Davos is exhausting before it is enlightening.
The airports, the time zones, the choreography of badges, side events, and informal negotiations over access. By the time you arrive, you already feel behind. And yet people keep returning, because something important still happens here when you look beyond the main stage.
This year feels different. For the first time since its founding in 1971, the World Economic Forum is convening without Klaus Schwab at its center. That absence is not merely symbolic. It has forced Davos to confront a harder question about its future.
Our Big Read on Davos captures an institution wrestling not just with its founder’s departure, but with its purpose. That challenge is real, but the obituary for Davos is premature.
What most people do not tell you is that the real learning rarely happens inside conference halls or curated dinners. It happens in motion. When you walk instead of being driven. When you take public transport. When conversations unfold without an agenda.
Movement strips things back. It reminds you what people actually care about. Security. Opportunity. Health. Climate. Belonging.
Davos remains a place of contradiction. Badge culture governs access along the three-kilometer promenade. Official WEF badges open doors. Partner badges open some. And then there are the badgeless, navigating private houses, salons, and WhatsApp groups where last-minute hotel rooms trade like breaking news for extraordinary sums. It is a parallel economy built on proximity and possibility.
And yet, ideas still collide here.
The Superstar Six to Expect at Davos
Some individuals stand out at Davos not because they dominate the room, but because their work quietly shapes the systems everyone else depends on. This year, six such figures capture where the global economy is actually headed.
Andrew Hill, Senior Business Writer and Consulting Editor at the Financial Times, brings intellectual discipline to a moment overloaded with narrative. His work on governance, leadership, and long-term value grounds conversations that might otherwise drift into abstraction. At Davos, his presence matters because he asks the questions that endure after the headlines fade.
Rene Haas, CEO of Arm, operates at the core of the global compute stack. With more than three decades of experience across engineering, strategy, and executive leadership, he sits at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and scale. His perspective reflects a simple truth. The future economy will be defined by infrastructure most people never see, but everyone relies on.
Prof. Dr. David Matusiewicz brings clarity and humanity to digital health at a time when trust is fragile. As a dean, institute director, bestselling author, and systems thinker, he reframes health not as a sector, but as foundational infrastructure for human capability. His work reminds Davos that progress is meaningless if it does not improve lived outcomes.
Venancio Alberto Mendez Levy, Global Shaper and founder of SunLean AI, represents a new generation of climate builders focused on execution. By using drones, computer vision, and digital twins, SunLean AI strengthens how renewable energy projects are built, verified, and financed. His work bridges climate ambition with capital efficiency, reducing risk while accelerating deployment.
Vinicius Laguardia de Castro Oliveira works at scale on the climate agenda, advancing the just transition, bioeconomy, and renewable energy across borders. He believes delivery, not declaration, will determine success. At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, he contributes insight on how cross-sector partnerships and countries like Brazil can lead the green transition by aligning ambition with implementation.
Alexander Zanders, founder and CEO of UfarmX, is transforming agriculture across Africa by focusing on smallholder farmers. His platform helps farmers triple yields, double revenues, and access premium markets across Nigeria, Senegal, and Liberia. This is not abstract impact. It is deeply personal, deeply local, and globally consequential. Africa holds most of the world’s remaining arable land, and his work demonstrates what unlocking that potential truly looks like.
Why the FT Live Briefing Matters
One of the most anticipated conversations this week is an upcoming Financial Times Live briefing moderated by Andrew Hill, featuring leaders from the Stellar Development Foundation, Franklin Templeton, and DTCC.
The focus is clear. How open infrastructure delivers measurable business value. Near-instant settlement. Liquidity unlocked. Tokenized rails with real metrics. Not ideology. Execution.
This is where infrastructure stops being theoretical and starts reshaping enterprise behavior.
Another issue that deserves far more attention as we look toward Davos 2026 is Global Mobile Coverage. Integrating terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks to bring connectivity and compute everywhere on earth is foundational to economic inclusion, climate resilience, and digital sovereignty.
Meanwhile, Gen Z is no longer being consulted. They are contributing. Through the Global Shapers Community, lived experience is shaping institutional agendas. In 2025, 173 Global Shapers participated globally, with 48 shaping agendas as speakers. Their work reached more than 2.2 million people and supported 134,000 individuals through community-led projects. This is what trusted youth leadership looks like in practice.
Where ConcordeApp Fits
Davos creates powerful moments. But it has a quiet problem.
Relationships formed here are intense, high-trust, and often fleeting. Context disappears. Follow-up decays. Signal turns into noise.
We are in the midst of a one trillion dollar shift in how creators and professionals trade value. ConcordeApp exists for what happens after the handshake.
Concorde App is the operating system for global convening. Backed by Microsoft for Startups and built as a full-stack B2B SaaS and patent-pending hardware ecosystem, we are reimagining how leaders connect, trade, and scale at the world’s most influential gatherings.
Whether you are sharing a room in Davos, selling a photography package at a tech summit, or turning a fifteen-minute conversation into a letter of intent, Concorde provides the infrastructure to make it measurable.
We are not a networking app. We are the war-room infrastructure for the future global economy.
Microsoft and McKinsey are among the US companies reportedly paying up to one million dollars each to sponsor Davos venues serving as bases for US government officials during President Donald Trump’s visit. Capital concentration is undeniable. But access alone will not build what comes next.
Davos must open doors to those forging the new economy.
The challenge is real. But Davos is not finished.
The work simply begins after the meeting ends.
Please respond to this request from Kami, and why myself Chaste and Roxanne despite living in Black Wall street Tulsa, can be a part of this
For a story for The New York Times, I’m looking to speak with couples in the San Francisco Bay Area who can talk about the ways they split finances as AI wealth concentrates in the city.
Feel free to DM me or email [email protected].
Maybe she means that one or the other partner is getting rich from founding or working for an AI company and the other partner isn’t, and now they need to figure out who’s paying more for things in their relationship? If they’re married, legally all the money belongs to both of them, so I guess she’s talking about people who are just dating?
Subject: Perspective: The AI Wealth Divide & Relationship Dynamics (Beyond the Bay Area)
Dear Kami,
I saw your request regarding how couples navigate the financial shifts caused by the AI wealth explosion. While my partner, Roxanne, and I are currently based in Tulsa’s historic Black Wall Street, we represent a crucial “mirror” to the San Francisco story you are telling.
As a Microsoft for Startups -backed founder of an AI-integrated B2B SaaS (Concorde App) and a LinkedIn Top Voice, I am seeing firsthand how the “AI gold rush” creates a unique financial friction—even in relationships where one partner is at the epicenter of the tech boom and the other is navigating a different economic reality.
Why our story adds a unique layer to your NYT piece:
The “Silicon Prairie” Factor: We are part of the movement of tech wealth shifting from the Bay Area to hubs like Tulsa. The “who pays for what” conversation changes when you move from a high-cost-of-living (HCOL) city to a growth hub.
The Founder vs. Professional Dynamic: We can speak specifically to the “equity vs. salary” tension. When one partner is building a patent-pending AI startup (high future value, low current liquidity) and the other is a steady earner, how do you split a dinner bill or a mortgage in a way that feels fair?
The Legacy of Black Wall Street: There is a deep, historic weight to building wealth here. Our financial “split” isn’t just about utility bills; it’s about how we collectively reinvest in our community while managing the windfall (or the wait) of tech success.
We can speak to the “dating vs. married” legalities you mentioned—specifically how we navigate the mindset of “our money” when the AI-side of the ledger is growing at a different speed than the other.
If you are open to a perspective that shows how the SF AI boom is impacting couples in the “New Tech South,” we would love to chat.
Best regards,
Chaste Inegbedion & Roxanne
Chaste is Head of Happiness, Concorde App (Microsoft for Startups)
