I spent the week with tech CEOs. Here is what they’re speaking about

DAVOS, Switzerland — I spent the week speaking to tech executives on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos about their priorities for the 12 months forward and the massive themes they see shaping investor sentiment.

Like final 12 months, AI dominated the convention. However this 12 months, the discussions went past AI fashions or which chatbot is healthier, shifting as an alternative to how enterprises will undertake the know-how and what future developments are on the horizon.

All of those may very well be key to income and share costs of the world’s greatest know-how corporations.

Adoption of AI by companies will enhance this 12 months, however the strategy will differ markedly from 2025. Many firms have been doing pilot tasks with AI that did not go into full manufacturing final 12 months.

Then, companies have been adopting AI, similar to chatbots offered by Microsoft, OpenAI and others. There was a concern of lacking out or FOMO, Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent‘s cloud group, informed CNBC in an interview this week.

As a substitute, companies might be extra selective with the kind of AI they’re adopting.

“This 12 months, once we discuss to clients, I believe they’re being much more pragmatic. I believe they’ve gone previous the part of FOMO,” Tong mentioned. “And as we speak, I believe a lot of our clients are much more particular.”

Raj Sharma, world managing companion for development and innovation at EY, mentioned companies might want to reimagine entire processes that may be completed with AI. “That is when you’ll begin seeing the worth,” Sharma informed CNBC in an interview.

This was one in every of 2025’s greatest buzzwords and is poised to remain entrance and middle. Agentic AI broadly refers back to the idea of AI methods which are capable of perform duties on behalf of individuals. The final word objective is to have refined brokers that work autonomously with little or no person interplay.

Expertise executives informed me that brokers are being applied, however there are various levels of scale and capabilities. It additionally actually will depend on which business you are referring to. Some makes use of of brokers inside enterprise are finishing up easy processes, whereas others are finishing up extra refined workflows.

“I believe these brokers are usually not autonomous. I do not assume we’ve reached the purpose the place we will substitute a human worker,” Uljan Sharka, CEO of startup Domyn mentioned.

Probably the most bullish on the tech was Fabricio Bloisi, the CEO of Prosus. He mentioned that Prosus has 30,000 brokers at the moment operating, and within the subsequent 5 years there may very well be firms which are run by brokers.

“I do not assume it is a hype and hope,” Bloisi mentioned in an interview with CNBC’s Dan Murphy and me this week.

The impression of geopolitical volatility was the topic of lots of the conversations I had this week.

“One factor that we’re not speaking about within the AI world, and that may change into an enormous difficulty, an enormous deterrent, or an enormous accelerant, is the place the [geopolitical] points are,” EY’s Sharma mentioned.

China’s tech developments in areas similar to AI and chips, have been additionally among the many speaking factors. In an interview for CNBC’s new podcast, The Tech Downland, with Steve Kovach, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis mentioned he thinks China’s AI fashions are simply months behind the U.S. and Western fashions.

Count on bodily AI to be on the tech buzzword listing this 12 months. The time period refers to purposes the place AI takes on a bodily kind, from robotics to driverless vehicles. My very own expertise at Davos highlighted simply how actual this push has change into: one night at dinner, a robotic was sitting proper on the desk.

EY’s Sharma labeled bodily AI the “subsequent wave,” estimating it may very well be 5 to 6 occasions the market measurement of agentic AI inside 5 to 6 years.

In the meantime, Sassine Ghazi, CEO of semiconductor design device firm Synopsys, mentioned he initially anticipated phyiscal AI would come “5 plus” years down the street, however it’s coming “a lot sooner.”

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, mentioned AI robotics is a “once-in-a-generation” alternative for Europe because the area boasts an industrial manufacturing base that’s “extremely robust.”

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