Tech CEOs brag about AI at Davos

There was a moment at this week’s World Economic Forum when Davos seemed to be transformed into a high-tech conference, with appearances on stage and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadellaand many corporate executives.

The big topic, unsurprisingly, was AI, with CEOs laying out visions of technological change and acknowledging ongoing concerns that they are adding to the big bubble. In between these great insights, he also found time to chase down his competitors, as well as to his good-looking friends.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcastI discussed all things Davos with TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec and Sean O’Kane.

Kirsten said the conference seemed a change from previous years, with tech companies like Meta and Salesforce taking center stage, while important topics like climate change failed to attract attention. And Sean said that even the AI ​​execs weren’t of course “Working with a lot of clients,” it can sometimes feel like that.

Read a preview of our entire interview, edited for length and clarity, below.

Kirsten: Some of the conversations around, say, climate change or poverty are major global issues, (they’re) not really appealing. Meanwhile, during a major visit to Davos, Switzerland, some of the largest shopping centers have been transformed and taken over by companies such as Meta and Salesforce, Tata, and many Middle Eastern countries. And I think the biggest one was USA House, which was sponsored by McKinsey and Microsoft. It felt different.

And then Elon Musk being there – Sean, you and I both listened to that. There wasn’t much there, but I will say that it was interesting that he showed up, because in the past he avoided Davos.

Anthony: We were trying to bring out the technical aspects of Davos, (and) there are things that need to be reviewed here, but it’s also surprising how, especially since AI has become a big business issue, it’s hard to separate that from any other thread that’s going on in relation to the big questions about international trade, about international politics.

One of the big themes to come out of (Davos), for us at least, was Anthropic CEO statementwhere he opposed this decision by Trump to allow Nvidia to do so sending chips to China. It is an issue that is a technical issue, but it is also a business issue, it is also a political issue.

I think that according to what he said, it works well for me in the sense that he is free to shoot his mouth, and that it is an interesting line (in the context of AI) when there is an element of opposition, and it connects with the AI ​​hype a lot. One of the expressions he used is that the AI ​​data center is like a world full of experts. I have questions about that – but they’re like, “How can we send all the chips to China if we’re worried about China? Because we’re basically sending a world full of experts to China and letting them run it.”

Sean: You could fill a notebook with all the amazing words these CEOs use this week. Another thing that has stuck in my mind is that Satya Nadella kept calling data centers token factories, which is an amazing picture of what he thinks they are.

You know, there were two things that convinced me about the different things that were said by these CEOs at different parts of the week. One is that they’re all shooting at each other – not Anthropic and Nvidia, which is interesting in itself, because Anthropic is a major Nvidia customer and uses Nvidia GPUs, and there’s an interesting tension there. Also just seeing them sitting next to each other and kind of pulling, you know, pulling out knives a little bit more than we see.

We know they’re all hustling to be leaders and trying to use talent without ruining themselves to death. And this was one of the first times it felt like the conflict was understandable and that he was there for it. These two things cannot be true at the same time.

Another thing, to your point a lot about geopolitics and its business – this was very clear that I see if we wrote to these CEOs about what they think they need to continue to do well.

Satya Nadella – I think you might misread it that way, but I don’t think it’s uninteresting – more or less it was like, “More people need to use this or it’s going to be a bubble and a bubble burst.” He took it in different ways from Dario Amadei of Anthropic, because Nadella’s goal was to try to use it as much as possible (and) how do we make sure that AI is equal in all the different areas and around the world, as opposed to one place, like only rich places, which I thought was an interesting challenge. But there is something to give the game of no actually panhandling work with many customers … but the kind of.

And until then, Jensen Huang of Nvidia did the same, when he said, “We are not investing enough in this and we need more money to do this work.”

Kirsten: Jensen’s comments were interesting because he really talked about it in terms of job creation, and one could give an argument that, there will be a moment when construction outside slows down, but no one is talking about it right now.

The other thing, I think, was a good point you made, that we never saw them together in the shooting room. You’ll often be like Sam Altman in a meeting or Satya (Nadella), but they’re all together. So you’re hearing it in real time.