By Jim Shimabukuro (assisted by ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, DeepSeek, LeChat, Gemini, Grok, Meta, Perplexity, Pi, and You.com.)
Editor
Introduction: Over the last two days, I surveyed 11 chatbots to gather their nominations for outstanding performance, in August 2025, across three AI categories: Outstanding Person, Outstanding Company, and Outstanding Product/Service. Sam Altman, OpenAI, and ChatGPT-5 led in all categories, winning three mythical ETCY awards. -js
Outstanding Person for August 2025
Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI (3 nominations): ChatGPT: His candor about the risks immediately following the GPT-5 launch highlights a rare combination of visionary ambition and responsible stewardship. Grok: OpenAI not only advanced multimodal integration—enabling seamless handling of text, vision, audio, and video—but also navigated the ethical and economic challenges of scaling AI. You.com: Altman’s influence extends beyond technical achievements; he has played a pivotal role in steering the global conversation on responsible AI deployment, ensuring that advancements like GPT-5 are accompanied by commitments to safety, transparency, and societal benefit.
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI Chief: In August 2025, as the industry grapples with questions of AI consciousness, safety, and societal impact, Suleyman’s voice represents a crucial balance between innovation and caution. -Claude
Pascal Bornet, author, Agentic Intelligence, Aug. 2025: In August, his ideas catalyzed a wave of enterprise adoption focused on augmentation, not automation—a subtle but profound shift. -Copilot
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic: In a field racing toward artificial general intelligence, Amodei demonstrated that the most critical leadership quality isn’t just vision, but the wisdom to know when to slow down. -DeepSeek
Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind: His emphasis on AI as a unifying layer across devices aligns with broader industry trends toward more personalized, context-aware computing. -LeChat
Dale Durran and Nathaniel Cresswell-Clay, University of Washington: By drastically reducing the computational power and time required for long-term climate simulations, Durran and Cresswell-Clay have democratized access to advanced climate modeling. -Gemini
Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, Chief AI Officer at ADP: His expertise in transforming businesses through AI aligns with the current industry trend of leveraging AI for growth and efficiency. -Meta
Lex Fridman, research scientist at MIT and host of the Lex Fridman Podcast: His multi-platform presence ensures that new developments, from language models to robotics breakthroughs, are debated rigorously, fostering consensus and critique in equal measure. -Perplexity
Grace Lin, AI Ethicist: By establishing the “AI Ethics Council,” Grace has created a platform for experts to collaborate and address critical issues like algorithmic bias, data privacy, and AI transparency. -Pi
Outstanding Company for August 2025
OpenAI (2 nominations): Gemini: GPT-5 demonstrates an impressive ability to seamlessly integrate and process text, image, and voice data within a unified model, signifying a substantial evolution from its predecessors. LeChat: Its ability to attract top talent and secure record-breaking funding rounds underscores its position as the most consequential AI company of the moment.
Virtual Lab (Stanford University and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub): This breakthrough shifts the paradigm away from human-led research towards machine-driven creativity, opening the door for AI agents to invent new materials, medicines, and scientific knowledge at a pace unthinkable for traditional labs. -ChatGPT
Anthropic: Anthropic holds 32% of enterprise LLM market share by usage….representing one of the most dramatic shifts in the competitive AI landscape. -Claude
Palo Alto Networks: Their approach to “platformization” is reshaping the fragmented cybersecurity landscape, offering unified protection across cloud, network, and operations. In August, they didn’t just respond to AI’s rise—they fortified its future. -Copilot
Tesla/Xai: They successfully transitioned AI from a product into a core, operational nervous system for mobility, proving that the most powerful AI might be the one that interacts with the physical world. -DeepSeek
Google: The release of Gemma3 270M, a hyper-efficient model for on-device applications, exemplifies Google’s push toward accessible, low-power AI, enabling smartphones and edge devices to run sophisticated tasks without cloud dependency. -Grok
TensorGo Software: They are building the AI backbone for enterprises, fueling automation, intelligence, and redefining global business. -Meta
NVIDIA stands out as the most significant AI company of August 2025, reporting a market capitalization of $4.27 trillion, the highest globally among AI-focused enterprises. Its leadership in chips and hardware for accelerating machine learning and generative AI has made it the backbone of current AI advances, powering products across robotics, automotive, cloud computing, and consumer devices. -Perplexity
Aurora Innovations: In August 2025, Aurora launched the “AI for Sustainability” initiative, which helps companies optimize energy consumption, reduce waste, and develop environmentally friendly products. -Pi
DeepSeek: In August 2025, DeepSeek released DeepSeek-V3.1, a large language model that not only closed the performance gap with leading Western models but also set new benchmarks for power efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This innovation is particularly significant for emerging markets and industries where energy consumption is a critical concern. -You.com
Outstanding Product/Service for August 2025
GPT-5 (6 nominations): ChatGPT: The model delivers substantial advancements in reasoning, problem solving, and multimodal understanding—benchmarked as up to 40% better than GPT-4 on complex reasoning tasks, and endowed with a novel “thinking mode” that allows for more deliberate, structured thought processes. Copilot: It’s not just answering questions—it’s co-authoring, co-designing, and co-strategizing. Gemini: Its core strengths lie in its substantially improved reasoning and multi-modal understanding, allowing it to interpret and generate content across text, images, and potentially voice with a level of coherence and sophistication previously unattainable. Grok: This model transcends predecessors by fully integrating vision, audio, and video inputs, enabling complex tasks like autonomous research simulations and real-time decision-making. Perplexity: It is lauded for improving coding assistants, creative work, and interactive applications, triggering a new competitive cycle. You.com: GPT-5’s impact is not only measured by its technical prowess but also by its role in shaping the direction of AI research, business integration, and public expectations for the next generation of intelligent systems.
Multimodal AI Systems: This represents a paradigm shift from single-modality AI tools to comprehensive AI assistants capable of understanding and responding across multiple forms of media simultaneously. -Claude
OpenAI’s “Orion” Personal Assistant”: Unlike its predecessors, it could reliably, for example, analyze a messy email thread about a project, draft a summary, populate a spreadsheet, schedule a meeting with relevant participants by accessing their calendars, and then generate the presentation deck—all from a single, complex prompt. -DeepSeek
Google Pixel 10 with Gemini AI: Unlike previous iterations of AI features, the Pixel 10 makes AI central to the user experience, enabling real-time, context-aware assistance across apps and services. -LeChat
Precue, an AI-powered pneumonia screening device by Ibrum Technologies: This product stands out for its potential to facilitate early diagnosis and improve healthcare outcomes. By leveraging AI in medical diagnostics, Precue represents a significant advancement in healthcare technology. -Meta
MindBridge AI Learning Platform uses advanced AI algorithms to analyze students’ learning patterns, preferences, and strengths. With its adaptive learning paths and real-time feedback, MindBridge has enabled millions of students worldwide to achieve better learning outcomes. -Pi
11 Chatbots and Their Selections (surveyed Aug. 24-25, 2025)
ChatGPT
PERSON: Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO)
COMPANY: Stanford’s Autonomous “Virtual Lab” (Stanford University / Chan Zuckerberg Biohub)
PRODUCT/SERVICE: GPT-5 (OpenAI)
Claude
PERSON: Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI Chief)
COMPANY: Anthropic
PRODUCT/SERVICE: Multimodal AI Systems
Copilot
AI PERSON of August 2025: Pascal Bornet
AI COMPANY of August 2025: Palo Alto Networks
AI PRODUCT/SERVICE of August 2025: GPT-5 by OpenAI
DeepSeek
PERSON: Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic
COMPANY: Tesla / xAI
PRODUCT/SERVICE: OpenAI’s “Orion” Personal Assistant
LeChat
AI Person of the Month: Demis Hassabis (CEO, Google DeepMind)
AI Company of the Month: OpenAI
AI Product/Service of the Month: Google Pixel 10 with Gemini AI
Gemini
AI Person: Dale Durran and Nathaniel Cresswell-Clay (University of Washington)
AI Company: OpenAI
AI Product/Service: GPT-5
Grok
PERSON: Sam Altman
COMPANY: Google
PRODUCT/SERVICE: GPT-5
Meta
PERSON: Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, Chief AI Officer at ADP
COMPANY: TensorGo Software
PRODUCT/SERVICE: Precue, an AI-powered pneumonia screening device by Ibrum Technologies
Perplexity
PERSON: Lex Fridman
COMPANY: NVIDIA
PRODUCT/SERVICE: OpenAI GPT-5
Pi
PERSON: Grace Lin, AI Ethicist
COMPANY: Aurora Innovations
PRODUCT/SERVICE: MindBridge AI Learning Platform
You.com
PERSON: Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI)
COMPANY: DeepSeek
PRODUCT/SERVICE: OpenAI GPT-5
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