Mary Barra

Mary Barra (born 1961) started at General Motors as an 18-year-old co-op student inspecting fenders and rose to become, in 2014, the first woman to lead a major global automaker. As chair and CEO she has steered GM through recalls, an EV pivot, and the robotaxi rise and retreat of Cruise — and made AI central to how the 117-year-old company builds and sells cars.

AI on the factory floor and in the car

At NVIDIA’s GTC conference in March 2025, Barra announced a sweeping partnership with Jensen Huang’s company to build custom AI systems across GM: Omniverse-trained models to optimize factory planning and robotics, and NVIDIA DRIVE AGX chips in future vehicles. “AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship,” she said. By early 2026 she told investors that nearly 90 percent of the code for GM’s next-generation, eyes-off Super Cruise driver-assistance system was being generated with AI.

On jobs, Barra is a measured optimist. Asked on Good Morning America in 2026 whether AI would create more work than it destroys, she answered honestly: “It’s hard to predict right now what that balance is going to be, but I think there are whole new careers that are going to be coming that no one has thought of yet” — pairing the bet with calls for math and science education to prepare workers for those careers.