Brad Stone's Key Takeaways from Davos

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Welcome to the City of London, the City of the City, the City of London. Please mind the gap between the and the financial heart of the country.

The city, the city.

Welcome to in the city, stand clear of the downs.

I'm Francis Laqua and I'm David Merritt.

And it's that time of your day in the city, in the mountains, in the snow.

It's our favorite time of the year. It's the busiest time of the year. It's the most sportest time the especially as we limp crawl towards the finish line of the World Economic Forum. It's Thursday afternoon. We thought it was probably about time to get our heads together, pick over the remains of what's been a very busy week and what the vibes of What are the big.

Takeaways So geopolitics, of course, a lot of what's happening with AI, but all the conversations continue to return to Donald Trump. Less about the president himself, but more about his policies and his rhetoric will be interpreted putting America first and leaving the rest of the world behind him.

Yeah, a couple of hours after we take this. He is beaming in apparently var zoom into the main plenary hall. He's going to be taking some questions, so rumors have been swinding that he is going to shop. Looks like that's not going to happen, but everyone's still hanging on what his words are going to be. The softenoon.

There's one man we need to speak to. He's Bradstone. He's editor of Bloomberg Business Week before that, senior executive editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News. Also the author of four books on Amazon, but also talking about Uber, AIRBNBN, the battle for the new Silicon Valley. Brad, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Francine, thank you David.

I mean, basically the week has been just trying to figure out AI and the US chief executives are extremely bullish on what happened to them, and the Europeans just being a bit depressed.

I think the conversation here has been on two tracks.

AI is one, Trump and the global economy or another. But certainly AI last year the forefront of everyone's mind. Last year it was kind of Sam Altman's coming out party.

We had him at the Blueberg House. That's right. This year.

Dario Amoday, he's the CEO of Anthropic. He kind of represents the one of them. He has a partnership with Google and Amazon. But look, this year, even more than last year, I think there's a feeling that we are on the verge of something. You could call it super intelligence, you could call it AGI. In any event, the kool aid is being handed out amply, and everybody's talking about it and what it means for labor and the global economy and full employment.

That's right.

I remember last everyone was sort of badging themselves a day without really knowing what it might meant. But this year we put some dollar numbers on it all. And of course not you know, in Washington we had this announcement from Trump about this big new investment initiative with some provots apport on switch, but a big number. Okay, I love the night.

Let me provide some context.

First of all, Stargate and they bandied about these numbers. A five hundred billion, probably last dollar investment in a series of data centers and energy sources. So Oracle is involved, open Ai is involved, and apparently Massi Son is raising the money. And then Donald Trump of course giving the rabbinical blessing to it. But what's so interesting here, and Mark Venieff came to the Bloomberg House and talked a little bit about it yesterday, is the rivalries, the divides

But who really has the money? Because there was also it was the first facts that we saw, you know, between Elon Musk and I mean it was via open AI, but actually it was almost a dig at Donald Trump and say, yeah, it's great announcing this, but who has money. There's no money to build this yet, right.

And we should say here, we are in Davos, and the conversation is really revolving around things that are happening in DC.

So I do think that's interesting.

So you're right, Elon Musk, an ally of the presidents comes out and tweets or posts on.

X that maybe open A doesn't really have the money.

Now that there's a lot of bad blood between alt men and Elon Musk because you know, long story there and so, but he does raise and I think Elon Musk is right that there's a little bit of vapor around these announcements. Do you remember seven years ago Donald Trump opening a macindosh plant in Texas with Tim Cook that had been in operation for eight years. It's the kind of thing that we're going to get a lot of.

But what is the reality behind the presentation?

Yeah, but I just love that, you know, we've since the election, we've been debating when know that when is this alliance of tech leaders and Donald Trump kind of start to salah? Are we seeing that ready?

No signs of it yet?

I mean, and that, you know, that is something I'm

Front and your conversation. I mean, I heard you talking to now I think, and he said, what was the line? He said, I've never experienced such pessimism about Europe. I mean, isn't that. I keep hearing that this way, and you've been hearing that in all the conversations, you know.

I mean, it was funny because because Larry Think I think tongue in cheek was also saying it's a good entry point. And then I've also heard you know, you could have collateral benefits from the US, because if Donald Trump completely rips up or gets rid of the money that was meant to go into Ira, then it could go actually to Europe, where you could have some kind of you know, jealousy from the Europeans saying what they're deregulating.

That's a really pesky question, but it is.

It is the good question, right, I mean right, because how do we get from the chatbots right to what Benioff was talking about yesterday, which is the we f app will tell you what they think you're interested in, because they're using salesforces Einstein to suddenly prognostications of a

You know, to be honest, I do think there's some handwaving.

I think you're right, And maybe it's not being described all the well because we don't exactly know what it is. But the idea is, and it's very much in vogue here at Davos that the technology goes and it does things.

For us, we don't have to supervise it.

Yeah, but we've heard lots of people say this here as well in after interview, that everyone does need to get the chief executives need to start understanding the applications and the companies who are applying AI in their organizations. They're going to be more efficient, they're going to have better customer service, they're going to have a better bottom line,

Well, I mean there are some you know, national or continental champions. The CEO of Miss Strall was here. Did you talk to him this week, prent He did have good boots.

I noticed that, and like orange boots because Mistral, you know the logo is like orange and black.

That's right, so you know, and of course they are making their play an open source, which is you know, powerful technology.

So all is not lost.

But you know, Trump coming in here and even this week his first week making it clear that this is a national security issue, that the rivalry is with China, and that he will put the muscle of the US government behind open Ai and the other national champions of Yes, I think we have yet to see that in Europe.

And it is somewhat concerning.

Deep Mind is deep Mind you you know British company. I know they're owned by Google, but they still have the headquarters there. Dennis's British. He thinks about things from more from a European perspective.

And yet because of the ownership by Google, because the brains of deep Mind are our power, the Gemini large Language model, I think we can really more realistically think about it as US technology at this point.

And you mentioned China. Just another thing that has been really striking to me has been kind of the absence of China from this form and in its place a huge presence by India. They have not one but two houses on the promenade, they have many Ministers of State. He Modi is not here himself, but the theme of India as an investment choice is the growth engine in

I will say that one thing that I'm coming away from this week is an interest and a curiosity in learning more about a Chinese company called deep Seek, a lot of people are talking about in the tech community here at Davos.

It's a former hedge.

Fund I believe, based in Beijing that has a large language model that in some ways people are saying this is just as powerful as the Western model.

So don't really know a lot about it yet.

They're very private, they're not here, but it's something that is on my radar as business to get the job done.

But I think, you know, the fact that the Chinese has a significant less presence than in the past may be telling of things to come. Because if you're kind of in the you know, in the eye line of Donald Trump, I mean, you don't want to be seeing too much. You kind of want to stay behind the radar. And some of the most interesting conversations that I've had, you know, in Davos's chief executives that are not American that are trying to figure out what you do with

But I think you know I was talking about the optimism.

I mean it's the Trump psychology, which is why everybody's so rosy. They know that this is a transactional president and everyone's got their bouquet of roses and is putting it at his feet right now.

I mean you've you've interviewed him, Brad, right, I mean, does that pers Nanci come frough, you know, sitting around?

I mean there's an interesting juxtaposition. You know. We interviewed him BusinessWeek no video.

Cameras in mar Lago in August and it was a great conversation. And then our colleague John Micklethwaite interviews on stage on camera, and it's a much more different, more pugilistic Donald Trump. So it is it is interesting when he has an audience, he plays to it. When it's quiet, he's a little bit more solicitous of the media.

Do you think across all the interviews here to say on camera fromt Scene and Brad, when you've been interviewing people on stage at the house or here on the TV set, the impression I g is people are just more resident this year to say anything ready. They don't want to put their heads about the parapet is this part of the Trump offeit.

But I think it's because they don't know. I don't think it's because they're trying to be coy or don't want to say anything. I think it's really uncertainty. We've seen in the markets right it's been quite wild because it's like, oh, you know, tech stocks will do fine, We're good. There's security issues with China. Stocks are down. So I think we're a little bit in the way and see situation especially you know for businesses that want stability.

I don't know.

I know they can't go wrong with flattery. I think they're holding their tongue on crypto and the Trump coin and the Milania coin. I think there's probably nobody wants to say it, but you know, there's a little bit of drifting right now.

It's very hard, it's very.

Hard to rationalize, but you know, nobody wants to be left behind. Trump is freeing the technol the AI race as a as a national security initiative, and an everybody is going.

To their respective teams right now.

The other concern is that, you know, there's only one show in town, and that's Donald Trump. And if you're a leader, you spend so much time dealing with the Trump administration in terms of how to respond what he's saying. You know, don't you know put your head above the parapet that you may lose sight of what's going on at home. And this is against some of the things that I've been here in the corridors is that you know, he's there's there's one show. He likes to be the

I certainly know the big political interviews we've had here this week. President Selenski, who spoke to John Mirkalthwaite yesterday, made it very clear that Trump is the key, of course to any resolution, but also the involvement of American troops in any sort of peace deal. He made that very clear as well. So Trump is the ultimate player in any sort of resolution.

And Argentina and I'll just the script to make a deal with Donald Trump.

I also just want to add that you know, these business leaders their weather veins.

They point in the direction that the winds are blowing.

And back in the US right now, we've seen the emergence of a sort of very conservative feeling among the American populists. There are not great protests on corporate campuses in universities, despite the executive orders of the of the first week. So I think a lot of business leaders have their finger up to the wind, and they are.

They're playing to their constituencies.

And a remarkable ability to pivot.

Mark Bennioff, as staunch a Democrat as you could find, had nary award of criticism yesterday at the Bloomberg House to say about Donald.

Fatty song were in about everything that names and.

I'm sure his private feelings made different from his public posture.

One of the other things that you know, we've been thinking about is because Donald Trump likes a deal, we don't really know what deals he's making with whom. So something that could be confrontational or not, do you political means that it would be in exchange for something else. So TikTok for me is quite interesting or what he's you know, he walked down in terms of like, ah, is it really dangerous if it's just a bunch of kids looking at crazy videos? Does he need China for

It's difficult. He introduced the idea of a TikTok ban.

There is bipartisan consensus that TikTok is biased towards the priorities of the Chinese government. So sure he's getting something it may not be from China, maybe for some of his donors who are major investors in TikTok's owner.

By dance just on TikTok. What happens because the Chinese have to agree to whoever they sell it to, right, so they said no to a number of people because it's my understanding that if they sell it, they also have to give the algorithm, and that's the loss of the Chinese want.

We have reported a bloomberg.

They appear to be warming up to the idea that they're going to have to sell the social network, maybe not the algorithm, and then we should probably prepare for Trump to steer it towards his allies like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk.

I was just going to say, Elon Musk, how we had the brother here yesterday and again there was a rumor that he show up with Elon lost that would have been rumor which has since been.

I don't think Elon has great things to say about Davos.

Well, they had a fat right on ax like a couple of years ago. I feel like the next twelve months are going to be pretty volatile and pretty bumpy. I mean, Brad's already thinking about what we're going to talk about next year in Davos.

I'm the worst crystal ball guys there is, and you know, think about its sitting at last year, we had no idea what was to come. So I'm going to I'm going to demur on that. Apart from the one the big serieslit geopolitical question that we've had to see, we have a ceased in them. At least clearly something is going to move in Ukraine. So perhaps there's less conflict in the world.

Well, I mean my question if the US is withdrawing as the world's policeman, you know what other conflict will we see? Power abhors a vacuum. Trump has shown very reluctant to deploy American troops. I have a feeling next year we will be talking about Donald Trump, because that is first rule of the Trump presidency. You talk about Trump and there it will be something that we have not yet imagined in terms of global conflict.

It'll be interesting to see if the Europeans are banks. We also didn't have We had one European leaders who's going to election on twenty third of February because they're just not strong enough at home and.

If Larry think is right. Maybe you know that the inverse devils indicator that excess pessimism here means that it's time to buy Europe. Maybe that's there.

Brad thank you so much for joing here.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of In the City from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me Franklin Lackwell with Dave Merritt, was produced by Sammersati and Moses, and sound designed by Blake Maples. Special thanks to Bradstone. Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Cool that's done.