two parts to any answer. the first is, who influenced the detroit pioneers? that's covered well in the article: kraftwerk, human league, gary numan, devo, giorgio moroder, alexander robotnik, etc. what's not really mentioned is the influence of the more synth oriented side of funk, especially parliament, which was huge in detroit at the time.
then there's, who influenced the growth of the genre beyond just detroit? people have already mentioned some industrial, EBM and krautrock artists. i'd add to that some of the more rhythmic oriented electro-acoustic composers. hard to listen to steve reich or terry riley and not hear techno in there...