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There were times at this week\u2019s meeting of the World Economic Forum when Davos seemed transformed into a high-powered tech conference, with on-stage appearances by Tesla CEO Elon Musk<\/a>, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang<\/a>, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei<\/a>, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella<\/a>, and even more industry executives.<\/p>\n The big topic, unsurprisingly, was AI, with CEOs laying a vision for the technology\u2019s transformative potential while also acknowledging ongoing concerns that they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n On the latest episode of TechCrunch\u2019s Equity podcast<\/a>, I discussed all things Davos with TechCrunch\u2019s Kirsten Korosec and Sean O\u2019Kane.<\/p>\n Kirsten noted that the conference seemed transformed from past years, with tech companies like Meta and Salesforce taking over the main promenade, while important topics like climate change failed to draw crowds. And Sean said that even if AI execs weren\u2019t quite<\/em> \u201cpanhandling for usage and more customers,\u201d it could sometimes feel that way.<\/p>\n Read a preview of our full conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.<\/p>\n Kirsten:<\/strong> Some of the discussions around, let\u2019s say, climate change or poverty and big global problems, [are] not really attracting the crowds. Meanwhile, on the main promenade in Davos, Switzerland, some of the biggest storefronts have been converted and taken over by companies like Meta and Salesforce, Tata, also a lot of Middle East countries. And I think the largest was the USA House, which was sponsored by McKinsey and Microsoft. It really felt visually different.<\/p>\n And then Elon Musk being there \u2014 Sean, you and I both listened to it. There wasn\u2019t a lot of there there, but I will say that it was interesting that he showed up, because in the past he has avoided Davos.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Anthony:<\/strong> We were trying to pull out the tech content of Davos, [and] there are absolutely things that worth highlighting here, but it\u2019s also striking how, especially as AI has become such a big business story, it\u2019s hard to fully separate that from all the other threads going on in terms of bigger questions about international trade, about world politics.<\/p>\n One of the big headlines coming out of [Davos], for us at least, was the remarks by the CEO of Anthropic<\/a>, where he basically attacked this Trump administration decision to allow Nvidia to send chips to China<\/a>. It\u2019s a story that is a tech story, but it\u2019s also a trade story, it\u2019s a politics story.<\/p>\n I think in terms of the substance of what he said, it felt consistent to me in the sense that he\u2019s generally comfortable shooting his mouth off, and also that it\u2019s this interesting line [in AI discourse] where there\u2019s an element of criticism, but it also ties into this really intense AI hype. One of the phrases he used was that an AI data center is like a country full of geniuses. I have questions about that \u2014 but he\u2019s like, \u201cHow could we possibly send all these chips to China if we\u2019re worried about China? Because essentially we\u2019re sending a country full of geniuses over to China and letting them control it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean:<\/strong> You could probably fill a notebook with all the different weird phrases that these CEOs use this week. The other one that has been stuck in my mind is that Satya Nadella kept calling the data centers token factories, which is a wonderful abstraction of what he thinks they\u2019re there for.<\/p>\n You know, there were two things that really stuck out to me about all the different things that were said by these CEOs in different parts of the week. One is that they are definitely all sort of sniping at each other \u2014 not just Anthropic with Nvidia, which is interesting in its own right, because Anthropic is a huge Nvidia customer and uses Nvidia GPUs, and there\u2019s an interesting tension there. But also just seeing them sitting them next to each other and really kind of pulling, know, putting the knives out a little bit more than we\u2019re used to seeing.<\/p>\n We know that they\u2019re all jockeying to be the lead and that they\u2019re also trying to hold on to talent without overspending themselves to death. And this was one of the first times where it really felt like that tension was palpable and that they were present for it. Those two things are not often true at the same time.<\/p>\n The other thing, to your point about a lot of the geopolitics of it and the business of it \u2014 this was the most blatant that I feel like we\u2019ve gotten these CEOs on record as far as what they think they need to continue succeeding.<\/p>\n Satya Nadella \u2014 I think you could maybe unfavorably read it this way, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that unfavorable \u2014 more or less was like, \u201cMore people need to be using this or else it\u2019s going to be a bubble and a popped bubble.\u201d He took a much different position in some ways from Dario Amadei of Anthropic, because Nadella\u2019s focus is really about trying to broadly scoop up as much usage as possible [and] how do we make sure that AI is equitable across all these different communities and throughout the globe, versus concentrated in one place, like only the wealthy places, which I thought was an interesting tension. But there is an element of him giving away the game of not really<\/em> panhandling for usage and more customers \u2026 but kind of.<\/p>\n And to that point, Jensen Huang of Nvidia did something similar, where he was more or less saying, \u201cWe\u2019re not investing enough in this and we need more investment to be able to make this work.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirsten:<\/strong> Jensen\u2019s comments were interesting because he really talked about it in terms of job creation, and one could give the counterpoint of, there will be a moment where the build out slows, but no one\u2019s really talking about that right now.<\/p>\n The other thing, I think, was a good point that you made, which is we\u2019ve never really seen them all sort of together in a room sniping at each other. Oftentimes you\u2019ll have like Sam Altman at a conference or Satya [Nadella], but here they are all together. So you\u2019re hearing it in real time.<\/p>\n \n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n