• Thursday was the last full day of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
• At panels and parties, the rich and powerful were discussing what's next for the economy, tech, and business.
• Delegates packed the 700-seater hall to hear Donald Trump's virtual address.

Thursday is the last full day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the rich and powerful have been discussing the year ahead in economics, business, and tech.

This is what happened.

A softer start to day 4

You can tell the parties in Davos have been running late when the security lines at the Congress Center are shorter. That was the scene on the morning of day four.

Last night, the Business Insider crew was out mingling with the rich and powerful, trying to gauge their biggest takeaways from the week.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told me he loves coming to Davos—not just for the events but also for the sheer number of connections he's able to make. Connections were certainly the theme of the night.

From Uber, we made our way to one of the most sought-after gatherings: J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon's annual drinks reception. Hosted at the iconic Kirchner Museum, this event is a Davos staple, bringing together the biggest names in business and politics. It's not just about the cocktails — it's a chance to meet Dimon, his top leadership, and an exclusive circle of global power players.

And yes, we managed to sneak in a photo with Dimon himself, alongside Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and none other than former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Just another night in Davos. — Spriha Srivastava

Trump's virtual address had people laughing and sitting in complete silence

 President Donald Trump's virtual address on Thursday afternoon drew a huge crowd.

The 700-seater hall was full and an audience of CEOs and leaders listened to the new president, who attacked EU regulation while indulging in rhetoric reminiscent of the campaign trail. One delegate told me she'd walked out after his remark about "transgender surgeries". I wrote here about the strange atmosphere. — Spriha Srivastava

Who will manage your AI colleagues?

The AI agents are coming, but who will manage them? It's a very real concern among some business leaders I've met with.

HR software maker Lattice got some backlash last year when it announced it would start giving AI workers official employment records. The idea might not seem so ridiculous now as business leaders think about how to govern a new class of AI capable of carrying out certain tasks without human input. "We were ahead, but by months," Lattice CEO Sarah Franklin told BI at Davos.

ManpowerGroup chief commercial officer Becky Frankiewicz also told BI she'd been hearing from business leaders who are thinking about ways to govern AI agents. Tech companies will likely be the first to jump in, she said, but she already knows of one consulting firm grappling with this challenge of the new AI era. "They've done the agents already," she said. "The next question they were asking was: do we need to have managers for the agents?" — Hugh Langley

The WTO's director-general had a stark warning about tariffs

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization, said in a session that she feared President Trump's tariffs could trigger retaliation and "catastrophic" damage to the global economy.

"We should not hyperventilate, we should take a deep breath," the former finance minister of Nigeria said, noting the US may still not follow through on its tariff threats.

Okonjo-Iweala, a Harvard and MIT-trained economist, said she wanted to avoid "a self-fulfilling prophecy" where talk of a tariff war causes politicians to wage one. She warned retaliation to Trump's tariffs could cause "catastrophic" double-digit global GDP losses and "everyone will pay."

Even if the world splits up into two trading blocs and there's wider uncertainty about trade policies, she said, an estimated 6.4% of real global GDP or $6.75 trillion could be lost in the longer term. That would be equivalent to "losing the economy of Japan and Korea combined," Okonjo-Iweala said. "That's far from trivial." — Theron Mohamed

A DEI advocate says it can survive — if it focuses on the business case

The new US administration's attitudes toward DEI initiatives might not seem hopeful for those in the space, but Mary Ellen Iskenderian still sees opportunities.

As president and CEO of Women's World Banking, a global nonprofit, she's focused on helping low-income women in the developing world access financial tools and resources. She's also tentatively entering the US with a for-profit impact investment management fund.

Despite many businesses seeming to pull back on their DEI efforts — although that list doesn't include JPMorgan — Iskenderian told me she's not deterred. The key is positioning any changes as focused on improving the business.

She told me that, after Davos, she's headed to Zurich to make a business pitch with a large European bank about DEI efforts within its wealth business.

The issue? Across the board, 60% of private banks' female clients will leave their bank when their husband dies because the relationship manager hasn't been talking to them.

It's solving those types of business-focused issues that Iskenderian believes will be key.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that if it stays within the business case, it's still going to be something," she told me. — Dan DeFrancesco

Uber wants to 'out Amazon' Amazon

"Never underestimate the power of human laziness," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told a small gathering on Wednesday in a Q&A. He was talking about Uber's plans for growing its same-day delivery network with merchants spanning from Apple to Walmart. "Ultimately what we want to do is empower every single local merchant to out-Amazon Amazon," he said.

Khosrowshahi traveled to Switzerland after attending festivities in DC for Donald Trump's inauguration, where he described seeing a reinvigorated sense of optimism among business leaders.

"You see it, whether you agree with the executive orders or not, there's a sense that there's a window, there's a permission to move quickly," he said. — Hugh Langley

March will be the month for tech IPOs

April's showers bring May flowers, but March will be the month for IPOs.

That's the expected timeline for tech companies to finally start going public again after a long drought in the space, according to bankers I've spoken with here.

Specifically, keep an eye on companies backed by private equity. One banker told me that private equity is feeling pressure to show a path to liquidity, and those assets are often too big to sell to another firm. There's also a desire to free up capital during what's becoming an exciting time to put money back to work.

Another banker made similar comments about the public window starting to open. They also pointed to the growing appetite among active managers to tap into IPOs to gain some alpha, given the strength of passive investing, as another sign of momentum.

But don't expect an absolute free-for-all. It won't be a return to the hysteria of 2021. Instead, expect a normal year similar to what we saw pre-pandemic, the banker added. — Dan DeFrancesco

Will AI widen the gender gap?

The conversations around AI have been overwhelming, especially with the rise of agentic AI and the talent transformation needed to keep up. But there's a growing concern that these advancements could deepen the gender gap, particularly in low-income countries.

Smriti Irani, a former Indian cabinet minister and the founder of the Alliance for Global Good, Gender Equality, and Equity, shared her concerns with me. She said, "One big risk with generative AI is that it relies heavily on scraping the internet to train its algorithms. But how much of that content actually represents women's issues?"

She also highlighted a crucial challenge for women in low-income countries: "The penetration of the internet is still a challenge. What happens to women and their businesses or their livelihoods in those countries, especially if most economies start pushing for automation?" Irani also emphasized that 70% of jobs held by women globally are vulnerable to automation.

"You have an opportunity coming, but you will also be overwhelmed by the fact that you have a subset of women who are potentially humanly trained to do jobs. They will reach a particular maturity in terms of their interface with their own organizations, and suddenly we have new technology coming that can use AI for workflow in the workplace. What happens to that female potential?"

As AI reshapes the workforce, the question remains: Will it help close the gender gap, or will it leave women further behind? — Spriha Srivastava

Davos is already prepping for 2026

The conference doesn't technically wrap until midday Friday, but things are already winding down. Some people leave Thursday, while a good chunk of the delegates head out early Friday.

But an end is just a new beginning, and that's the case for Davos … 2026.

Planning for next year's event has already begun. Plenty of companies will lock down their spaces along the Promenade — the main street that runs through town where retail shops are transformed into a "haus" for the business renting it — by the end of the week if they haven't already done so. When I arrived on Sunday afternoon, I saw one shop with a large display advertising itself as a potential 2026 home base.

Reservations at restaurants for big dinners also start filling up fast, although one person involved in event planning told me some establishments opt to wait a bit in hopes they can just rent out the entire space in one go.

The entire week is a boon for local businesses and homeowners, who make many multiples above what they see selling things or renting out their space any other week of the year.

Of course, some shops choose to stay open, like the town's luxury watch shop. (Its Rolex signage fits in quite well with the vibes, to be honest.)

And then there's the one souvenir shop in the middle of town, which might secretly do the best business. A simple cotton T-shirt with some Davos branding can run you close to $40. — Dan DeFrancesco

• Agentic AI, which makes decisions without human input, is a hot topic at Davos this year.
• AI agents promise tangible benefits to companies but raise questions such as whether they should get KPIs.
• Business leaders now have to work out how to manage autonomous bots alongside human employees.

Many companies are using AI to get better, faster, and leaner — but what happens when artificial intelligence is not just your tool but your colleague or your employee? Should it be trained like a human, given goals and performance metrics?

There's a reality setting in at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year: business leaders will soon have to decide how to manage not only their human workforce but also a new class of AI employees while maintaining harmony between bots and people.

It's something Lattice CEO Sarah Franklin has spent a lot of time thinking about. Her company, which builds HR software, announced last year that it was going to treat AI workers like humans by giving them official employee records and even putting them through onboarding like a real human employee. The actual humans weren't keen on the idea and Lattice hit pause after the backlash.

Now, with talk of AI agents everywhere, Franklin says Lattice's idea was "really prescient" if too early. "We were ahead, but by months."

That may prove to be so. Agentic AI is a hot topic at Davos this year. The past two years have brought much hype around artificial intelligence, but agents — AI that can act and make decisions independent of user input — are what many stakeholders believe can provide tangible, immediate benefits. Or, as one exec in Davos put it, the time for kicking the tires is over. Businesses want returns on their investments — and agents are one way to get it.

Franklin is not the only one raising the flag on this topic. "I don't think the world has yet had the opportunity to think through all of the implications," Alan Flower, global head of AI at HCLTech, told Business Insider.

"For example, as a manager, I'm going to be managing a human workforce and an agentic workforce at the same time — they're going to have to collaborate," said Flower. "My agents are going to have to collaborate with agents from another company, for example."

The question then, said Flower, is how do employers "broker" collaboration between agents — including from other companies —and motivate them to do good work?

"Will we get to a phase where agentic AI will be given KPIs? These are all considerations that the world of work is going to have to kind of contemplate," Flower added, referring to key performance indicators.

'How do I manage them?'

Franklin says one of the mistakes Lattice made with its announcement last year was in how it communicated it. "People are more comfortable with the word 'agent' than they are with 'digital worker,'" she said. Franklin added, "There's a huge lack of education of what AI is and a disbelief that AI is going to be able to have the types of conversations that it can."

That's a huge opportunity for HR leaders, Franklin said. And, of course, for Lattice, which counts OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic among its customers.

Becky Frankiewicz, chief commercial officer at ManpowerGroup, told BI she has been hearing a lot of talk about whether companies will need "AI managers" for their AI agents.

"I think the first step in working out how to manage these AI employees is, how do I deploy them and make them productive? And then step two is, how do I manage them?"

Frankiewicz said she knew one consulting company already grappling with this. "They've done the agents already," she said. "The next question they were asking was: do we need to have managers for the agents?"

Lattice's Franklin thinks the discussion around AI in the workplace isn't being taken seriously enough — and needs to happen soon.

"The reality is that today, AI is being implemented as agents to have conversations on behalf of brands, on behalf of people," Franklin said, adding that it's a huge amount of trust to put into AI without proper governance. As agents take on more responsibilities, more governance will be needed — but that means acknowledging the new reality and having those conversations.

"We need everyone to get to this place where they're comfortable, they're not afraid," she said. "And we can work together with AI in the workforce in a way that feels natural."