Latest / Technology Now / What’s happening at Davos 2026?
Transcript
- SAM JARRELL Hey Michael! For listeners I can see that you’re outside, looking quite cold and dark... Where are you exactly? MICHAEL BIRD Hey Sam, yep good question. I’m in beautiful Switzerland, in a little ski town south of Zurich called ‘Davos’ SAM JARRELL Ooh lovely. What are you doing there? MICHAEL BIRD Well this week is the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This little ski town is transformed into a hub of activity where world leaders from government, business, civil society and academia descend on Davos for one week where they, quote “engage in forward-looking discussions to address global issues and set priorities” including own very own John Schultz who is involved in a session called Data Against Modern Slavery. HPE will be talking at the AI house, a platform for collaboration aiming to shape the next frontiers in AI. SAM JARRELL Sounds very exciting so let’s get going! MICHAEL BIRD Absolutely. I’m Michael Bird. MICHAEL BIRD Welcome to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland SAM JARRELL Michael, for the uninitiated, what exactly is the World Economic Forum, and why exactly is HPE doing there? MICHAEL BIRD The World Economic Forum – you might have heard it referred to as just Davos which is where it takes place – is an annual event where governments, businesses, representatives from civil society and academia arrive from all over the world to meet and discuss the major obstacles facing humanity. It started 55 years ago in 1971 and possibly one of the most interesting things is that attendees span all sorts of private and public sectors, backgrounds and ideologies. It’s a true melting pot of ideas for people to try and address the world’s most pressing challenges. SAM JARRELL And I assume that part of the reason we, as HPE, are there is that we are a global leader in things like AI and cloud? MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, exactly. Global trends in AI, cloud and sustainability are incredibly important to us as a company but it’s more than that. We work with governments around the world, and we are also working to try and reduce things like modern slavery which is a global issue and a big topic for this year’s conference. So let’s look into those key topics a bit more. Earlier today, I had a chat with our very own President and CEO, Antonio Neri, to get a deeper insight into what HPE are doing here, and what we are hoping to come away with. MICHAEL BIRD Well, Antonio, thank you so much for joining us again on technology Now. Uh, it's slightly different to last time we met. We're not, uh, wearing sports kit. ANTONIO NERI No, but it is still quite cold. Well, actually, as I can see, the weather weather's actually pretty nice. Yeah. A lot of snow. But, uh, yeah, it's always the time of the year here. Overnight, it gets really cold. MICHAEL BIRD It does get very, very cold. Um, so we're at Davos 2026. Can you just talk to me some of the key themes of, of Davos this year? ANTONIO NERI Well, it's always great to be back in Davos because you get the opportunity to meet with, uh, government officials, um, and a lot of customers. And the customers representation is very long and deep. Um, and obviously our CEOs and that's the opportunity to really have strategic conversations, close deals, which is very important, but really talk about the status of the affairs of, uh, the world and then what we see in the industry. Uh, for us, obviously AI is gonna be an important element of it. Yeah, that was a theme last year. But I think this year is gonna be dominated by the geopolitical tension, And obviously tariff is gonna be another, another element of that. MICHAEL BIRD So, so why our HPE here in particular? ANTONIO NERI we have a lot of customers that come here. And it's an opportunity to strengthen those relationships or to establish new, uh, strategic partnerships. I'll be meeting with a lot of government officials where we have a lot of things going on. Um, many of them are in the process of deploying AI and it takes relationships. It takes, a lot of conversations to make sure they don't forget about you. But ultimately, we need to compete with, with the best technologies and best people, which of course we have. But don't underestimate the, the power of politics and the power of having those, uh, strategic discussions. MICHAEL BIRD what do our customers get out of us being here at Davos? ANTONIO NERI we learn a lot and we incorporate our learning into our agenda, um, starting with the strategy, figure out where we should invest, where we should divest. Uh, you know, sometimes you come here and then you realize, you know what? That was the wrong place to invest. Mm-hmm. Let's shift at the investments somewhere else, or, uh, we learn a new opportunity where we should double down very aggressively. And, when I think about where the growth is today, obviously we see the United States economy growing very rapidly with strong GDP Asia continue to grow very rapidly. India is one of the fastest, uh, GDP growth, uh, countries in the world. Uh, but when you look at Middle East, obviously they are invested in significant training infrastructure. Um, they want to be a center of excellence for ai. And so having the, the ability to be here and learn and then have those conversations is very important as we establish our agenda for the next, uh, 12 months or 36 months MICHAEL BIRD And what are you, what are you in particular most looking forward to at this year's World Economic Forum? ANTONIO NERI for me it's always about. Getting with people. Yeah. Getting their point of view. Get their point of view. Sometime outside the room, not inside the room, because inside the room sometimes people don't wanna speak up. Um, and then, you know, uh, learn, you know, this is an, it's an amazing forum for an intensive learning of retreat and, MICHAEL BIRD and you get to spend time with customers. ANTONIO NERI Of course. Yes. Um, you know, much of the agenda is with customers, um, and government obviously, but governments are customers too. Yeah. MICHAEL BIRD So you touched on this earlier last year, AI was the big hot topic at Davos. I mean, has much changed since then. ANTONIO NERI No, I think continue to be a hot topic. I think it's a topic that, uh, plays into the geopolitical aspects of it. 'cause uh, everybody wants to preserve sovereignty. And that's why for us, it's a huge opportunity to build AI infrastructure with sovereign principles. And we have the, the right to play there because of our super computing heritage. Mm-hmm. But honestly, we are building now some large AI clouds for governments. Think about the UK or the classified system we built for the French government. So there is many of those opportunities and that's why you need to be here talking to customers and governments because. Sometimes the government is the prime, meaning de customer themself. Sometimes the government use a private sector to build the cloud, so we have to be in concert with both of them. MICHAEL BIRD So I wanna talk about some of the key themes being discussed at the, uh, the AI house where, um, HP has a presence this week. Um, and it keeps coming up on technology now, but I and you, and you mentioned the s word sovereignty earlier. Yeah. Is, is a huge topic. It feels like a Davos this year. Why do you think that is? ANTONIO NERI Well, because many of the models, if not most of the models are built in the United States and trained in the United States. And, you know, and that clearly is great for the United States, but when you think about, you know, culture, think about national security. Mm-hmm. Um, talk about data sovereignty, the regulation compliance, they all play a huge, huge role in the sovereign aspect of it. And so, um, it's very, very clear that as we move from generative AI to agent AI to physical ai. That many of these models will be trained, uh, locally and the data will remain local. And that's why, you know, um, for us it's important that we understand what level of investments each of these countries, all the European Union are gonna make. And making sure that, to your question, our name is there and visible to be a trusted partner. And remember, we already developed a lot of the sovereign solutions, you know, even with GreenLake, disconnected, sovereign, uh, cloud instances that we already provide. But this is gonna be a, a massive infrastructure build out over the next, uh, two to three years. MICHAEL BIRD And it feels like this time last year, sovereign wasn't really on anyone's lips. but it's really, I've really heard it lots in the last, say, three months or so. ANTONIO NERI Well, because now we see the evolution and the acceleration of AI. And, um, we now see real use cases, we see the benefits of it. Mm-hmm. And nobody wants to be left behind. So I think people are waking up to the idea that if you are not using ai, you're gonna be left behind. But at the same time, how you use it and how you deploy is as important as. For what purpose? MICHAEL BIRD and how does this impact the way that we at hp think about the way that, you know, the we, the way that we develop technologies, the way that we speak to our customers? ANTONIO NERI Well, remember we developed an AI ethical code Yeah. That we use for ourselves, uh, for deploying AI, but also for developing solutions for our customers, right? Data provenance, uh, the, the provenance of the model. Um, you know, how we use tools in r and d. And the like, and, you know, starts with that mission and the, and the responsibility to do, uh, the good, not just for shareholders, but for, uh, for the society. We, we participate in the c We work. MICHAEL BIRD another word that's, that's coming up a fair bit is trust. It's a big theme apparently this year. within a business context, like what does trust mean to you? ANTONIO NERI Well, trust is earned. And, uh, you have to earn trust over a period of time. Yeah. By the series of actions and how you operate and you know, through your values and your commitments. Uh, the good news is that obviously we are an incredible ethical company that have the trust for customers. Yeah. And countries. We, we participated, but you know, you can't take it for granted. Mm-hmm. A little misstep, a little mistake. It sets you back so far that it takes years to recover from that. So that's why our employees work ethically, with integrity and remember how our technology can advance the way people live and work. Mm. And fundamentally advance also the communities we work in. MICHAEL BIRD So, so sort of trust and ethics align quite closely. ANTONIO NERI Yeah. I think you, without one, you can have the other. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah. And, and I suppose possibly even sustainability there at some point. ANTONIO NERI Well, sustainability is an outcome, right? Um, because obviously if you do it, um, with, uh, the, the planet in mind to reduce carbon footprint. it pushes the engineer to think differently. Mm-hmm. And the reality is that both can be done. Uh, it just needs to be a priority. It needs to be a focus. MICHAEL BIRD We briefly talked about quantum computing at, uh, we met in Barcelona and, um, you know, it, it feels like it's another major topic of discussion. Yep. What is it about quantum that captures our attention? Like what is it that that's so exciting about it? ANTONIO NERI Well, obviously it is a complete different computing architecture. Yeah. Remember, we still operating in the conventional architecture that was developed decades ago, and the models law that allows us to increase, uh, the, the compute power, uh, over time. But now we are reaching the, the, the wall, right? And therefore, quantum computing with quantum physics and new technologies can accelerate the computing landscape to levels we haven't imagined before. And then, you know, as always said, I think one replaces the other one, one works with the other one. Look, today we still have mainframes, uh, around the world. we still have PC client servers. Mm-hmm. Somewhere in the world. We have obviously the cloud. And we have high performance computing, super computing. I think my view that the quantum computing will address unique use cases, unique problems that neither of those solutions can solve themselves, but also can be an acceler rate of four conventional computing to get traditional workloads, to a new level of performance that maybe was not available before. MICHAEL BIRD Almost like. Something else that an organization can, can have in their arsenal to solve a specific problem? ANTONIO NERI Yeah, I mean, um, you know, I think about what problems quantum computing can solve. You know, definitely finding cures is, is one important aspect. Um, you know, think about molecular docking is an important aspect of it. Obviously the national security is, is key. So there, there is many, many use cases. The problem we have with quantum computer right now is that. It. It has tremendous potential still early in the development, this progress being made, but the cost curve is still too steep. Mm. And the scale is not there yet. So that's why I think our approach to integrate quantum computing as a part of the conventional computing is the right one. Yeah. And we'll do that through both our networking and software layers where we have deep expertise. MICHAEL BIRD It feels like AI may have been there a few years ago that sort of hasn't quite scaled, isn't, isn't particularly well known, and then it just sort of overnight just accelerated, didn't there? ANTONIO NERI Yeah. But, um, AI technologies like GPU still traditional Yeah. Mm. You know, conventional, kind of core based, um, and are based, but quantum is a whole different scenario. So today maybe we are, we are reaching a thousand cubits. Um, which you think is a lot, but actually it's not a lot in the context of solving some of the biggest mathematical algorithm problems. MICHAEL BIRD So where does HPE sit in the world of quantum computing? ANTONIO NERI As I said, we, we want to play an agnostic game, meaning where we work with a lot of the quantum companies, uh, to help, to help them scale to logical set of units that ultimately becomes. A larger scale. And then integrate, uh, quantum into the, uh, conventional computing. We already have done that. We have done proof of concepts for that. So we're gonna play in the networking layer to connect both the conventional with a quantum and within a quantum, be able to do a scale out type of solutions by chaining together smaller amount of cubit so we can get more cubits and then the software environment because ultimately, Computer required quantum applications, and that's a whole different development environment. MICHAEL BIRD Okay. So we, we've gone from the smallest objects in the universe to something that's pretty much the opposite. Space. Space. Why, why are we talking about space, at the AI house, at at das this year? ANTONIO NERI Because it's a new frontier, right? So I think, you know, the mission to Moon and the mission to Mars requires an enormous amount of technology. Uh, despite the fact that we're, uh, on the moon in 1969 for the first time, um, when I think about the moon will become a point of launch to Mars, 'cause the distance is so far. And so establishing the right infrastructure on the moon will allow us to get to Mars, um, take Takeback communications basis and, and, and, you know, colonies of sorts. Um, but. Once you are there, you will learn new things that will make the planet stronger. So everything we learn there will make the earth planet better. MICHAEL BIRD And should we expect to see moves when it comes to technology and space? ANTONIO NERI We are already part of, um, the, the mission to, to the Moon through the partnership with, uh, uh, Ventura Astro Lab, where we are gonna integrate our compute and our network inside these Robs, which are gonna play a huge role moving. You know, stockpiles and materials around the, the moon. So we are very excited about that and hopefully if everything stays on time, which you know, as you know, not always the case, we expect that by the end of 2026 we will have, uh, HPE on the moon. MICHAEL BIRD And on that, Antonio, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It's been really a really, um, really genuinely interesting conversation.. So thank you ANTONIO NERI Thank you MICHAEL BIRD so much joining us. Thank you. SAM JARRELL Wow, that was quite the conversation. was really interesting listening to you and Antonio catch up. I really, really enjoyed it specifically. think the discussion around like us being here and meeting with customers and trying to be a force for good in the world while we're these world leaders. MICHAEL BIRD I think I find this place quite fascinating. It's like you walk along the street and you just sort of don't know who you're bumping shoulders with. It's such a great opportunity to meet with, collaborate with, have conversations with people from all walks of life, from businesses, governments, as we said at the top of the show. So yeah, found it. Yeah, I found it a really fascinating conversation with Antonio. One of the things I thought was really cool was how he talks about how actually some of the conversations he has during this week sort of helps to maybe like mold, change, tweak our company strategy. SAM JARRELL I would imagine, he said he was meeting with customers, but those customers can be some of the largest organizations and governments in the entire world. it kind of has a lens to it. When you're hearing directly from a world leader who we do business with, they're saying these are our priorities, then you do kind of need to consider, okay, how do we then rearrange our HPE priorities to meet those needs, right? MICHAEL BIRD maybe what governments are doing, maybe, you know, how they're wanting to help their citizens, how they want to do things differently. And actually that can then impact how we as a company approach our strategy. So I thought that was fascinating. I guess the other thing that we talked about was sovereignty, the S word. I don't know about you, like I'm hearing it all the time now. SAM JARRELL It's come up a lot, but I often feel like the framing of the word data sovereignty, sounds like this bigger thing than it is, but really it is just who owns the data, right? Who gets to make the rules around how the data is used and how does it stay protected and whatnot? And I think it's a big question, particularly as AI has become more and more of a theme, not just in Davos itself, but for everybody, right? Who has your data and who is allowed to use it and what can become of it. Back in the day, you might post something or publish something, and you're just expecting it to be viewed, not necessarily leveraged. So I think it has a lot of implications. And I see where maybe our customers are coming together and starting to really grapple with what does it mean for me being in the US and having my data taken and leveraged somewhere. What does it mean for you being in the UK? MICHAEL BIRD And I think what's interesting about being here in Davos is that there are leaders of sovereign nations. So it's not necessarily a hypothetical thing. It's actually like going and speaking to a world leader and asking, how do you view sovereignty as a nation? How do you view sovereignty as it comes to data or as it pertains to AI? So I thought it was really fascinating. The last thing that thought was really fascinating that Antonio and I talked about was quantum, quantum computing. I think we briefly touched on it again back in Barcelona, like it's, I think it's, it's, it feels like it's the next big thing. It's the thing that people are starting to talk about a lot more. SAM JARRELL I appreciate that he said, you we're not there yet, but you're right. It is the next big thing on the horizon. And so everyone has to be kind of discussing and thinking about it right now. And the same way that 10 years ago, when people talked about AI, I still think people thought, that's something 30, however 40, maybe not even my lifetime, you know, in the future, but a lot of AI concepts were actually slowly becoming a reality then. And people who were having these discussions could see it on the horizon. So quantum is coming for us. It's coming for us. And I feel as though the speed of innovation just, you know, continues to pick up. And so it'll be here before we know it. We need to be prepared. MICHAEL BIRD Now, we’ve spoken a fair amount about what’s happening here at Davos and as I said at the start, the annual meeting of the world economic forum is attended by world leaders and business CEOs, so one thing i wanted to ask Antonio was why the everyday person should actually be paying attention to what’s being discussed at Davos, ANTONIO NERI Because it will impact them one way or the other one. Um, this is a place where a lot of, policies get shaped. Mm-hmm. And ultimately, remember what was the mission of the World Economic Forum is to make a better world that has shifted over the, the years. Right. But I think this, this year is gonna be very important to get some sort of common understanding on these issues so that when we go out, when we get out of this place and go back to normal, uh, routine, they will be follow ups and closure. So we need to find common ground for peace, common ground for inclusion and common ground for making sure everybody get access to what they need to provide better services and better life to their citizens. SAM JARRELL Okay that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Antonio Neri, And of course, to our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do let us know – rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes and if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technology now AT hpe.com . Subject line? MICHAEL BIRD Ski jacket, I’m really cold SAM JARRELL Ski jacket? And don't forget to subscribe so that you can catch every episode and be the first to listen every week. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is hosted by Sam Jarrell and myself, Michael Bird This episode was produced by Harry Lampert and Izzie Clarke with production support from Alysha Kempson-Taylor, Beckie Bird, Alissa Mitry, and Renee Edwards. Our video editor was Dan King and our theme music was composed by Greg Hooper. SAM JARRELL Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers! SAM JARRELL Bye y’all