Market Update: Tech giants showcase their overwhelming power in Davos | Economy and Business – Full Analysis

For more than a century, large private business conglomerates — whether Standard Oil, the East India Company, or others — have wielded enormous power and influence over societies, and even public authorities. But it can be argued that the power accumulated today by the tech giants grants them an unparalleled role in history. Industry leaders like Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, X), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), and Alex Karp (Palantir) attended Davos last week in a parade that, viewed as a whole, was a show of overwhelming power.

The display isn’t necessarily based on the communication style of the leaders of these titans. Huang and Nadella, for example, tend toward a thoughtful and moderate discourse, and even the hyperbolic Musk was relatively restrained in his conversation with Larry Fink (BlackRock) on the main stage in Davos. But the flexing of muscles is evident in the arguments presented, in conjunction with the data.

The data shows, for example, that Nvidia has a market capitalization similar to Germany’s GDP; companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon connect with billions of people, collecting data on them and projecting an astonishing intellectual influence; moreover, they increasingly possess strategic material assets, not only products like Nvidia’s microchips, but also data centers and clouds that are crucial in this era. Companies like Palantir are developing the key components of the future capabilities of the defense industry.

And the talking points highlighted that astonishing — and unsettling — ambition and transformative capacity. Musk observed that the overall goal of his companies is “to maximize the probability that civilization has a great future.” Regarding SpaceX, he said that the company’s mission is anchored in the assumption that life and consciousness are a tiny candle in the darkness. “We need to do everything possible to ensure that the light of consciousness is not extinguished,” said Musk, who defined the work on AI and robotics as “the pathway to abundance.”

Visionary arguments of this kind go hand-in-hand with brutally realistic actions. Musk — the richest person in the world, who has just secured a compensation plan with Tesla that could bring him a trillion dollars over a decade, equivalent to the GDP of a country like Poland — was a key figure in Donald Trump’s return to power, through donations and, above all, by using the X platform as a reality-distortion machine in favor of the Republican tycoon.

But, in a symbol of the power of Big Tech, Musk subsequently broke with the president, and on the Davos stage, he didn’t hesitate to criticize his tariff and energy policies, stating that solar power is the future and that tariffs imposed on Chinese solar panels hinder its development. In an example of the blend of the earthly and the celestial, Musk suggested that, in his view, AI data centers in space, where light is constant and cooling is efficient, could become economically viable in just a few years. The energy issue was central to all the industry’s presentations. “We‘re very soon going to be producing more chips than we can turn on,” he said.

Musk also mocked the Board of Peace that Trump presented in Davos. Playing on the homophones “peace” and “piece,” Musk joked about whether it was a “peace” meeting or rather a “piece” of Greenland, since Trump referred to the giant Arctic island as a mere piece of ice.

The reluctance to criticize is telling within an American landscape that Zanny Minton-Beddoes, editor of The Economist, described as a “climate of fear” in a conversation with Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan). “I am struck, I’m genuinely struck, by the unwillingness of CEOs in America to say anything critical. There is a climate of fear in your country. Would you agree with that? And what should be done about it?” the journalist asked, eliciting applause.

Dimon responded with what sounded like a touch of irritation: “This is the Davos intellectual elite. You know, I’ve been coming to Davos all these years and listening to chatter and stuff like that. And you didn’t do a particularly good job making the world a better place […] I want a stronger NATO, a stronger Europe. Some of the things Trump has done are causing that, some are not. I’m not a tariff guy, though I’ve used it in the eight cases I had. I think they should change their approach to immigration. I’ve said it. What the hell else do you want me to say?” This was on Wednesday. On Thursday, it emerged that Trump had sued Dimon and JP Morgan for €4.3 billion ($5.11 billion) for cutting off his financial services for political reasons.

Huang, with a style completely different from Musk’s, is another example of the immense power of these titanic technology companies. The Nvidia CEO has managed to persuade the Trump administration to reverse its restrictions on exports of certain types of microchips to China, a central issue in the geopolitical struggle between Washington and Beijing.

Huang highlighted the historical dimension of the technological revolution — and, consequently, the power of those leading it. He argued that the development of AI has triggered “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history.” He urged a much broader understanding of AI than just focusing on language models, proposing instead a five-layered, periscopic view: energy, chips, clouds, the AI ​​model itself, and applications.

Huang adopted an optimistic stance, arguing that many of these layers are creating jobs and/or improving salaries. He further maintained that if Europe manages to properly combine AI with its extraordinary industrial base, it could take a leap forward, especially in the application of robotics, and overcome the drawbacks of its lag in software development.

Huang’s optimism regarding the impact of AI on labor markets was not, however, shared by Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, who, at the Davos economic panel, expressed her concern about undesirable effects, such as the destruction of entry-level jobs, which are the gateway for young people to the labor market.

Karp, CEO of Palantir, also offered a positive outlook on AI. The executive maintained that “there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”

The core of his public remarks in Davos, however, concerned Palantir’s military developments. The company has a consolidated contract with the Pentagon worth $10 billion. The significance lies not in the size of the contract, but in its content. Large arms manufacturers provide the U.S. Armed Forces with highly sophisticated and lethal systems at a very high cost. But Palantir supplies something more sensitive: software and AI that processes broad data to guide the operation of a war machine like the Pentagon. This is yet another example of the astonishing — and unsettling — power of contemporary technological giants.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition