I spent the week with tech CEOs. Here's what they're talking about

DAVOS, Switzerland — I spent the week talking to tech executives astatine the World Economic Forum successful Davos astir their priorities for the twelvemonth up and the large themes they spot shaping capitalist sentiment.

Like past year, AI dominated the conference. But this year, the discussions went beyond AI models oregon which chatbot is better, shifting alternatively to however enterprises volition follow the exertion and what aboriginal developments are connected the horizon.

All of these could beryllium cardinal to gross and stock prices of the world's biggest exertion firms.

Adoption of AI by businesses volition summation this year, but the attack volition disagree markedly from 2025. Many companies were doing aviator projects with AI that didn't spell into afloat accumulation past year.

Then, businesses were adopting AI, specified arsenic chatbots provided by Microsoft, OpenAI and others. There was a fearfulness of missing retired oregon FOMO, Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent's unreality group, told CNBC successful an interrogation this week.

Instead, businesses volition beryllium much selective with the benignant of AI they're adopting.

"This year, erstwhile we speech to customers, I think they're being a batch much pragmatic. I think they've gone past the signifier of FOMO," Tong said. "And today, I deliberation galore of our customers are a batch much specific."

Raj Sharma, planetary managing spouse for maturation and innovation astatine EY, said businesses volition request to reimagine full processes that tin beryllium done with AI. "That's erstwhile you volition commencement seeing the value," Sharma told CNBC successful an interview.

This was 1 of 2025's biggest buzzwords and is poised to enactment beforehand and center. Agentic AI broadly refers to the conception of AI systems that are capable to transportation retired tasks connected behalf of people. The eventual extremity is to person blase agents that enactment autonomously with precise small idiosyncratic interaction.

Technology executives told maine that agents are being implemented, but determination are varying degrees of standard and capabilities. It besides truly depends connected which manufacture you're referring to. Some uses of agents wrong concern are carrying retired elemental processes, portion others are carrying retired much blase workflows.

"I think these agents are not autonomous. I don't think we person reached the constituent wherever we tin regenerate a human employee," Uljan Sharka, CEO of startup Domyn said.

The astir bullish connected the tech was Fabricio Bloisi, the CEO of Prosus. He said that Prosus has 30,000 agents presently running, and successful the adjacent 5 years determination could beryllium companies that are tally by agents.

"I don't deliberation it's a hype and hope," Bloisi said successful an interrogation with CNBC's Dan Murphy and maine this week.

The interaction of geopolitical volatility was the taxable of galore of the conversations I had this week.

"One happening that we are not talking astir successful the AI world, and that volition go a large issue, a large deterrent, oregon a large accelerant, is wherever the [geopolitical] issues are," EY's Sharma said.

Expect carnal AI to beryllium connected the tech buzzword database this year. The word refers to applications wherever AI takes connected a carnal form, from robotics to driverless cars. My ain acquisition astatine Davos highlighted conscionable however existent this propulsion has become: 1 evening astatine dinner, a robot was sitting close astatine the table.

EY's Sharma labeled carnal AI the "next wave," estimating it could be five to six times the marketplace size of agentic AI wrong 5 to six years.

Meanwhile, Sassine Ghazi, CEO of semiconductor plan instrumentality institution Synopsys, said helium initially expected phyiscal AI would travel "five plus" years down the road, but it is coming "much faster."

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said AI robotics is simply a "once-in-a-generation" accidental for Europe arsenic the portion boasts an concern manufacturing basal that is "incredibly strong."

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