All anyone wants to talk about at Davos is AI and Donald Trump
This story first appeared in The Debrief, our subscriber-only newsletter about the biggest news in techby Mat Honan, Editor in Chief. Subscribe to read the next edition as soon as it lands.
Hello from the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. I've been here for two days now, attending meetings, speaking on panels, and basically trying to talk to anyone I can. And as far as I can tell, the only things anyone wants to talk about are AI, and Trump.
Davos is physically defined by the Congress Center, where the official WEF sessions take place, and the Promenade, a street running through the center of the town lined with various houses"-mostly retailers that are temporarily converted into meeting hubs for various corporate or national sponsors. So there is a Ukraine House, a Brazil House, Saudi House, and yes, a USA House (more on that tomorrow). There are a handful of media houses from the likes of CNBC and The Wall Street Journal. Some houses are devoted to specific topics, for example there's one for science and another for AI.
But like everything else in 2026, the Promenade is dominated by tech companies. At one point I realized that literally everything I could see, in a spot where the road bends a bit, was a tech company house. Palantir, Workday, Infosys, Cloudflare,C3.ai. Maybe this should go without saying, but their presence, both in the houses and on the various stages and parties and platforms here at the World Economic Forum, really drove home to me how utterly and completely tech has captured the global economy.
While the houses host events and serve as networking hubs, the big show is inside the Congress Center. On Tuesday morning, I kicked off my official Davos experience there by moderating a panel with the CEOs of Accenture, Aramco, Royal Philips and Visa. The topic was scaling up AI within organizations. All of these leaders represented companies that have gone from pilot projects to large internal implementations. It was, for me, a fascinating conversation. You canwatch the whole thing here, but my takeaway was that while there are plenty of stories about AI being overhyped (including from us), it is certainly having substantive effects at large companies.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, for example, described how that company has found $3-5 billion in cost savings by improving the efficiency of its operations. Royal Philips CEO Roy Jakobs described how it was allowing healthcare practitioners to spend more time with patients by doing things such as automated note-taking. (This really resonated with me as my wife is a pediatrics nurse, and for decades now I've heard her talk about how much of her time is devoted to charting.) And Visa CEO Ryan McInerney talked about that company's push into agentic commerce and the way that will play out for consumers, small businesses, and the global payments industry.
To elaborate a little on that point, McInerney painted a picture of commerce where agents won't just shop for things you ask them to, which will be basically step one, but will eventually be able to shop for things based on your preferences and previous spending patterns. This could be your regular grocery shopping, or even a vacation getaway. That's going to require a lot of trust and authentication to protect both merchants and consumers, but it is clear that the steps into agentic commerce we saw in 2025 were just baby ones. There are much bigger ones coming for 2026. (Coincidentally, I had a discussion with a senior executive from Mastercard on Monday, who made several of the same points.)
But the thing that really resonated with me from the panel was something Accenture CEO Julie Sweet-who has a view not only of her own large org but across a spectrum of companies-said: It's hard to trust something until you understand it."
I felt like that neatly summed up where we are as a society with AI.
Clearly other people feel the same. Before the official start of the conference I was at AI House for a panel. The place was packed. There was a consistent, massive line to get in, and once inside I literally had to muscle my way through the crowd.Everyone wanted to get in. Everyone wanted to talk about AI.
(A quick aside on what I was doing there: I sat on a panel on Creativity and Identity in the Age of Memes and Deepfakes" led by Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, featuring the artist Emi Kusano who works with AI, and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, who has been at the center over a lot of the debates about AI in the film and gaming industries. I'm not going to spend much time describing it because I'm already running long, but it was a rip-roarer of a panel.Check it out.)
And, okay. Sigh. Donald Trump.
The President is due here Wednesday, amid threats of seizing Greenland and fears that he's about to permanently fracture the NATO alliance. While AI is all over the stages, Trump is dominating all the side conversations. There are lots of little jokes. Nervous laughter. Outright anger. Fear in the eyes. It's wild.
These conversations are also starting to spill out into the public conversations. Just after my panel on Tuesday, I headed to a pavilion outside the main hall in the Congress Center. I saw someone coming down the stairs with a small entourage, who was suddenly mobbed by cameras and phones.
Moments earlier in the same spot, the press had been surrounding David Beckham, shouting questions at him. So I was primed for it to be another celebrity - after all captains of industry were everywhere you looked. I mean, I had just bumped into Eric Schmidt, who was literally standing in line in front of me at the coffee bar. Davos is weird.
But in fact, it was Gavin Newsom, the governor of California who is increasingly seen as the leading voice of the Democratic opposition to President Trump, and a likely contender, or even frontrunner, in the race to replace him. Because I live in San Francisco I've encountered Newsom many times, dating back to his early days as a city supervisor before he was even mayor. I've rarely, rarely, seen him quite so worked up as he was on Tuesday.
Among other things, he called Trump a narcissist who follows the law of the jungle, the rule of Don" and compared him to a T-Rex, saying you mate with him or he devours you." And he was just as harsh on the world leaders, many of whom are gathered in Davos, calling them pathetic" and saying he should have brought knee pads for them.
Yikes.
There was more of this sentiment, if in more measured tones, from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney duringhis address at Davos. While I missed his remarks, they had people talking. If we're not at the table, we're on the menu," he argued.