January 22, 2026
WHEN: Today, Thursday, January 22, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box” – “Money Movers”
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcripts of CNBC interviews with “Squawk Box” and Sara Eisen which aired on CNBC today, Thursday, January 22 for Davos 2026 in Davos, Switzerland.
Interviews included: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Goldman Sachs Chairman & CEO David Solomon, JLL CEO & President Christian Ulbrich, Sierra Co-Founder & CEO Bret Taylor, Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Philanthropist & Entertainer Will.i.Am, Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson, Dell Technologies Chairman & CEO Michael Dell, Scale AI CEO Jason Droege, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan, Authentic Brands CEO Jamie Salter, and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.
Links to video of the interviews are included below.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
KHOSROWSHAHI ON GLOBALISM EFFECTS TO COMPANY
KHOSROWSHAHI: What's different about Uber is how local we are. We've got over 9 million drivers and couriers on our platform, and they are locals. So while Uber is a global brand, we're a big global system, the business being done is a local business, and the money is not just staying in the country, but they even stay in the city in which you're operating. Now we want everyone to get along, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't affect our businesses directly, as maybe it affects other businesses.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON CONSUMERISM AND EMPLOYMENT
KHOSROWSHAHI: In our last quarter, for example, we – transaction grow 22%. For a company of our size, right, we're doing 38 million trips a day. For a company of our size and scale to grow 22% shows that the consumer remains strong. Now, employment is not as strong as I would have thought, within kind of the consumer spend category. Because everything we see in terms of consumer spend, whether it's on restaurants, whether it's on travel, whether it's on commute, etc., it looks really strong. The employment market is not as strong as we would like. To some extent, that's okay for us, because it means we have a lot of drivers coming onto the platform. We have a lot of careers coming onto the platform. That's the one area where I worry about, is the strength of the employment market.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON AI AFFECTING EMPLOYMENT
KHOSROWSHAHI: I think it is very early, and I have to believe that it does. You know, I think if you look at technology companies, for example, we all went through a period of it's like, grow at any cost, add, you know – the more employees you have, the better. Then the market forced discipline on some tech companies, and I think that was a good thing. You know, and we listened, and I think we acted appropriately. And we've seen two things. One is, well, productivity growth is a great way to grow. We don't need all these people. And now, with the advent of AI, we are seeing productivity increases all across the board.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
KHOSROWSHAHI: I think it's for some time to come. You know, I'll go back to we're growing 22% a year, right? So that's 6 million trips per day coming onto our platform. There aren't the number of new autonomous vehicles. And by the way, it's a great technology. Consumers love it. We've got partners like Waymo Austin and Atlanta. We'll have 10 different launches in AV this year and many, many more next year. The number of AVs coming onto the platform is far, far less than the platform growth. That curve may change five to 10 years from now, and that could be a problem five to 10 years from now. And to some extent, I think, as these AVs come onto the platform, as it's early, there are really important questions to ask, which is, like, doesn't everyone in a city deserve transportation.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE COST
KHOSROWSHAHI: I don't know about half the cost, because right now, AVs, with all the tech and the compute and the hardware, they're much more expensive than humans. But you know, companies like ours will take that in, and we'll amortize it, and we'll invest ahead. Eventually, the cost of AVs, when you look at the hardware cost curves – you see it in data centers, you see it in AI – the hardware cost curves are going to come down. We need time. We need I think it'll be probably another two generations of cars for AVs to get to human prices, at least in more wealthy markets where the cost per mile is high, but it's absolutely going to get there. It's inevitable.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE OWNERSHIP
KHOSROWSHAHI: We don't want to own the vehicles, right? We want to partner. We'll have fleets that own vehicles. We're gonna have like financing companies owning giant fleets, just like these REITs own hotels. But then and especially, I think, in suburbs, in rural destinations where we do want our service – that's our fastest growth has come in there – I think you're going to have either individuals or people owning 10 cars, 20 cars. I think you're going to have many fleet owners. It's going to be a little bit like you've got these super hosts on Airbnb. And while it's not institutionalized, it's professionalized.
KHOSROWSHAHI ON IRAN
KHOSROWSHAHI: Personally, you know, I was born in Iran. I'm very much an American. I'm so thankful for this country, for what America has offered me. But I am really hoping for regime change, because the people of Iran, it's an incredibly talented, rich society – I think it's great that the President cares what we do about that. And what the U.S. does and what Europe does remains to be seen. The most effective regime change, I think, has to come from within.
Goldman Sachs Chairman & CEO David Solomon
SOLOMON ON NOMINAL GROWTH
SOLOMON: I wouldn't have thrown out 8% nominal, but I do think that, you know, our view on nominal growth issue would be higher than the consensus. You have very, very strong fiscal stimulus. You obviously have the things in the bill that are coming through. You have some stimulus that comes from the deregulatory environment that the administration has created. We obviously have continued AI infrastructure spend that's very, very significant. Plus, you've got productivity gains coming as AI, you know, is implemented into the enterprise. So, it's a relatively constructive environment, and barring, you know, in my mind, some sort of an exogenous event or a change in sentiment that's created either by geopolitics or, you know, some other speed bump that we don't see, you know, I think the nominal growth that we see will be ahead of the consensus. So, I think the tailwinds are pretty constructive on that front.
SOLOMON GROWTH TRAJECTORY
SOLOMON: I think we're set up where we have the possibility for a stronger growth trajectory for the next few years. We're set up for that. That might not happen - much of those exogenous things could soften it, but that's – I think we're set up with a better possibility for that then we've had in quite some time.
SOLOMON ON FRAGILE GEOPOLITICAL ENVIRONMENT
SOLOMON: We're in a we're in a geopolitical environment that's more fragile than it's been for some time. You know, we have a president that's got a clear view about how he wants to drive an agenda, and he's got a certain style in the context of the way he drives that. I think, you know, markets don't like uncertainty. And so, if you just look back over the last couple of days, there's been a variety of narratives that have created a little bit more uncertainty, and then there have been narratives that have followed up, that seem to have taken the uncertainty out. And so, I think what's interesting right now is the business environment sets up very well. Businesspeople feel unleashed, you know, all over the world and want to invest in their businesses and grow their businesses. They have an environment where they think they really can make progress growing their businesses. You've got technology innovation that's helping people in their businesses, and CEOs are very focused on that.
SOLOMON ON GEOPOLITICAL UNCERTAINTY
SOLOMON: I think what slows them down – we're talking big multinationals – what slows them down is when there's uncertainty, and some of the noise around geopolitics creates uncertainty. One of the things I try to do is I always try to step back and say, Okay, what's noise? What's actually substantively going on? And I think that's a helpful lens. But on a day-to-day basis, when you're listening to the news, when you're listening to the speeches, if you're sitting here now, there's going to be noise.
SOLOMON ON ARCTIC SECURITY
SOLOMON: If we come out of this, okay, with a better – with a strengthening of Arctic security for the U.S. and Europe, that will be a good thing for the world. So I don't have to debate, you know, every discussion in every way that we get there – Arctic security is something that's worth thinking about. Okay, there are different ways to get there, but if we wind up with a better structure around that, that would be good, both for Europe and the U.S.
SOLOMON ON PRIME MINISTER CARNEY SPEECH
SOLOMON: I wouldn't let one speech at Davos at this moment in time drive a conclusion as to where things wind up. The U.S. and Canada are massively economically entwined. Canada is a hugely important ally to the U.S. I watch to see how this plays out. I wouldn't glean too much from the speech, but it obviously was an important speech. He said some things. It certainly will get people on both sides thinking about where we are. I think a de-escalation and a focus on the important relationship we have would be very constructive.
SOLOMON ON CREDIT CARD CAPS
SOLOMON: Stepping back, just as an observer of markets, you know, and someone who has some understanding of the business, I don't think that's a good idea. I think it would significantly constrain credit for most Americans –
BECKY QUICK: You mean that it wouldn't be offered.
SOLOMON: Yeah, the point that affordability is a big issue, and we need to get at it, I think is correct. I don't believe that a 10% credit card cap would be constructive in that context.
SOLOMON ON HOUSING ISSUE
SOLOMON: It's a complicated, multifaceted issue. I do think the President made some very good points around how the structure depreciation works with some of this. But to really get at the housing issue, I think we've got to get at supply. I think we've got to get at things that create incentives or make it easier for people to afford down payments on homes. I think one of the things that's been a big issue is the price of homes based on the price of construction. The lack of supply has made the prices higher, and people don't have the down payments.
SOLOMON ON HOUSING STOCK
SOLOMON: There’re all different forms of institutional capital that buy homes in the United States, not just the public companies, the couple of public companies. There's all sorts of institutional capital formation that supports the accumulation of housing, you know, in the United States. And so, the bigger issue, I think, that we have to really get at – I'm not saying that that's not appropriate issue to look at – the bigger issue is supply and the availability of housing stock.
JLL CEO & President Christian Ulbrich
ULBRICH ON DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT
ULBRICH: Well, we manage them. We do the facility management of those data centers and we help do project management when they are being constructed, and we help to design them. But you're right. We don't own them. We help to raise the capital for them. But capital is not the constraint. As you know, the constraint around data center is power.
ULBRICH ON DATA CENTER LOCATIONS
ULBRICH: You need land, you need power and you need water. Those are the three big topics, and so you literally have to look where you can get that without those constraints that the neighborhood is getting very upset. So, you will see also data centers now moving into geographies where you have that a little bit easier, where the legal environment allows you to push it through quite easily. So, in the Middle East and other places.
ULBRICH ON HOUSING AFFORIDABILITY
ULBRICH: Well, first and foremost, this is an issue all around the world. This is not a U.S. issue. We have the trouble that the kind of the lower end of the society is increasingly struggling to pay the rent or to get into the housing market. There is no easy answer to it. You can try to kind of provide more sheep land, but the construction costs have gone up really high. And then very often, the issue is that they don't have enough equity to just start off and get some debt, because they can't deliver the equity piece, and that's where government can step in and help on the equity side with guarantees.
Sierra Co-Founder & CEO Bret Taylor
TAYLOR ON THE BEGINNING OF AI CURVE
TAYLOR: I think we're at the beginning of this curve, though it's a little bit like 1996 and the rollout of the internet, where, I think it's somewhat self-evident. It's going to have a huge impact, just like in 1996 if we were sitting here, we'd say it's gonna impact commerce and search and payments. But it takes a while, both for the infrastructure to be built out. It takes a while for companies to adopt the regulatory landscape needs to evolve.
TAYLOR ON COMPANY AI ADOPTION
TAYLOR: I think most companies don't necessarily want to buy technology. They want to buy solutions to problems. And so one of the things I hope to see this year is more companies like Sierra and Harvey, which does applied AI for legal, where companies can buy off the shelf solutions. You know, you can buy Sierra and replace your IVR system with an AI agent that answers the phone. You don't need to worry about models, right? And I don't think companies should be developing software. Companies should just be applying technology to solve their problems. And we're just early in that applied AI landscape being mature, which is why I think adoption sort of lags the potential. But I'm very optimistic we'll see it this year.
TAYLOR ON AI BUBBLE
TAYLOR: It probably is a bubble. You know, when everyone knows that AI is going to have a huge impact on the economy across a huge range of industries and workflows, money is plentiful. And what you end up with – smart money, dumb money – you end up with too many competitors at every layer of the stack. But I think that's good. Competition is good. It ends up with this culling effect where the free market determines who has the best products and where the most value is. And I think over the next few years, you'll see correction, you will also see consolidation. But I don't think you can get innovation without that kind of messy competition.
TAYLOR ON OPENAI MUSK LAWSUIT
TAYLOR: We've been consistent that we believe this is baseless. We're really focused on building out this foundation, which is now one of the largest foundations in the world, in our new structure, which we're very proud of.
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach
ESCHENBACH ON AI HIRING
ESCHENBACH: Our hiring has been pretty robust this past year. We continue to lean into the opportunity of bringing incredible talent. Just in the last year, we hired two incredible technology leaders, both of them out of Google. One is our president of product and technology, and the other is a CTO. The lineage of AI talent they're bringing into our company is pretty exceptional. So the strategy to optimize workforce around AI, AI talent, which allows us then to deeply invest in AI on the Workday platform is paying off.
ESCHENBACH ON AI NARRATIVE
ESCHENBACH: There's a narrative out there in the market that's impacting our stock, and I think it's an overblown narrative, and it's not true.
BECKY QUICK: What's the narrative ?
ESCHENBACH: That AI is going to disintermediate or displace mature software companies like us. We are uniquely positioned to be one of the AI winners in the enterprise because of our incumbency, and lastly, because of the trust we get from our customers. Our customers aren't saying, Becky, they are replacing Workday. They're asking us, how can you bring more AI to market so we can build it into your platform. It's not bolted on. It's built into the fabric of our data. We have the cleanest set of data in the industry, and AI is a tailwind for us. It's absolutely not a headwind.
ESCHENBACH ON DATA MONETIZATION
ESCHENBACH: We have not seen an enterprise replace Workday, and we have 65% of the Fortune 500. And we're working with new customers. When new customers are looking for an HRIS system or a financial system, guess who they're coming to? They're coming to Workday. So, yeah, there's going to be these third-party agents, and, oh, by the way, if they want access to the Workday data, we'll give it to them. But we're also going to monetize it. We're not just going to allow people to come through open set of APIs, get access to our data and try to replicate what we're doing. They can’t do it.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett
HASSETT ON REAL WAGES
HASSETT: Real wages are up. They were down under Biden. The real wage is the w divided by the p. The p includes the tariff. And so wages are going up more than the cost of buying stuff. And that’s exactly President Trump’s point. So, it’s in the data.
HASSETT ON TARIFF POLICY
HASSETT: In the end, the final score, right, is what’s in the data. And I think one of the reasons why the, you know, there’s some like I don’t know if you saw the interaction between Lutnick yesterday and Al Gore, but the ideologues in this space are really, really upset that the tariff policies are working because the data – in the end, it depends on the final score. The final score really is what happens to the real wage of ordinary Americans. And it went up a lot under President Trump before and he introduced tariffs and it’s going up a lot now.
HASSETT ON THE ECONOMY
HASSETT: What I believe now, whoever’s the Fed Chair, is that the economy is really hot. I think we might end up with two quarters in a row above five now, right? We really might. And if that happens, then that’s a hot economy. But inflation is not taking off. And, so, it’s obvious because productivity is in the fours right now because of AI and the data centers. And yeah, so, it looks very, very much like the 90s to me right now.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
ALLAIRE ON GENIUS ACT
ALLAIRE: last year we had the GENIUS Act passed. We saw USDC grow massively. Transaction volumes growing massively. Sitting here at Davos, you know, virtually every major bank in the world is sitting down to talk about how to implement and integrate this technology in capital markets, in payments, in tokenization. So things are accelerating, regulatory relief at the federal level, every government here, all constructing policy. So we feel that continued momentum.
ALLAIRE ON STABLECOINS
ALLAIRE: The issue is this. GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers like Circle from paying interest. And in fact, every regulatory regime in the world for stablecoins, and we're subject to a lot of those, prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest. These are cash payment instruments. That's what they're designed to be. But there are lots of companies that distribute stablecoins and provide services around them and, you know, they want to be able to provide incentives and rewards and loyalty systems around those. And I think there's a debate about how to do that. And whether that's good or bad for the banking system, that's really the debate there. But I think the fundamentals, that's not really a debate. I think it's really around this marketing activity.
ALLAIRE ON STABLECOIN NETWORK EFFECT BUSINESSES
ALLAIRE: Our view is that stablecoins are network effect businesses. So, they're platforms people build on and integrate to, and they are utilities that people connect to, and the more people who connect to them, the more usage they get, the more network effects they have, the more circulation you get. And so we've achieved, like, very strong network effects, and we've got, I think, a very big global platform for that. And I think the important thing is, we're a neutral company. We don't compete with banks, we don't compete with payment companies, we don't compete with exchanges. We're a market neutral player. And I think in this space, when you're building on stablecoins, you're going to want to build on a neutral infrastructure.
Philanthropist & Entertainer Will.i.Am
WILL.I.AM ON SAMPLING VS AI MUSIC
WILL.I.AM: Imagine it's 1970 we're talking about jazz here. A jazz musician would say, hey, man, what do you think about these samplers that are coming, man? People just sampling our stuff that we did back in the past, man? You think that's music, man? Just sampling stuff, man? Turns out that that's the form of hip hop sampling and using technology to reimagine and chop up, reconfigure, doing poetry, tapestry, collage, music. Like so I can't be that critical over AI, because I have a career sampling music.
WILL.I.AM ON LIVE MUSIC VALUE
WILL.I.AM: We're going to get to a point where live is the place to be. You can't trust the screen in a couple of years. It's going to be indistinguishable between human music and AI music. It’s going to get to a point where you truly have to improv. You truly have to perform. Theater is going to be like, did you see that play? Did you go see that? At least, that's my hopes. As much as I love technology, we're going to get to a human made – that's the value.
WILL.I.AM ON TEACHING STUDENTS
WILL.I.AM: We're teaching these kids to build their own agent, because we're now like sharing the same village agent, the same village AI.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: What does that mean?
WILL.I.AM: So I love OpenAI, great company, great product, ChatGPT. I love Gemini. Google's rocking it. And that – those type of services are always going to be needed, but you need your own agent. And for you to have your own agent, you need a GPU at the house.
WILL.I.AM ON AI REGULATION
WILL.I.AM: Right now we're in the WWW. And that ain't the world wide web, that's the wild wild west. We're in the wild – with no sheriff in town. And in these movies, the gunslinger comes in and goes pew pew, and no one's accountable. Somebody got pew pew, bro. And nobody – there's no accountability to the pew pew. And so that – the laws, the regulations, to make sure that we're safe without stifling innovation – because I'm an optimist – is right around the corner.
Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf
SCHARF ON FED CHAIR CHOICES
SCHARF: Care a lot but thrilled with the choices that are on the table. I think they’d all make great choices, and we've got a process to get from here to there, and I think we're in a really good place.
SCHARF ON GROWTH TRAJECTORY
SCHARF: Everything that we see is really, really good. And so it's more likely than not that growth will be stronger than people expect. And for us, you know, as a U.S. company, where so much of our business is the U.S., we feel great about it. You know, rates we can debate, no problem, you know, that they likely will go lower, and that's probably a good thing for a period of time. How low they go, I think, is dependent on all the other data that we see, and I think that would be a pretty good place to be, and the markets would certainly feel good about it.
SCHARF ON CREDIT CARD CAPS
SCHARF: First of all, remember, the President has not suggested that rates get capped forever across the board. So just as we think about the business, it is a great business. It's a really important business. It'll continue to be that way. We offer products that are well below 10% for an extended period of time. So, I understand that. I think, you know, we just got to be very focused on what we're trying to solve, and what we don't want to do is put in artificial price controls that could be harmful at a period in time where it matters most to Americans.
SCHARF ON TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AND CREDIT CARD CAPS
SCHARF: One of the things I've learned a lot from just watching the administration is they've got lots of ideas. They're very, very focused on the outcomes, and he's very focused on affordability. And the thing about this administration, that I think is wonderful, is they engage and they want to get to the right answer. They want to do the work, they want to do the study. So, you know, 10% everyone overall, I think would be a real problem, but let's figure out –
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: But do you think it would have a meaningful reduct – there are a lot of people out there –
SCHARF: Yes, a meaningful reduction in credit.
SCHARF ON INSTITUTIONS VS INDIVIDUALS FOR HOUSING
SCHARF: I do think one of the things that you know has come out – anytime there's an inconsistency, whether it's between institutions, between individuals and institutions, in terms of what it means from a tax perspective or whatnot, and when one person is advantaged, that's not a good place to be. So, we shouldn't have a policy where it is more affordable for an institution to buy something than an individual that just it doesn't make sense and it doesn't get to the right goal that we want.
SCHARF ON WELLS FARGO TURNAROUND
SCHARF: We're able to compete on a level playing field now for the first time since 2018. And so, when you look at our results, we've actually feel great. Not just about the fact that we put these issues behind us, but that almost all of our businesses are growing today, and we were able to do that while not able to grow loans, grow deposits, grow inventory, things like that. And so now we're able to do all that on behalf of our customers.
BECKY QUICK: The shackles have come out?
SCHARF: Exactly. And by the way, the market didn't give us any degree of reprieve because we had that. They had the same high expectations for us. And so, our balance sheet’s up 11% since the asset cap was lifted, we're going out to companies who we had to ask to take deposits away, to say, please bring them back. We're increasing our inventories and financing. We're growing loans again. And so, you know, we're still very, very conscious of being, you know, what Wells Fargo is, thinking about our own risk tolerances the same way but being much more on our front foot.
SCHARF ON HOUSING 401(K)
SCHARF: I think it's super interesting. I think, you know, under the right circumstances, depends on the amount, I would think about level of concentration, within 401(k) and things like that. But you know, it should be a long-term investment locked up in a long-term plan. You know, the devil's in the details, but, I think it's really interesting.
SCHARF ON INVESTMENT BANKS
SCHARF: We've always been in the business, but we've always wanted to be below the radar screen. It's a natural progression from using your own balance sheet to finance companies to give them access to public markets, give them access to broader degrees of private credit, provide financing advice. And so, you know, what we've made the decision is that we don't want to keep it under the radar screen. We want to grow the business. We want to continue to serve companies of all sizes. We have competitive advantages. We have Treasury services relationships. We lend a huge amount of money to these companies. I think they like doing business with us, and like doing business with us for long term. They want more options.
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries
FRIES ON GLOBAL RELATIONSHIPS
FRIES: I think it's a red herring.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: It’s a red herring.
FRIES: I do. I think that Donald Trump's approach is to be, to take the extreme and figure out where I think it's, it's a red, I don't believe the relationship will change fundamentally over the long haul. He won't be president forever. I mean, they'll, you know, I think it's, it's too fundamental, too many things that we need to do together. So I'm an optimist. I think long term, I think it's, it's exciting. It's an interesting headline to say it's changed forever, I don't think so. That’s my view.
FRIES ON AI
FRIES: What I'm picking up here is this massive gap between what AI can do and what I'm doing. I mean, your prior guest, Bret, told me today, if you stop building AI gigafactories, today, you would get 80% of the benefits that it's going to provide. Someone else at Davos said there's a 10x gap between what it can do and what we're doing with it. So what I'm stressed out about is we're making these marginal improvements. You call my call center, the call is a little better, but these are marginal improvements. Where's the transformation?
FRIES ON FORMULA E INVESTING
FRIES: This Gen 4 car coming out in a couple months. You know, it's just a matter of time before we're faster than F1 if speed matters to you, if it doesn't matter to you, then fine. But it's, it's the, you know, the five fastest cars in the world have batteries. I mean, the physics of this, so that it's going nowhere but up. And that's exciting for us. There's only eight global sports on the planet. We own one. I'm happy about that. So we compete on five continents and and it's got nowhere to go but up.
FRIES ON STREAMING PLATFORM DEALS
FRIES: I got to be careful here. I'm not going to come down on one side or the other, but whoever wins is going to be a partner with us, for sure, or already is, because that content will be too important to us. I think both deals will, both buyers will have a little bit of work to do because, as you know, EU regulators and local regulators are quite protective of their national broadcasters and their content industry.
Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson
HUDSON ON HEALTH INEQUITY
HUDSON: I'm encouraged actually, by the energy for removing health inequity, and I think it bodes well for access to innovation, not least the U.S., but perhaps the challenge the President put down for Europe is also important one.
BECKY QUICK: In terms of them paying more for some of their medications, you think –
HUDSON: I think we start with, you know, making sure people get access to medicines. A lot of people need them, and we're trying to do our very best to demonstrate our value, of course, but I think getting it on the agenda, I think that's important.
HUDSON ON AI
HUDSON: We're trying to make sure that we're using AI right across the governances in R&D, set higher bar, be more demanding. Because in the end, innovation is the only thing we know will be rewarded. When all is said and done, if you're doing things that have never been done before – and that's what we laid out two years ago for the company – that's where we'll get the relevance.
HUDSON ON AI AND GOVERNANCE
HUDSON: I think that's somewhere with the company of the last 12 to 24 months has really honed the AI contribution to the governance and decision making, and over time, it'll give more incredible medicines. It'll make us a bit more efficient, and the cost and speed will change. And that's good for everybody. We're very proud of that. I think we're one of the earliest adopters, broadly in AI, in pharma. And of course, you know, it'll have to show itself over the next 12 to 24 months, but we have some big readouts ahead of us. Everybody's feeling very excited about what we're doing.
HUDSON ON RARE DISEASES
HUDSON: We're one of the world's leaders in rare diseases, and there's such small numbers of patients as you mentioned, but it's so necessary to help. And we've been able to run a successful business, and doing that at the same time. That's going to continue. We're well placed for that. I think we have a duty to do that work. That's why most of us are in healthcare. But I think the way we set ourselves up on the balance of the portfolio, we can support those patients with first-in-class options, and we can run a really successful business at the same time. And I think it's important to do that. That's why I'm in healthcare.
Dell Technologies Chairman & CEO Michael Dell
Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/01/22/michael-dell-ai-demand-is-in-excess-of-supply.html
DELL ON TRUMP SPEECH
DELL: what I'm hearing from a lot of the European business leaders is they're secretly kind of happy that the point of European competitiveness has come to the fore as a key topic. And you know, there's kind of a recognition that some things need to change.
SARA EISEN: They like the tough love?
DELL: Well, I’m specifically on this point of European competitiveness, which is an issue independent of U.S. politics. Certainly, the pro-growth strategies of the administration are bearing some incredible fruit, right with the results you're seeing in the United States economy. And so I think European business leaders are looking at that and saying, hey, maybe we need some deregulation, maybe we need some pro-growth policies, and hoping that their political leaders will follow in that direction.
DELL ON INVEST AMERICA PLEDGE AND FUTURE OF THE PROGRAM
DELL: The most important investment that a country can make is in its people, and especially its children. We know that when children have accounts like this, they're much more likely to graduate from high school, and to go on to college, and to start a business, and to buy a home, and to not be incarcerated, and to be successful members of society. I think it's pretty likely that we'll get it to continue in terms of the government's contribution. And again, if you do the math on compounding, and you go out 10 or 20 years, this can be incredibly significant and also sort of change the psyche and understanding. If you understand what capital is and how you invest and save, that can really change a generation.
DELL ON AI PROFITABILITY
DELL: I think there's a clear ROI that, you know, we, and the customers that understand how to use this are generating certainly, our earnings per share have been consistently growing double digits, and we expect that to fully continue over the next five years. So, you know, we have a great outlook for our business. And you know, it is both because of AI and how it's helping us be a more competitive company, and because we're making the picks and shovels and selling them to all the great companies out there and the firms that are building these big models and doing all the inference. And, you know, I think it really is, we're way more at the beginning of this.
DELL ON AI IMPACT
DELL: I think, buckle up, brave new world. I mean, I take the view that as we get better tools, the economy will expand. And so, you can sort of look at this and say, well, we have all these incredible tools. People can be way more productive. We're just going to do the same work, but with fewer people. I don't think that's what will happen. I think we're going to do a lot more things in the world. We're going to advance drug discovery, right? We're going to – all areas of human endeavor are going to be advanced in a significant way. And I think we will see elevated economic growth as a result. And you know, some of the some of the data seems to suggest that's already starting to occur.
Scale AI CEO Jason Droege
DROEGE ON SCALE AI
JASON DROEGE: 2025 was a big year for us, obviously, with the Meta investment 14 plus billion dollars, revenue for the year, new bookings for the year is over a billion dollars. More than half of that came in Q4. AI infrastructure, the nuts and bolts of what make AI work is a booming business. There's tons of demand. We sell data to model builders. We sell applications and services to governments, fortune 500s, and making AI work reliably is just a high demand business and so we are at the center of that.
DROEGE ON MAKING AI MORE RELIABLE
DROEGE: There's a lot of concern here at Davos about like, how do I make AI reliable for my enterprise because the bar to adopt something in enterprise is much higher than for a consumer, and so to make it work, to make it work reliably, you have to have the right people, the right technology and make the right investments, and to a certain degree, have some patience because you need to pick the right problems.
DROEGE ON WORK WITH DEPARTMENT OF WAR
DROEGE: We do a lot of work with the Department of War, and we have for years. We started out doing data labeling five years ago. Since then, we've been building applications to help them with operational planning. So the department doesn't just do right of launch missiles and conflict. They have to do a lot of logistics, a lot of operational planning, and those processes are highly manual, they're expensive, and they can be done and assisted with AI very effectively. So we're doing a lot of work in that area.
DROEGE ON AI BUBBLE
DROEGE: There are a lot of promises out there on what AI can do that are not being delivered on today. In that way that is, that is definitely bubbly. There are a lot of companies and providers out there who are trying to deliver value and not succeeding. They might have, you know, they might be well funded, etc. I think next year in Davos, the wheat and the chaff are going to separate. It will become very clear in the next 12 months, who's actually delivering value, what kind of use cases there are. And at that moment, I think we can really reassess, like, where we are.
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan
NARASIMHAN ON EUROPEAN DRUG LAUNCHES
VAS NARASIMHAN: I think the challenge is, as you know, European policy does not move quickly, and this is going to take time, and in the intervening period, we're going to be faced with the challenge of not being able to launch new medicines in the public markets in some of these countries. So we really are urging policy makers to accelerate the process to try to close the gap.
NARASIMHAN: I hope it doesn't come to that, but launches are not going to happen. There'll be more political pressure in Europe to change the system, and then hopefully we get better awarded for innovation.
NARASIMHAM DRUG PRICING FOR EUROPE
NARASIMHAN: We will need to go country by country in the target list of countries. It's important to note, it's not every European country, but it is large European countries, and we'll need those countries to rehaul how they value medicines. They often compare us to the oldest generic drug to try to get a low price, and then often they claw back our excess growth and sales when they see too much volume. And when you add all of this together, it just leads to this really large disparity between the US and Europe.
NARASIMHAM ON WASTE IN THE SYSTEM
NARASIMHAN: What we have to do is keep educating the American public. Here are the facts. Over 90% of drugs in America are generic in terms of volume, and the US pays the lowest prices on generic drugs amongst any developed country in the world. Drug, drugs are only 10% of the total health care budget, and they're growing at 2%. 50% is hospitals, 40% is waste and all of the other actors in the system, PBMs, etc. I think we need to start tackling those problems. Otherwise we're going to kill the innovation engine of biotech in the United States.
NARASIMHAM LIST ON PRICE VS PATIENT OUT OF POCKET
NARASIMHAN: It will adjust list prices over time. Remember, the list price and the drug and what the patient actually pays are very, very different things. Remember, Medicaid patients basically don't have an out of pocket cost. Medicare patients out of pocket caps, are capped. Many patients without assurance get all kinds of support. We really should be talking about out of pocket costs in the United States, not list prices, not net prices. It should be a focus on reducing patient out of pocket costs, which actually, I think is going in the right direction.
NARASIMHAM EUROPE HAS TO STEP UP
NARASIMHAN: Europe has to now step up from a competitiveness standpoint. I mean, it's even beyond our sector. We see that Europe has to take this as a moment, however we want to think about the relationship with the US. Increase competitiveness, make the Draghi report a reality, start to really unlock investment in innovative sectors, fix the overall financial market in the region, deregulate all the owners, regulation we're up against, and then really make the region more competitive. That would be the win.
Authentic Brands CEO Jamie Salter
SALTER ON TARIFFS
SALTER: So far, the global consumer is actually performing quite well. We have not really seen a bump in the road as far as tariffs go in the U.S. You know, let's be honest, we probably saw tariffs last year, 50% of sort of what we're going to see this year. So this year, tariffs will be twice as much as what we paid last year. It's not that it's going up so much. I mean, a lot of people were able to sort of manage their inventory properly, put a little bit of pressure back on the sourcing side of the business, and, you know, pass it on to the consumer. The biggest question is, is the consumer really going to sustain, you know, these price hikes that we're going to see, you know, over the next 12 months.
SALTER ON TARIFF IMPACT
SALTER: The biggest question is, is where are we going to see the pause – are we going to see it more on the value side, the mid-tier side, or the luxury side. We've seen some, definitely some pause on the luxury side, mid-tier seems to be holding in there, and that's where we pay – play sort of 80% of our business plays in that market at Authentic.
SALTER ON TARIFF WINNERS AND LOSERS
SALTER: At the end of the day, tariffs are tariffs. So, they're going to be on, you know, value product, and they're going to be on high-end product. I definitely think it will continue to hit the consumer, but you're going to see some, you know, winners and losers, you know, through this. Walmart continues to be a big winner. So, TJMaxx and Ross and Burlington, they also seem to be winning. And you know, the clubs continue to win. So, we actually think that, you know, the markets actually pretty good.
SALTER ON ACQURING GUESS
SALTER: We announced, I guess it was about four months ago that we were going to be buying Guess, and it is happening. All the regulatory approvals have been approved, and we will be closing Guess momentarily. If not the next 24 hours, definitely early next week.
SALTER ON KEVIN HART PARTNERSHIP
SALTER: We are now partners with Kevin Hart, where we acquired, you know, basically 50% of the brand. And Kevin Hart, he is, you know, he's a legend, obviously. But what we've seen is, Kevin Hart, you know, early days, you know, we started managing his business about six months ago. And, you know, because that's what we generally do. We sort of date these people to make sure that we want to do a long-term deal with them. So, we've now completed the long-term deal, and we're very optimistic that Kevin Hart's business will continue to grow and probably double in the very near future, specifically on the merchandising side, but also on the entertainment side.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz
Video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/01/22/crowdstrike-ceo-on-new-cloud-deals.html
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