Davos reveals mixed messages on CEO confidence—and new narratives on AI

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos brings together an incongruous mix of celebrities (this year included Matt Damon, David Beckham, and Katy Perry, who was accompanying ex-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau), world leaders (President Donald Trump), and nonprofit leaders. The event also reliably assembles an unrivaled group of global CEOs who offer a window into where business is heading.

Some CEOs see sunny skies ahead

This year, though, I found the window very foggy—and I wasn’t alone. According to PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey, released at the start of the meeting, only about a third of CEOs (30%) say they are confident about revenue growth in the next 12 months, down from 38% in 2025 and 56% in 2022. Yet Paul Griggs, CEO of PwC U.S., says the American CEOs he spoke with in Davos are feeling much more optimistic than the survey would suggest. While they acknowledge that they’re dealing with high levels of uncertainty, they’re also more prepared to deal with complexity through new workflows and processes to keep them agile. “I met with 10 CEOs today, and it was a day of optimism,” Griggs says.

Sharon Marcil, who leads Boston Consulting Group in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, is also seeing bright spots. A new report, BCG AI Radar 2026, finds that four out of five CEOs say they are more optimistic about the returns on their AI investments than they were a year ago. “I do think 2026 is going to be a growth year,” she says.

Who’s feeling blue? Most consultants I spoke with say European and U.K. CEOs are less confident than their U.S.- and Asia-based counterparts.

AI’s impact beyond the hype

The impact of AI on jobs was also hotly debated at Davos. While most CEOs and executives continue to insist that AI will make work better by reducing mundane tasks, a few CEOs have started to talk—publicly and privately—about the roles AI will eliminate and the need to prepare workers for changes.

“We’re focused on being completely honest with our workforce,” says Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen Technologies, a digital network services provider. Johnson says the company is committed to training employees for new roles in the organization but adds, “We have to reimagine what the world will look like in the future, and [employees] need to imagine a world where their current job may not exist.”

Conversations about AI have also shifted away from applications (think OpenAI’s ChatGPT) and agents (software that can make decisions and complete tasks) to infrastructure. Throughout the week, executives shared insights on the energy and networking capacity needed as data centers built specifically to support AI crop up.

“The big question now has gone from the potential to operational reality,” says Aamir Paul, president of North America Operations at energy technology company Schneider Electric. (Fast Company partnered with Schneider Electric on a series of videos in Davos.) “How do we make it happen . . . getting data centers built, getting energy access, getting it in a way that it doesn’t affect retail costs and consumers don’t have to take the burden, and doing it in a way where we’re still meeting our sustainability goals?”

These are daunting challenges that will require investment and inventiveness to solve. Luckily, one of BCG’s recent business surveys saw a 14% uptick in mentions of innovation versus a year ago. Perhaps that’s another reason for optimism in 2026.

Your views on 2026

How are you feeling about the year ahead? Do you agree with the prevailing sentiment at Davos, or are you less optimistic about what’s coming? I’d like to hear your thoughts and why you feel that way. Please send them to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I may use your comments in a future newsletter.

Read and watch more:

• Fast Company’s Brendan Vaughan offers his take on Davos
• CEO insularity threatens dialogue goal at Davos
• CEOs at Davos are buying the agentic AI hype​