At this week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum, Davos often felt transformed into a high-powered tech conference. The stage featured appearances by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and many more industry executives.
Unsurprisingly, the big topic was artificial intelligence. The CEOs laid out a vision for the technology’s transformative potential while also acknowledging ongoing concerns that they might be inflating a massive bubble. Amidst all that big-picture prognostication, they also found time to take swipes at their competitors and even at their ostensible partners.
One observer noted that the conference seemed transformed from past years. Tech companies like Meta and Salesforce took over the main promenade, while important topics like climate change failed to draw similar crowds. Another said that even if AI executives weren’t quite panhandling for usage and more customers, it could sometimes feel that way.
Visually, the event felt different. On the main promenade in Davos, some of the biggest storefronts were converted and taken over by companies like Meta, Salesforce, and Tata, as well as many Middle East countries. The largest was the USA House, sponsored by McKinsey and Microsoft. Elon Musk’s presence was also notable, as he has avoided Davos in the past.
Pulling out the tech content from Davos revealed worthwhile highlights, but it is striking how, especially as AI has become such a big business story, it is hard to fully separate that from other threads like international trade and world politics.
One of the big headlines was the remark by the CEO of Anthropic, where he criticized a recent administration decision to allow Nvidia to send advanced chips to China. This is a story that is simultaneously about tech, trade, and politics. His comments fit a pattern of being outspoken and tied into the intense AI hype. He described an AI data center as being like a country full of geniuses, questioning how such technology could be sent to a geopolitical rival.
The week was filled with unusual phrases from the CEOs. Another that stood out was Satya Nadella repeatedly calling data centers “token factories,” which is a telling abstraction of their purpose.
Two things really stood out from the CEOs’ various remarks. First, they were all definitely sniping at each other. This was evident not just in Anthropic’s criticism of Nvidia—interesting given Anthropic is a huge Nvidia customer—but in seeing them all together, putting the knives out more than usual. They are all jockeying to lead while trying to hold on to talent without overspending, and this tension was palpable.
Second, this was the most blatant these CEOs have been on record about what they think they need to continue succeeding. Satya Nadella more or less stated that more people need to be using AI technology, or else it risks becoming a bubble that pops. His focus was on broadly scooping up usage and ensuring AI is equitable across different global communities, which created an interesting tension with other perspectives.
Similarly, Jensen Huang of Nvidia emphasized that we are not investing enough in this technology and need more investment to make it work. His comments framed the issue in terms of job creation, though a counterpoint about a future slowdown in the build-out was not being discussed.
It was notable to have all these leaders together in one place, sniping in real time. Oftentimes you hear from them individually at separate events, but here they were all together, making the competitive dynamics immediately clear.