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CNBC Excerpts: CNBC Broadcasts Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Today, Wednesday, January 22

CNBC

WHEN: Today, Wednesday, January 22, 2025

WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box” – “Money Movers”  

Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcripts of CNBC interviews with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and Sara Eisen which aired on “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) through “Money Movers” (M-F, 11AM-12PM) today, Wednesday, January 22 for Davos 2025 in Davos, Switzerland.

Interviews included: Accenture Chair & CEO Julie Sweet, NYSE President Lynn Martin, Salesforce Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO Marc Benioff, Vista Equity Partners Founder & CEO Robert Smith, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Microsoft Chairman & CEO Satya Nadella, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Goldman Sachs Chairman & CEO David Solomon, Coca-Cola Chairman & CEO James Quincey, BNY CEO Robin Vince, Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber, HP Inc. President & CEO Enrique Lores, Breyer Capital Founder & CEO Jim Breyer and TCW Group CEO Katie Koch.

Links to video of the interviews are included below.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

Interview with Accenture Chair & CEO Julie Sweet

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/sweet-physical-ai-is-the-next-big-thingwrite-that-down.html

SWEET ON TARIFF NEGOTIATIONS

JULIE SWEET: Those conversations are actually not happening, mostly right now, because it’s pretty unclear what are the tariffs going to be on, what products are going to be. It’s a lot more about how do we reset the conversation in terms of engagement. What do we need to do as Europe and a lot of investment in the US is happening from Europe and around the globe, and when we talk about the US ourselves as a growth market, and so I think you’re going to see a lot of different reactions in terms of, do I need to invest more? Do we need to in Europe think differently about our competitiveness? And of course, there’s a lot of open questions on how best to engage.

SWEET ON AI TALENT

SWEET: The biggest barrier to using AI is not the technology, it’s actually having the talent who’s been up skilled to use AI and then reskilled to take advantage of the opportunity. So we’re growing and we’re hiring because we’re helping companies do that.

Interview with NYSE President Lynn Martin

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/martin-the-us-economy-drives-the-global-economy-forward.html

MARTIN ON OPTIMISM

LYNN MARTIN: A tremendous amount of optimism

SORKIN: And optimism from US folks, or across the board.

I’d say across the board, which has sort of surprised me. I think it’s a function of the importance of the US economy in driving the global economy forward.

MARTIN ON TARIFFS

MARTIN: I think on the tariffs issue, though, I think it’s going to be something that this administration, who is a very pro-business administration.

SORKIN: First president since Reagan to show up at the New York Stock Exchange.

MARTIN: Absolutely, but that that was a sign that he is very pro-business and pro strength of the US economy. I think the people that he has around him, a lot of very smart people going into the cabinet are going to look at the issue of tariffs, alongside the issue of inflation.

MARTIN ON IPO LANDSCAPE

MARTIN: We’re very optimistic about the IPO forecast for the year. We have a company that just went last week did really well. Company, Flowco, in the energy sector did really well. We have a large deal on the road at the moment, Venture Global. We have a tremendous pipeline, and people are actually doing the work to go public. Now, not just talking about doing the work.

MARTIN ON REBALANCING

MARTIN: I think they’ll also be a bit of a rebalancing. There’s a lot of great stocks that are don’t have the same PE ratios of some of the higher Pete ratios, lot of good value in those companies. So I think you’ll see a rebalancing.

MARTIN ON CRYPTO

MARTIN: We just need regulatory guidelines. We need clear guidelines, clear guardrails to operate under, which I think is what is driving so much of the optimism in the crypto market. It’s that finally we will have clarity as to what the frameworks look like.

MARTIN: We’ve been, always been an advocate of fair, transparent markets. Regulation has always been a tailwind for us, it’s why we spend so much time on pioneering the crypto ETF. We started working on the first crypto ETF with grayscale in 2016 we only got to market last year, which is crazy to me. So we’re just going to continue to look for opportunities to add transparency to markets.

Interview with Salesforce Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO Marc Benioff  

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-dont-think-microsoft-will-use-openai-in-the-future.html

BENIOFF ON WHITE HOUSE AI INITIATIVE

MARC BENIOFF: When you look at Masa Son, or you look at Larry Ellison, and I think, you know, Larry Ellison is my mentor, so I have spoken him about his vision for how to cure cancer with AI, and he rolled it out yesterday at the White House, and I’m extremely proud of him. I could just tell you, don’t, it’s kind of funny but I would always say, don’t short Larry Ellison and don’t short Elon Musk.

BENIOFF ON MICROSOFT

BENIOFF: It’s extremely important that OpenAI gets to other platforms quickly, because Microsoft is building their own AI, and I don’t think that Microsoft will use OpenAI in the future. They’ll have their own frontier models. They’ve said it very clearly that it’s too expensive and too hard for them and that they want to have their own. That’s why they hired Mustafa Suleyman. And Mustafa Suleyman and Sam Altman are not best friends.

BENIOFF ON TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

BENIOFF: I think with this political administration. We’re all going to need to regain our beginner’s mind and see how things are going to play out.

BENIOFF: I’ve actually never been a Democrat. I was a Republican for many years. I was in the Bush administration, and then I became an independent after that. And look, I have said I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I’ve worked now with five or six different presidents. I can work with anyone. That is how I roll. That’s important to me. I’ll do whatever I can to support the administration. and I will, you know, root for the United States of America. I’m an American.

BENIOFF ON US AI LEADERSHIP

BENIOFF: United States of America has a tremendous lead in artificial intelligence and in technology. The vast majority of the front tier model, the AI, the research that’s come out of our universities, and you’re seeing that manifest into our tech companies, and that’s what’s incredible, and then you see that right here, play out at the administration, where these are the leaders of all the most important companies are all Americans

BENIOFF ON TRUMP & DAVOS

BENIOFF: You’re going to see Donald Trump here at this conference virtually, and I’m sure you’re going to see him here next year physically. And he was here when he was president, you know, four years ago, five years ago. And I think that, you know, you probably remember that I worked very hard on the Trillion Tree initiative, an idea that I had. I brought it out with Donald Trump, launched it here. And I think you have to find your way with Donald Trump, one of the things that he cares about.

BENIOFF ON AGENT FIRST

BENIOFF: The World Economic Forum is now agent first. When you’re here, you’re where you’re working with the app. The app is an agent, and the agent is helping to guide you through the conference. If you go to the Help for my company, help.Salesforce.com you’ll see we have an agentic layer now on our customer support. So we get 36,000 customer support calls every single week. If you looked at it a month ago, before we did this, 10,000 those calls had to go to our human agents. They have 9,000 support agents. Now, only 5,000 are going to the human agent. Now, the AI is not 100% perfect, it has about 95% accuracy, but this is an amazing moment where you know those agents, then those humans come together to resolve those customer support issues.

BENIOFF ON AI

BENIOFF: I think the infrastructure game is an incredible game. It’s not a game that I want to play, but we work with the Amazons and the Googles and the and other companies too, and we can ride on their infrastructure and these investments with our software. Our software is this is why we’re now the second largest software company in the world. Our software is excellent. We can help automate these companies. We help them connect with their customers in a whole new way, and they’re all going to have to go agent versus a moment of transformation in our industry that I’ve been waiting for.

BENIOFF ON DIGITAL LABORERS

BENIOFF: This is the first year in the history of Salesforce after 25 years, I will not hire any net new software engineers.

SORKIN: Not one new.

BENIOFF: Not one.

Interview with Vista Equity Partners Founder & CEO Robert Smith

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/vista-equity-partners-ceo-the-productivity-measures-from-generative-ai-are-astounding.html

Interview with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins 

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/cisco-ceo-chuck-robbins-on-impact-of-tariffs-ai-innovation-and-future-of-dei.html

ROBBINS ON TARIFFS

CHUCK ROBBINS: I think that it’s been an interesting discussion, even if you think about it at the Business Roundtable, because every company has different nuances about their business that would lead them to be supportive of certain tariffs and be afraid of other tariffs or dislike other tariffs. And so, you know, for us, we’ve been distributing our supply chain obviously, post COVID, we’ve built a lot of geographic diversity and not just on final assembly and test, but going all the way back into our supply chain, and moving things around different countries. So I think it’s, we’re gonna have to wait to see how it – how they roll out. If we’re talking for Cisco’s purposes, you know, we dealt with them last time, and we adjusted and have adapted since and we’ll deal with them again.

ROBBINS ON AI

ROBBINS: We’re actually having a lot of success right now, underpinning the GPU clusters in the web skill and cloud providers. So we think we would have a potential to play the same role in this particular project.

SORKIN: Have you been involved in discussions with them about it?

ROBBINS: No not yet.

SORKIN: How does that happen?

ROBBINS: It’ll happen

ROBBINS ON DEI

ROBBINS: I think what happened is there’s a subset of initiatives under the DEI brand that were particularly disliked. And I think the whole thing got blown up because of that. If I’m sitting in a room to try to solve a complex problem or to chase a big opportunity, I want a lot of diverse brains in that room, and I don’t care if it’s gender or if it’s nationality or if it’s just diversity of experience. Diversity in general is good for business. But I think the pendulum swung but I think it was a handful of issues that really triggered it all.

ROBBINS ON CHINA

ROBBINS: I’m actually really happy to see President Trump reaching out to try to at least begin some dialogue. Because I think I’ve always said that the world and the global economy needs the US and China to coexist somehow, we don’t need a battle. And notwithstanding what’s going on with some of the technology issues that we all face, the best outcome is for us to find a way to coexist. So I’m pleased with that. I mean, our business in China is effectively, it’s immaterial at this point. So we rely them for some components in our supply chain, but I’d like to see the discussions continue.

Interview with Microsoft Chairman & CEO Satya Nadella   

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-500b-stargate-project-our-partnership-with-openai-continues.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-ai-simultaneously-reduces-the-floor-raises-the-ceiling-for-all-of-us.html

NADELLA ON OPENAI PARTNERSHIP

SATYA NADELLA: Look, I think the partnership with OpenAI to us is a critical partnership. We love it. It’s working. It’s created a lot of value for us and we plan to just continue forward with it. It’s true that on Azure today, there are other models. They’re open-source models. We have our own small language models, and we’ll continue to have all of that because customers at the end of the day are going to demand choice there, and that’s fine, and we’ll make sure we support it. But having a leading model on Azure exclusively is a great advantage to us, and it’s good.

NADELLA ON OPEN AI INVESTMENT

NADELLA: Microsoft is investing $80 billion in capital each year, and this year we’re investing. I’m not particularly in the details of what they’re investing.

NADELLA: Look, all I know is, I’m good for my 80 billion. I’m going to spend $80 billion building out Azure. Customers can count on Microsoft with OpenAI models being there, everywhere in the world, serving OpenAI models and other models. That’s, I think, what I know.

NADELLA ON SCALING LAWS

NADELLA: I don’t think there’s a wall. Things do get harder with scale. And interestingly enough, pre training scale with you know, as the scale goes up, gets harder. But then what Sam and team have shown, even with o1, and now o3, is this inference time compute and the ability to really have inference scaling compound, in some sense, the effects of scaling laws. So what used to be a six month doubling, maybe a three month doubling. So I would say scaling laws are very much alive. And the question now is, in fact, if anything, how do you take advantage of all this capability building to deploy real AI systems?

NADELLA ON PRESIDENT TRUMP CONVERSATION

NADELLA: It was a great conversation on a couple of different topics. One, of course, on AI and energy and the nexus there, and the need for the United States to build out more of the energy infrastructure and support. We talked about cyber. That was the other topic. So yeah, broad range of topics.

NADELLA ON ENERGY

NADELLA: I think one of the new growth formulas for GDP growth anywhere in any country, I think is going to be what I describe as tokens per watt per dollar, right? That’s the way to think about that energy and compute and intelligence nexus. And so in that context, we have contracted what something like 36 gigawatts all around the world of energy. And we plan to continue with our goals to 2030 and feel confident that we can get there with both a combination of what we source on the grid and behind the meter, and so we feel pretty good about making progress.

NADELLA ON AI AND JOBS

NADELLA: For sure, there’s going to be productivity increases because in some sense, AI does really help reduce the drudgery in a lot of our work in talking about software development. My first belief in all this technology came when I saw GitHub Copilot and what it did because the joy of programming was something that was brought back because of AI helping me with the task in hand. So I think what AI does, quite frankly, is simultaneously reduce the floor and raise the ceiling for all of us. So that means the expertise level inside of an organization goes up, productivity goes up. So that means they will be like take software development. I think there’ll be a billion software developers. And you could say, wow, what does the world need billion software developers? Look at the tech debt. You look at every IT organization and say the number of apps that they need to refactor, rewrite, build new, I think a billion software developers is a good thing for the world.

Interview with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi     

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-on-future-of-evs-autonomous-vehicles-and-nyc-congestion-pricing.html

KHOSROWSHAHI ON TRUMP

KHOSROWSHAHI: From our standpoint, and from my standpoint, we want this administration to succeed. When this administration succeeds, the country does well. Business does well. And we have a very broad envelope in terms of consumers, in terms of drivers, and we want to show our support as it relates to the administration. And we want to engage with the administration on things that our drivers care about, in terms of the cost of living, in terms of the access to transportation and vehicles etc., and, you know, it’s the beginning hopefully of a dialogue.

KHOSROWSHAHI ON EVS & EV SUBSIDIES

KHOSROWSHAHI: The fact is, with EVs is that they are actually the great product, and so we see EVs in our fleet growing. Our drivers are moving over to EVs about five times faster than the general public. They’re great cars, our riders, our passengers love them. So it’s, the economy is working, which is, if you build a great product, then the marketplace will take care of it.

KHOSROWSHAHI: We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. And I think if anyone who bases their business plan based on government subsidies is not the right thing, sure they help. But the fundamentals for us continue to be there, and we’ll keep running our business as we have before… we don’t need subsidies for EVs to succeed at Uber and we continue to increase them, because they’re actually really good product and of course they’re good for the environment.

KHOSROWSHAHI ON AUTONOMOUS

KHOSROWSHAHI: I think the technology will be ready for prime time between now and two years from now. It’s moving very quickly especially with some of the newer kind of newer generation companies. The commercialization of EVs is gonna take much longer.

KHOSROWSHAHI ON CONGESTION PRICING

KHOSROWSHAHI: It is absolutely reducing traffic over bridges and tunnels. It has not had a significant impact in terms of traffic in the city. It’s too early to tell right now, things are moving over too quickly, and right now there’s a holiday period that has quite unusual traffic patterns. So I think it remains to be seen. We supported congestion pricing because our cars, our drivers, have a huge amount of utilization and utility within New York. And I think to some extent, congestion pricing is pricing out the low utilization vehicles.

Interview with UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/uk-finance-minister-rachel-reeves-uk-anot-part-of-the-problema-when-it-comes-to-u-s-trade.html

REEVES ON TARIFFS

RACHEL REEVES:I won’t speculate on what may or may not happen, but I do understand that President Trump is concerned about countries that are running large and persistent surpluses on the trade balance with the US. That’s not the case for the UK. We are not part of the problem here. So we, the UK, increased trade with President Trump last time he was in office, and there’s absolutely no reason why our two great nations with such a strong and special relationship can’t increase those flows of trade once again.

REEVES ON CHINA

REEVES:I went to Beijing and Shanghai to try and get a better deal for UK financial services firms that operate in China, like HSBC and Standard Chartered. And I was able, during that economic and financial dialog, to secure licenses and quotas for big UK banks and asset managers that do business in China. That’s in the UK’s national interest, and that’s what I will always do as Chancellor of the Exchequer, represent the interests of my country on the global stage, whether that is improving the ability of British businesses to export to China, improving our trade links with the European Union, or indeed, strengthening the ties that we have with the United States, our biggest single trading partner.

REEVES ON ELON MUSK CRITICISM

REEVES:Elon Musk is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not one of the people that votes in a UK general election. We had an election just over six months ago. We received a huge majority, a huge mandate for the change that we’re bringing. That change to grow the economy and make working people better off, those changes to improve our schools and our health system, and that’s what British people voted for, and that is what our prime minister, Keir Starmer and me as finance secretary, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, are getting on and delivering.

Interview with Goldman Sachs Chairman & CEO David Solomon

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/goldman-sachs-ceo-david-solomon-a-more-growth-oriented-agenda-is-the-best-path-for-us.html

SOLOMON ON THE US ECONOMY

DAVID SOLOMON: The US economy is in is in pretty good shape, Andrew, you know, as we, as we head into this new administration, but I think the thing that I’m encouraged about as I talk to clients, I’m finding clients are really encouraged about it seems like, and this is true in the US. It’s true with the new administration. But I’m also hearing at my meetings here, as I’m talking to clients from Europe, etc., people are focused on growth. And if we can run a more growth-oriented agenda, if we can do some things that free up capital investment, especially private sector investment, that is a good path for us. And I think people are optimistic, and it’s not going to be a smooth, perfect path, but people are optimistic that we are going to run a more growth prone agenda. We’re going to free up some investment, we’re going to unlock the private sector a little bit more, and that’s got to be constructive, and that that is the best path for us.

SOLOMON ON REGULATION

SOLOMON: I think one of the things that you have to recognize, the market runs ahead, the market looks forward, and so we are coming off of a very, very tough regulatory environment across all industries. One of the things that was interesting to me last spring was at an event with a very broad group of CEOs, and when asked broadly across all industries, what’s the number one thing affecting the strategic execution of your business, 67% said regulatory kind of program. So the change in that is something that I think can be quite constructive, but it’s going to take time. People are policy. You have to get people in place, and it’s going to take time.

SOLOMON ON TARIFFS

SOLOMON: So it’s complex, and it depends, you know, where they sit and where they are. And I think one of the things that that we all have to recognize is that this is going to be fluid. And so I think for a lot of CEOs that we’re talking to today, they’ve been thinking about these things for a number of years. This is not new. You know, on the agenda of policy discussion. The question is, how quickly and where, and you know, I think it’s uncertain.

SOLOMON ON DEI PROGRAMS 

SOLOMON: Well, I think the construct is companies have to do what’s right for them to successfully run their business, operate compete in the markets they operate in. I think one of the things that’s interesting on this topic here is the legal constructs changing a little bit, especially when you get into states and different jurisdictions. And so that’s something that we continue to evaluate. And I think other companies continue to continue to evaluate.

Interview with Coca-Cola Chairman & CEO James Quincey       

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/coca-cola-ceo-james-quincey-see-inflation-in-the-u-s-and-globally-moderating-in-2025.html

QUINCEY ON MEETING PRESIDENT TRUMP 

JAMES QUINCEY: We’d sent the bottle with a nice letter. Actually, the president written a response back on the letter, saying, thanks very much. And his team said, well, why don’t you come down and give it to him personally? So it was more kind of just to present, present the bottle. We talked about all sorts of things across the scope of how the world’s going golf, which sort of golf courses, a bit of everything. But it was, it was a, it was a nice opportunity to present, you know, the President of the United States his own bottle.

QUINCEY ON US ECONOMY

QUINCEY: I think the economy is in good shape going going into 2025. I think the US is particularly strong. There are other bits that are a little softer, maybe Europe, but in broad terms, the economy globally is in okay shape. The US is clearly in better shape going into 2025 and I think that’s what’s going to take us forward.

QUINCEY ON INFLATION

QUINCEY: In the US, it’s clear that it’s moderating down to much more normal levels. I mean, inflation overall is a three, which is pretty close to two. I know there’s a lot of worry that it’ll be hard to squeeze the last 1% out, but think how far we’ve come just to get down to three so we see inflation in the US moderating substantially, and we see ourselves on a track down to what the Fed is going to be happy with. I’m sure they’ll stay applied to the business of getting down. And that’s also true globally. Inflation globally, whether it’s the developed economies of Europe or some of the more inflationary economies. We see inflation. We see inflation coming down, and that’s a more normalized state of affairs, and we see that playing out in ’25.

QUINCEY ON SHRINKFLATION ACCUSATIONS

QUINCEY: I think shrinkflation applies, you know, as a term when you only sell one pack, but that’s not how we do business. I mean, not only do we sell lots of different products, but a Coca-Cola is available in lots of different sizes. The regular can, for example, of a coke has has not changed from decades. So we have what our strategy is to provide a range of choice of different pack sizes at different price points. So there is no real shrinkflation in that sense, in the sense you can buy a six ounce Coke or a three liter coke around the world, that all the pack sizes are out there. And our intent is to provide the right amount of liquid at the right price for what you want.

QUINCEY ON COKE PRODUCTS & ALCOHOL

QUINCEY: We’ve got, we’ve got some joint ventures.

SORKIN: You have a deal with Bacardi now.

QUINCEY: Bacardi, and Jack and Dan, Jack Daniels, and with Absolute vodka and sprite. These are premixed cocktails and they’re kind of experimental. And so we’re looking at a couple of places around the world saying, is this something that’s got a bit of traction? We need to, we need to believe it can become a significant segment within the alcohol industry, or relative to beer, let’s say, and then we can get a significant share. I mean, it’s easy to make the question is, is it easy to market as well.

Interview with BNY CEO Robin Vince

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/bny-ceo-growth-is-the-word-of-the-day-here-in-davos.html

Interview with Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/williams-sonoma-ceo-when-housing-and-furniture-picks-up-itll-be-great-for-us.html

ALBER ON USING AI FOR HOME DESIGN 

LAURA ALBER: So in addition to the incredible people in our stores, and you know, we have people who will come to your home and do the whole place for you, we have brought to life tools online so we have that virtual designer, and over time, that’s going to continue to be even better, so that you know, you don’t have to even talk to a person.

EISEN: AI powered?

ALBER: Yes, AI powered.

ALBER ON THE HOUSING MARKET

ALBER: Well, it’s gotten sequentially better all year, right? You’ve seen our numbers and but it still hasn’t been robust. You know, we want growth. We’re not looking for flat. We’re looking for growth. And that’s that’s really our focus is what are those growth drivers going to be even if housing doesn’t get better.

ALBER ON TARIFFS

ALBER: So, we’ve reduced our China exposure from fifty to twenty five percent. That’s our last published number, and we’ve been working to reduce it even further. The great news is we design our products ourselves, so we can move them around. And we’ve seen this coming the last time this happened, when we were ahead of the curve. You can go back and look at the tapes, and then see what happened, and we were able to get through it, and we did move a lot out but we also, you know, were able to come up with new great other places to do business and better products and it affected everyone. We don’t have as much exposure as others.

Interview with HP Inc. President & CEO Enrique Lores

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/hp-ceo-deregulation-will-help-drive-growth-and-optimistic-about-these-actions.html

LORES ON TRUMP AND TARIFFS 

ENRIQUE LORES: One of the key learnings for me these days has been the optimism that we see, especially in enterprise customers. I think deregulation is going to help to drive growth, and everything that will drive growth will be good for our company. So we are optimistic about the impact that some of these actions are going to be taking on the economy and on the business.

LORES ON TARIFFS

LORES: I think it’s going to depend on how high the increase of tariffs is but clearly there is a risk that some of these will be reflected in price from the consumer. But I think we need to wait and see what are the final decisions to really assess what the impact is going to be. 

LORES ON AI

LORES: I think relative to expectations is going as we were expecting. I think what we are seeing now is the conversation is going from a theory of why AI is going to be relevant to specific implementation plans, and especially around the future of work, which is the priority that we have as a company driving this future of work. Here in Davos, there have been many specific discussions, both in terms of technology and how to use technology to drive productivity, but also in terms of the skill improvements that we need to help the workforce to have to take advantage of that technology, and the combination of both is what is going to be driving the benefits of AI.

Interview with Breyer Capital Founder & CEO Jim Breyer

Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/01/22/jim-breyer-stargate-project-too-big-and-expensive-and-they-tend-to-not-work-over-time.html

BREYER ON STARGATE 

JIM BREYER: Too big, too expensive. It’s great if it happens for a lot of startups and entrepreneurial companies, but big capital expenditure projects like this tend to not work over time.

BREYER ON ZUCKERBERG AND META

BREYER: I think we see a revitalized Mark Zuckerberg right now and so post-election, I’ve traded many messages and spoken to him. He’s very revitalized. The original vision, when he was 20, when I first met him, April 2005 he wanted to connect billions of users. He was not yet 21. I think he feels right now with what he’s doing with AI, what he’s doing from a technology standpoint, he feels he’s really unleashed to go for it. And I think Meta through a lot of their open source work in AI is as well positioned in AI as anyone out there.

Interview with TCW Group CEO Katie Koch

KOCH ON TRUMP ECONOMY 

KATIE KOCH: I’ve been here as many times before, and I’m really struck by the level of optimism about the US. And it is around deregulation. It’s around unleashing the energy market. It’s around maintaining the US edge on AI. And I believe in all of that. And I believe that there’ll be animal spirits. We do believe the M&A cycle will restart. These are all great things.

KOCH ON BEING CAUTIOUS AROUND RATES

KOCH: We are cautious around rates. There is going to be volatility around that, and we are open to the possibility that rates could stay higher for longer. And what we’re in our portfolios, where we’re probably the most differentiated, however, is that we are underway credit for the reasons stated. We see more value in agency MBS, and we’re underway credit in the public markets. In the private markets, this environment of higher rates for longer is eventually going to create a lot of opportunities for private credit.

For more information contact:

Jennifer Dauble

CNBC

t: 201.735.4721

m: 201.615.2787

e: jennifer.dauble@nbcuni.com

Stephanie Hirlemann

CNBC

m: 201.397.2838

e: Steph.Hirlemann@nbcuni.com