0:00
/
0:00
Transcript

👋🏼 Davos Daily, Day 1

Going live from inside Davos 2025

Hi all,

Here’s a quick live dispatch from Davos.

If you prefer video over notes, go to 02:26 where my briefing begins.

The energy here is different this year, so I’ll share my daily takes from the Forum to help you understand what it’s like and what we’re learning here.

Three big themes emerged from my Day 1 at the Forum:

  1. Yesterday’s inauguration is the elephant in the room. There’s a palpable sense of a “changing world order” here, with dinner conversations revolving around adaptation scenarios. One memorable quote from an attendee described Europe as being in the doldrums, struggling to match the energy behind the US economy.

  2. While 2024 felt like an AI conference with Davos branding, this year’s conversations are refreshingly practical. I bumped into Yann LeCun and Ya-Qin Zhang in the corridors, it’s the beauty of Davos! I had a fascinating chat with Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO, about AI and cybersecurity. His take? The good guys have more data than the bad guys and AI is actually strengthening our security capabilities, not weakening them. I’ve also had discussions with people like Bill Gross, another EV member, whose company ProRata is building technology to measure and pay publishers based on how much their content is used in AI responses.

  3. Not everyone has caught up with the transition of energy from a commodity to technology. As a reader of Exponential View, you are ahead of the curve. In the coming days I’m hosting a couple of sessions where it’ll be top of the agenda so I hope to make this knowledge more mainstream in the Davos circles.

My favourite personal Davos moment so far was the delight of seeing a long-time EV member Sougwen Chung as this year’s featured artist. She might join tomorrow’s live briefing for members so stay tuned!

I’m proud to say that the Exponential View community is incredibly well-represented here – I keep bumping into members in the Congress Centre’s “inner sanctum.” If you’re in Davos and not in my WhatsApp group, leave a comment in this post and let’s change that.

Off to dinner now – that’s the Davos way – you keep going until your legs give out because the density of interesting conversations is just too good to miss.

More here tomorrow.

Cheers,
Azeem

Get more from Exponential View & our community by becoming a member.

Discussion about this podcast