Working notes on builders under consideration—not on the 5×5 yet. Anyone who has made Ella’s list can upvote a name or send a tip.
Last updated
Helped create and launch the Universal Commerce Protocol (January 2026).[linkedin.com][blog.google][ucp.dev]
Co-authored the Agentic Wallets launch (February 2026).[coinbase.com][linkedin.com]
Co-author of the Payment HTTP authentication Internet-Draft (September 2026).[datatracker.ietf.org][paradigm.xyz][wevm.dev][github.com]
Co-created the Model Context Protocol at Anthropic (open-sourced Nov 2024).[anthropic.com][latent.space]
Joined OpenAI in Nov 2025 with the Sky acquisition; founding engineer at Software Applications Inc., earlier at Humane.[linkedin.com]
Prototyped the Claude for Excel add-in in his second week at Anthropic; it launched about three months later.[linkedin.com][anthropic.com]
Senior Staff Product Designer at Shopify since 2022; one of the designers of Canvas.[kjellr.com][linkedin.com][shopify.com]
Announced on October 25, 2026 that she joined OpenAI's Design Systems team as a contract Design Engineer; founder of Interface.[x.com][aydaoz.co][linkedin.com]
Announced in October 2026 that his PayPal role ends in late October.[rongoldin.com][rongoldin.substack.com]
Product Design Lead in Amazon Shopping Design.[barunkwak.framer.website]
Leads design for Walmart's AI shopping and agentic commerce, including Walmart in ChatGPT.[linkedin.com][winners.webbyawards.com]
Product Designer at Perplexity.[podcasts.apple.com][dive-club.beehiiv.com]
Joined Anthropic in September 2026 after Periodic Labs.[turingtree.com][peopleofsi.com][alphaxiv.org]
Co-founded Trillium Labs to do high-risk AI research in the open.[blog.trilliumlabs.org][wired.com]
Led economics research at OpenAI (2020–26).[nymag.com][arxiv.org]
Left Moonshot AI (Kimi) in September 2026.[turingtree.com]
Committed full-time to MAISI rather than joining OpenAI (2026).[turingtree.com][en.wikipedia.org]
Part of the core team that launched the Universal Commerce Protocol.[linkedin.com][blog.google][ucp.dev]
Core team for Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines.[linkedin.com]
Product manager for GPT-6 Intelligent UI (October 2026).[techcrunch.com][openai.com][talkmezzo.com]
Left OpenAI in September 2025, where he was a product lead on Deep Research; co-founded Recursive.[sequoiacap.com][linkedin.com]
Product at OpenAI; worked on the Instant Checkout launch in September 2025.[linkedin.com][openai.com]
Leads commerce at OpenAI.[365daily.net][openai.com]
Joined Replit full-time to lead growth marketing in 2026.[linkedin.com]
Leads marketing for Cursor's startup program.[linkedin.com]
Leads product and growth at Perplexity.[linkedin.com][a16z.news]
Leads developer product marketing at OpenAI, after joining in December 2023 as the platform's first product marketer.[linkedin.com]
Joined OpenAI's ChatGPT growth team in April 2026 after leading growth engineering at Superhuman.[linkedin.com]
Anthropic's first marketing hire (Feb 2023); Head of Customer Marketing since April 2026.[linkedin.com][anthropic.com]
Suggest someone
Send a person tip to Ella
Spot an under-recognized builder behind shipped AI work? Anyone who has made Ella’s list can send a tip directly to her reading pile.