YouTube's Neal Mohan is TIME's 2025 CEO of the Year: All you need to know

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has been named TIME's 2025 CEO of the Year for his 'calm leadership' and 'big role in shaping what billions watch daily'

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has been named TIME's 2025 CEO of the Year. The magazine says his decisions shape what billions watch every single day. Mohan, who spent part of his early years studying in Lucknow and learned Sanskrit and Hindi in school, is described as a "calm yet powerful force" behind one of the world’s most influential platforms.

 

TIME calls him a “culture shaper” whose leadership influences global viewing habits -- often without loud displays of power or personality.

 

In its profile, TIME said that Mohan appears “surprisingly mellow” despite leading what it calls the “world’s most powerful distraction machine”. The magazine writes, "In many ways, YouTube is creating the cultural diet that the globe is beginning to subsist on. Mohan is the farmer; what he cultivates will be what we eat."

 

Alongside this vast influence, the magazine highlights Mohan’s grounded personality. "The pilot of the world's most powerful distraction machine is surprisingly mellow. He's quiet-spoken, deliberative, hard to ruffle. He likes watching sports, going to his daughters' dance recitals, and open white shirts, just normal stuff," it said.   

 

From Lucknow schooling to Silicon Valley leadership

 

Mohan, 52, studied electrical engineering at Stanford University before beginning his career as a senior analyst at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in 1994.

 

He later joined NetGravity, which was acquired by DoubleClick, where he rose to vice-president of business operations. His leadership helped reshape DoubleClick during difficult years, and he moved into Google’s ad division when the tech giant bought the company in 2007 for $3.1 billion.

 

By 2011, Mohan had become central to YouTube’s long-term strategy. Google even offered him a $100 million retention package a move that proved to be crucial as his product vision helped guide YouTube’s next decade.

 

Creators at the heart of YouTube’s growth

 

More than 2 billion people watch YouTube every day, tuning in for everything from pet-rescue clips to major film releases. Creators like MrBeast, Ms. Rachel and Mark Rober have crossed over into mainstream entertainment, turning YouTube into a global talent engine.

 

Mohan believes this success builds on itself. “Creator success on the platform brings in all of these viewers and fans from all over the world, which in turn brings in brands and advertisers and marketing opportunities,” he says.

 

In 2024, YouTube generated over $36 billion in advertising revenue and around $14 billion from subscriptions. In 2025, advertising grew 15 per cent in the first nine months, while subscriptions to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music jumped 25 per cent.

 

AI becomes the next big push

 

Under Mohan, YouTube has invested heavily in artificial intelligence to help creators work faster and reach global audiences. In September, YouTube introduced more than 30 AI tools, three times the number it launched the previous year. 

 

These include:

• automatic dubbing into multiple languages

• text-to-music tools

• highlight generators

• long-to-short video converters

 

Mohan said that AI will bring back some of YouTube’s early energy, giving new creators more opportunities to build audiences from scratch. It also has a critical safety role.