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and The Boring Company.

Forbes described him as the only person to have built or grown five companies, each valued in the billions, across different sectors.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ranked second for revolutionizing retail and pioneering cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates placed third for his role in personal computing and global philanthropy.

Filmmaker George Lucas came fourth for reshaping modern blockbuster cinema and merchandising, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang rounded out the top five for turning the company’s graphics chips into the backbone of the AI economy.

Other notable innovators in the top ten include OpenAI chief Sam Altman (6th), Nike co-founder Phil Knight (7th), biotech entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt (8th), media mogul Ted Turner (9th), and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla (10th).

Full List of America’s 250 Greatest Innovators (Forbes)
#1–50
Elon Musk | 2. Jeff Bezos | 3. Bill Gates | 4. George Lucas | 5. Jensen Huang
Sam Altman | 7. Phil Knight | 8. Martine Rothblatt | 9. Ted Turner | 10. Vinod Khosla
Larry Page | 12. Sergey Brin | 13. Reed Hastings | 14. Marc Andreessen | 15. Larry Ellison
Judy Faulkner | 17. Jim Sinegal | 18. Michael Bloomberg | 19. Michael Milken | 20. Diane Greene
Andrew Viterbi | 22. Brian Chesky | 23. Judy Estrin | 24. Thomas Peterffy | 25. Fred Moll
Henry Samueli | 27. Bob Metcalfe | 28. Marc Benioff | 29. Steven Spielberg | 30. Howard Schultz
Henry Kravis | 32. Noubar Afeyan | 33. Palmer Luckey | 34. Harry Stine | 35. Warren Buffett
Rupert Murdoch | 37. Mark Zuckerberg | 38. George Roberts | 39. Robert Langer | 40. Ken Griffin
Leroy Hood | 42. Charles Schwab | 43. Ed Catmull | 44. Rodney Brooks | 45. Carl June
Rich Fairbank | 47. Jim Clark | 48. Phillip Sharp | 49. Peter Thiel | 50. Steve Wozniak
#51–100
51. Paul Mockapetris | 52. Dennis Slamon | 53. Hamdi Ulukaya | 54. Arthur Blank | 55. Tom Mueller
56. H. Michael Shepard | 57. Martin Cooper | 58. David Shaw | 59. Michael Dell | 60. Leonard Kleinrock
61. Craig Venter | 62. Lewis Ranieri | 63. JB Straubel | 64. Jeff Yass | 65. Robert Weinberg
66. Dean Kamen | 67. Marvin Caruthers | 68. Reid Hoffman | 69. Chuck Hull | 70. Therese Tucker
71. Vlad Tenev | 72. Fred Luddy | 73. Paul Graham | 74. Min Kao | 75. George Church
76. Alexander Karp | 77. Max Levchin | 78. Feng Zhang | 79. James Goodnight | 80. Jan Koum
81. Larry Fink | 82. David Geffen | 83. Peggy Cherng | 84. Jennifer Doudna | 85. Charles Ergen
86. Tom Monaghan | 87. Sandy Lerner | 88. David Baker | 89. George Kurtz | 90. Leonard Adleman
91. Fei-Fei Li | 92. Robert Johnson | 93. Jack Dorsey | 94. Stephen Schwarzman | 95. John Mackey
96. Oprah Winfrey | 97. Dario Amodei | 98. Kevin Systrom | 99. Eric Swanson | 100. Madonna Ciccone
#101–150
101. Adrian Krainer | 102. John Morris | 103. Lorne Michaels | 104. James Allison | 105. Temple Grandin
106. Jeffery Kelly | 107. Ray Kurzweil | 108. Napoleone Ferrara | 109. Patrick Brown | 110. Kam Ghaffarian
111. James Fujimoto | 112. Carolyn Bertozzi | 113. Brian Druker | 114. Jeffrey Friedman | 115. Frances Arnold
116. Thomas Frist Jr. | 117. Jack Dangermond | 118. Arthur Rock | 119. Pierre Omidyar | 120. David Duffield
121. Harold Hamm | 122. Gabe Newell | 123. Sandy Weill | 124. Jerry Yang | 125. Tim Sweeney
126. Bill Gross | 127. Suma Krishnan | 128. Jay Chaudhry | 129. Eric Fossum | 130. David Baszucki
131. Daniel Gilbert | 132. Patrick Soon-Shiong | 133. Dan Shugar | 134. Brad Jacobs | 135. Eric Yuan
136. Walter Gilbert | 137. Stanley Lapidus | 138. Michael Welsh | 139. Craig Mello | 140. Mark Cuban
141. Israel Englander | 142. Jony Ive | 143. Craig Newmark | 144. Eric Smidt | 145. Tony Xu
146. William Kaelin | 147. Dustin Moskovitz | 148. Robert Pera | 149. Tony Fadell | 150. Brian Armstrong
#151–200
151. John Tu | 152. David Sun | 153. Barry Diller | 154. Xiaowei Zhuang | 155. Neha Narkhede
156. Carl Icahn | 157. Bill Franke | 158. Mitchell Hashimoto | 159. Timothy Springer | 160. Daphne Koller
161. Sangeeta Bhatia | 162. Mitch Kapor | 163. Sheila Johnson | 164. Yann LeCun | 165. Andrew Ng
166. Zach Perret | 167. Nina Vaca | 168. Drew Weissman | 169. Katalin Karikó | 170. Jay Adelson
171. Len Bosack | 172. Jeff Hawkins | 173. Lonnie Johnson | 174. Jed McCaleb | 175. Andrew Weinreich
176. Whitney Wolfe Herd | 177. Aman Narang | 178. Fred Ramsdell | 179. Thomas Südhof | 180. Adam Foroughi
181. Brian Kobilka | 182. David Walt | 183. Baiju Bhatt | 184. Steve Cohen | 185. Howard Marks
186. Brian Acton | 187. Yet-Ming Chiang | 188. Peter Diamandis | 189. Ray Ozzie | 190. Shonda Rhimes
191. James Park | 192. Ralph Lauren | 193. Lewis Cantley | 194. Kate Ryder | 195. David Booth
196. Edwin Chen | 197. Kevin Plank | 198. RJ Scaringe | 199. Sara Blakely | 200. Alexandr Wang
#201–250
201. Bran Ferren | 202. Shan Sinha | 203. Robert Lefkowitz | 204. Jack Szostak | 205. Katrina Lake
206. John Schiller | 207. Moungi Bawendi | 208. Billie Jean King | 209. Shahid Khan | 210. Yvon Chouinard
211. Kay Koplovitz | 212. Hamid Moghadam | 213. Daniela Amodei | 214. Michael Sabel | 215. David Steward
216. Evan Spiegel | 217. Luis von Ahn | 218. Kris Jenner | 219. Thai Lee | 220. Dan Bricklin
221. Paul Judge | 222. John Carmack | 223. Jerry Jones | 224. Mira Murati | 225. Jimmy Chen
226. Tyler Perry | 227. Doris Fisher | 228. Chad Hurley | 229. Rick Kittles | 230. Naval Ravikant
231. Hugh McColl | 232. Cathie Wood | 233. Jim Koch | 234. Lynn Jurich | 235. Shiv Rao
236. Chris Larsen | 237. Donna Dubinsky | 238. Shivani Siroya | 239. Janice Bryant Howroyd | 240. Peter Lynch
241. Limor Fried | 242. Roberta Williams | 243. Michael Rosbash | 244. Caterina Fake | 245. Calvin Klein
246. Lisa Lindahl | 247. Ryan Petersen | 248. Robert Rodriguez | 249. Marian Croak | 250. Taylor Swift
If you want, I can also format this in a clean table with columns for Rank, Name, Age, and Bio, making it look more like a professional news article ready for publishing. This would make the long list much easier to read.
Do you want me to do that?