Davos 2025: A Week of Debates, Protests, and Global Decisions

This year’s World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting was held in Davos, Switzerland, between January 20 and 24, 2025. It brought top government, business, and civil society decision-makers together to discuss ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’.

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From Greenpeace protests demanding taxation of the super-rich to intense discussions on AI’s improvements and risks, Davos 2025 had a hectic week. The annual WEF meeting once again became the centre of our global economy, technology, climate policy, and geopolitics.

Leaders discussed finding ways to collaborate to rebuild trust, identify new sources of growth, invest in human capital development, catalyse energy and climate to safeguard the planet, and strike a balance between the short—and long-term necessities of industries in the intelligent age. While those discussions and answers to the topics affect the whole world, let’s start by understanding why this WEF annual meeting—Davos—matters so much.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab as the European Management Forum. In the late 1970s, the Forum broadened its focus to include global economic and social issues, and in 1987, it was renamed the World Economic Forum. Every year, global leaders from business, government, and civil society come together in Davos and discuss the global, regional, and industry agenda around the year’s theme.

Davos 2025 welcomed 3,000 attendees from over 130 countries, over 50 heads of state and government, and hundreds of other top governmental leaders, including the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, the Vice-Premier of the People's Republic of China, Ding Xuexiang, and many more. Besides the world leaders, business executives from major corporations like Google and Microsoft, tech and AI leaders from OpenAI and NVIDIA, and activists are also attending this exclusive, invite-only Davos.

Shaping global policies, economic trends, and tech regulations.

Davos is more than just a high-profile meeting—it directs global policy outlooks on economic systems alongside industry standards and innovative developments:

• Discussions set the tone for global policies and geopolitics that shape international diplomacy, business agreements, and peace resolutions. This year, the focus is on US-China relations, the Ukraine war, and European defence strategies.
• Economic trends and market shifts were centred on understanding the reasons for and trying to find solutions to European economic stagnation, inflation concerns, and shifting investment patterns.
• The significant technology company executives and policymakers discussed technology and AI regulations to find the right balance between innovation and regulation in the AI-rising world.

Although the Davos discussions did not create laws or rules directly, they impacted global economic directions, corporate strategies, and investment destinies, which endured for several years.

Agenda around the global risks

The theme of Davos 2025 is ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’, which emphasizes the need for global cooperation to achieve positive outcomes in technological advances. This year’s meeting was oriented around five distinct but highly interconnected themes:

1. Rebuilding Trust: How can stakeholders find new ways to collaborate on solutions both internationally and within societies?
2. Reimagining Growth: How can we identify the new sources of growth in this new global economy?
3. Investing in People: How can the public and private sectors invest in human capital development and good jobs that contribute to the development of a modern and resilient society?
4. Safeguarding the Planet: How can we catalyse energy, climate and nature action through innovative partnerships, increased financing and the deployment of frontier technologies?
5. Industries in the Intelligent Age: How can business leaders strike a balance between the short-term goals and long-term imperatives in the transformation of their industries?

One week before Davos 2025, on January 15 2025, WEF published the 20th edition of the Global Risks Report 2025. The report shows the global risks in terms of five risk categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological. When we check the risks ranked by severity over the short and long term, the top risk in 2027 will be misinformation and disinformation. While the risks are spreading around all categories except economic, we see that environmental and technological will take the lead when we look at the long-term risks. So, the central and under-themes of Davos 2025 overlap with the outcome of the Global Risks Report 2025.

5 key takeaways from Davos 2025

The five days of Davos felt much longer with all the debates, protests, and global decisions. The themes revolved around global risks, and so did the discussions. The most pressing global challenges were discussed, from AI progress to climate change, geopolitical tensions, and economic power shifts. Here are the five key takeaways from Davos 2025, highlighting the most critical discussions about world-changing topics.

1. AI dominance was in Davos, like everywhere

Unsurprisingly, AI dominated Davos, as it has dominated everything else with its most disruptive and debated times over the last few years. Industries, organisations, and leaders adapt to technological shifts, and new toolkits are needed to adapt to those changes. We are all witnessing improvements in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and more with the help of generative AI, autonomous decision-making, and AI-driven automation. AI will show us its revolutionary impact side, but as with every good thing, there is a catch to this, too.

The improvements in AI came with concerns about AI governance, ethical considerations, and job displacement. According to the Global Risk Report 2025, misinformation and disinformation is in fourth place in the current global risk landscape, while adverse outcomes of AI technologies, cyber espionage, and warfare are behind in the technological risk category.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei takes part in a panel during the 2025 World Economic Forum on Jan. 23 - Image source: Observer

Here are the five most intriguing AI topics from Davos 2025:

• Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, talks about their upcoming models and features while suggesting that AI could surpass “almost all humans at almost everything” shortly after 2027, and it can possibly double the human lifespan in the Technology in the World panel.
• Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind said they hope to have some AI-designed drugs in the clinic by the end of the year in the Folding Science panel.
• Kevin Weil, OpenAI's Chief Product Officer, outlines ChatGPT’s 2025 roadmap, the future of computing power, intelligence, and regulation, and why OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle are planning Project Stargate at the WSJ Journal House Davos.
• Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, talked about the shelf life of the current LLM paradigm and how a new paradigm of AI architectures could emerge within 3-5 years in the Debating Technology panel.
• António Guterres, UN secretary-general, mentioned AI as the next existential threat and likened it to a double-edged sword in a Special Address. It is revolutionizing learning, diagnosing illnesses, and helping farmers, but it comes with profound risks, such as disrupting economies or deepening inequalities if it is left ungoverned.

The event also highlighted how AI is helping their The Reskilling Revolution initiative, which aims to empower people with better education, skills, and economic opportunities by 2030. It also highlighted the importance of creating a foster, inclusive, ethical, and sustainable AI within the AI Governance Alliance initiative.

2. Climate change warnings vs Energy security

Climate change is the most common topic among the participants - leaders, scientists, and activists. Temperatures have been rising for the last 10 years, breaking yearly records. And now, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 is the warmest year on record. Former US Vice President Al Gore talked about the climate risk situation and some ways to get the climate back on track. "The world releases 175 million tonnes of greenhouse gases daily into the atmosphere. The accumulated amount now traps as much extra heat as would be released by 750,000 first-generation atomic bombs exploding every day on the Earth,” according to Al Gore. We can get back on track by improving energy system infrastructure and setting hard, short-term deadlines since many countries are currently not on track to meet their climate targets.

• In the Climate Finance: More Actors, More Tools panel, they pointed out that businesses need to gain more funding to push for green initiatives and commit to further green finance funding.
• UN secretary-general António Guterres likens fossil fuel addiction to Franskensten’s monster, sparing nothing and no one in his Special Address.

António Guterres warned of the threat posed by the climate crisis and ungoverned AI in his Davos speech. - Image source: WEforum

We just endured the hottest year and the hottest decade in history. 2024 is likely to be the first calendar year that pushed past 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. Breaching this limit does not mean the long-term goal of keeping the rise in global temperature to 1.5ºC is shot. It means we need to fight even harder to get on track.

António Guterres, UN secretary-general

As Al Gore and António Guterres warned about climate change, Trump pushed for increased fossil fuel production to power AI-driven industries. Last week, in his first week, Trump froze some funds and paused some projects. He also withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, as he also did in 2019, but former president Joe Biden quickly re-entered on his first day. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration day, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it had withdrawn from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).

3. ‘America is back and open for business’

Trump’s second inauguration date was the same as the opening of Davos 2025. So, one of our eyes was in Europe, while the other was in Washington. He attended Davos virtually and explained that the US is entering an era of reduced regulations and enhanced pro-business policies.

Donald J Trump makes a special address at Davos just three days after being inaugurated as the 47th president of the US. - Image source: WEForum

There will be no better place on Earth to create jobs, build factories or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.

Donald Trump, US President

In his virtual address, he mentioned the need to double the energy for AI, lower the corporate tax from 21% to 15%, and urged Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices to help resolve the Ukraine war. While gender parity, diverse workforces, and better representation of minorities are key WEF goals, Trump ordered cutting federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

4. Europe should adapt not to be left behind

While Trump and the US showed confidence, European leaders and experts acknowledged the region’s complicated situation and shared their concerns about Europe’s economic competitiveness at Davos 2025. Between 2019 and 2024, the EU economy grew at roughly half the pace of the US. The leading causes are the slow improvements in digital transformation, regulatory constraints, and an ageing population.

• Europe is also losing its edge in technology since 80% of semiconductor suppliers are located outside the bloc, and firms from the US and China are dominating AI, quantum computing, and advanced chips.
• Europe’s working-age population will shrink by 20% by 2025, and Italy, Spain, and Germany will suffer the most significant losses.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, addressed Europe in his Special Address to enhance military defence capabilities while working toward minimizing foreign dependence on external defence support during the ongoing Ukrainian war. Europe needs to compete for the top spot in priorities, alliances and technological development.

Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who’s actually watching Europe at the moment? (…) Ladies and gentlemen, Europe can’t afford to be second or third in line for its allies. If that happens, the world will start moving forward without Europe, and that’s a world that will not be comfortable or beneficial for all Europeans.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine

According to European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, European decision-makers know what must be done but should have started doing it. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva drew a sharp line between Europe and the US by saying, “The United States has a culture of confidence. Europe has a culture of modesty,” and she advised Europeans to be more self-confident.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the Competitiveness Compass at Davos - Image source: WEForum

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a new roadmap for the EU with the theme, “The world is changing, so must we.” The competitiveness compass came within three core areas: innovation, decarbonisation and competitiveness, and increased security and resilience. And the Europe will achieve those three theme with five key actions:

1. Reducing red tape
2. Lowering barriers to the single market
3. Financing competitiveness
4. Promoting skills
5. Coordinating policies

5. Wealth inequality sparks protests

Although the WEF Annual Meeting aims to improve the state of the world, the high-profile nature of the invitees is seen by some groups as a symbol of capitalism. “We are criticising the elites who presume to speak for the people while millions of people are already dying from climate change,” a spokesperson for the Strike WEF collective told Keystone-SDA.

Asides from the protests outside, there were climate change protests just inside the main hall. Greenpeace activists protested inside Davos, demanding higher taxes on the ultra-rich, as debates over global wealth distribution and corporate responsibility gained traction.

A future with ‘cautious optimism’

Davos 2025 highlighted the key accelerators and problems shaping our world, from AI to climate change. This week, which felt definitely more, was jam-packed with topics affecting our country, continent, and world. We’ve listened to new roadmaps, reasons, probabilities, and hopes from the world's leaders.

One thing is sure - Davos 2025 may have ended, but the discussions and decisions made here will echo globally for years to come.