President Donald Trump will be making remarks just a couple hours from now, and Fortune will be reporting live from USA House on the main promenade, with insights from government officials and chief executives during and immediately following the president’s conversation. Keep an eye on our livestream, here https://fortune.com/2026/01/21/ceos-davos-buy-into-the-agentic-ai-hype/.

Elsewhere around town, CEOs are setting their agendas for the year. Here’s what’s top of mind for a few of them:

This will actually be the year of agentic AI. The first time I heard the term “agentic AI” was at Davos last year. For all the hype around it, does the average CEO really know what it is or how to deploy it? And is AI good enough yet for agents to replace or even significantly assist human employees? The answer appears to be yes. Google Gemini head Demis Hassabis told me that Gemini 3 achieved some milestones that allow agentic AI to truly proliferate in terms of its capabilities. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott is also an emphatic “yes,” and says he is already using it to do things like automate his IT department (without doing layoffs, he stresses; he says he has repurposed employees instead). He thinks other CEOs are ready to do the same.

Get ready for Google glasses—for real, this time. A decade ago, Google launched its Google Glass eyewear to widespread mockery. Hassabis thinks the timing was just off; at the time there was no super app to go on the platform. AI has changed that, and Hassabis is bullish on Gemini glasses being the future form for consumer AI. Meta is betting the same thing, and OpenAI is also reportedly considering a super-device, but it doesn’t seem like either can match Gemini’s capabilities any time soon.

There’s artificial intelligence, and now there’s also “energy intelligence.” Schneider Electric CEO Olivier Blum says that nailing energy intelligence is his mission this year. By that he means he wants to capture data from various energy sources into a single “data cube,” filter it, and use agentic AI so customers can manage it all in one place to find opportunities to save power and money. “Our job is to make sure we go to the next level of energy technology to make energy more intelligent,” he told me yesterday. If he can achieve it, he sees a 7%-10% annual growth opportunity ahead.

Greenland: national panic or national security risk? I’ve heard various reactions to President Trump’s desire for a full U.S. takeover of the huge island—from outrage to vigorous support. If he does get his wish (which some here think is likely), could Europe retaliate by making life harder and more restrictive for big U.S. tech companies? That was one CEO’s consideration. Said another: “Clear-eyed people can agree that that is a national security concern. And having a national security concern is not just a U.S. concern, it’s also a NATO concern.” They were optimistic that the in-person meetings this week would help move the matter in a positive direction. You can follow all our Davos coverage—including Fortune live interviews today with Ray Dalio, Dara Khosrowshahi and more—right here.—Alyson Shontell

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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The annual Edelman Trust Barometer, revealed at Davos every year, shows an “insular” mindset permeating the business world, with 70% of respondents not wanting to talk to, work for, or even be in the same space with anyone with a different world view. Richard Edelman says CEOs must adopt a sense of urgency in addressing the crisis; they need to sense that “time is running out.”

The Fortune 2026 World’s Most Admired Companies list

Fortune published the 2026 World’s Most Admired Companies this week, an annual ranking in collaboration with Korn Ferry that surveys executives, directors, and analysts across a range of industries. Apple made the top of the list among leaders in all industries for the 19th year in a row—read who else made the cut.

Netflix co-CEOs boost the case for the Warner Bros. deal

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters praised the streaming company’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery during its earnings call on Tuesday, selling the deal as a boost to its streaming business and a production boost for America. Investors, however, remain worried that the deal will push Netflix away from its core business, and the stock dropped almost 5% after hours.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are up 0.19% this morning. The last session closed down 2.06%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.41% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.02% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.41%. China’s CSI 300 was up o.09%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.49%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.3%%. Bitcoin was at $89K.

Around the watercooler

What Walmart’s CEO succession reveals about the smartest time to exit by Ruth Umoh

Americans are paying nearly all of the tariff burden as international exports die down, study finds by Jacqueline Munis

The 9 most disruptive deals of Trump’s first year back in the White House by Geoff Colvin

Gen Z’s nostalgia for ‘2016 vibes’ reveals something deeper: a protest against the world and economy they inherited by Nick Lichtenberg and Eva Roytburg

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.

The initiative will begin operations in Rwanda, working directly with African leaders to pioneer the deployment of AI in health settings. With a core principle of the Foundation being to ensure that people in developing regions do not have to wait decades for new technologies to reach them, the goal in this partnership is to reach 1,000 primary health care clinics and their surrounding communities by 2028.

“A few years ago, I wrote that the rise of artificial intelligence would mark a technological revolution as far-reaching for humanity as microprocessors, PCs, mobile phones, and the Internet,” Gates wrote. “Everything I’ve seen since then confirms my view that we are on the cusp of a breathtaking global transformation.”

Addressing a Critical Workforce Shortage

The impetus for Horizon1000, Gates said, is a desperate and persistent shortage of healthcare workers in poorer regions, a bottleneck that threatens to stall 25 years of progress in global health. While child mortality has been halved and diseases like polio and HIV are under better control, the lack of personnel remains a critical vulnerability.

Sub-Saharan Africa currently faces a shortfall of nearly 6 million healthcare workers, ” a gap so large that even the most aggressive hiring and training efforts can’t close it in the foreseeable future.” This deficit creates an untenable situation where overwhelmed staff must triage high volumes of patients without sufficient administrative support or modern clinical guidance. The consequences are severe: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that low-quality care is a contributing factor in 6 million to 8 million deaths annually in low- and middle-income countries.

Rwanda, the first beneficiary of the Horizon1000 initiative, illustrates the scale of the challenge. The nation currently has only one healthcare worker per 1,000 people, significantly below the WHO recommendation of four per 1,000. Gates noted that at the current pace of hiring and training, it would take 180 years to close that gap. “As part of the Horizon1000 initiative, we aim to accelerate the adoption of AI tools across primary care clinics, within communities, and in people’s homes,” Gates wrote. “These AI tools will support health workers, not replace them.”

AI as the ‘Third Major Discovery‘

Gates noted comments from Rwanda’s Minister of Health Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, who recently announced the launch of an AI-powered Health Intelligence Center in Kigali. Nsanzimana described AI as the third major discovery to transform medicine, following vaccines and antibiotics, Gates noted, saying that he agrees with this view. “If you live in a wealthier country and have seen a doctor recently, you may have already seen how AI is making life easier for health care workers,” Gates wrote. “Instead of taking notes constantly, they can now spend more time talking directly to you about your health, while AI transcribes and summarizes the visit.”

In countries with severe infrastructure limitations, he wrote, these capabilities will foster systems that help solve “generational challenges” that were previously unaddressable.

As the initiative rolls out over the next few years, the Gates Foundation plans to collaborate closely with innovators and governments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Gates wrote that he himself plans to visit the region soon to see these AI solutions in action, maintaining a focus on how technology can meet the most urgent needs of billions in low- and middle-income countries.

The company’s co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, said the deal, which values Warner Brothers Discovery at $83 billion, will accelerate its own core streaming business while helping it expand into TV and the theatrical film business. 

“This is an exciting time in the business. Lots of innovation, lots of competition,” Sarandos enthused on Tuesday’s earnings conference call. Netflix has a history of successful transformation and of pivoting opportunistically, he reminded the audience: Once upon a time, its main business entailed mailing DVDs in red envelopes to customers’ homes. 

Despite Sarandos’ confident delivery, however, the pitch didn’t land with investors. The company’s stock, which was already down 15% since Netflix announced the deal in early December, sank another 4.9% in after-hours trading on Tuesday. 

Netflix’s financial results for the final quarter of 2025 were fine. The company beat EPS expectations by a penny, and said it now has 325 million paid subscribers and a worldwide total audience nearing 1 billion. Its 2026 revenue outlook, of between $50.7 billion and $51.7 billion, was right on target.  

Still, investors are worried that the Warner Bros. deal will force Netflix to compete outside its lane, causing management to lose focus. The fact that Netflix will temporarily halt its share buybacks in order to accumulate cash to help finance the deal, as it disclosed towards the bottom of Tuesday’s shareholder letter, probably didn’t help matters. 

And given that there’s a rival offer for Warner Bros from Paramount Skydance, it’s not unreasonable for investors to worry that Netflix may be forced into an expensive bidding war. (Even though Warner Brothers Discovery has accepted the Netflix offer over Paramount’s, no one believes the story is over—not even Netflix, which updated its $27.75 per share offer to all-cash, instead of stock and cash, hours earlier on Tuesday in order to provide WBD shareholders with “greater value certainty.”) 

Investors are wary; will regulators balk?

Warner Brothers investors are not the only audience that Netflix needs to win over. The deal must be blessed by antitrust regulators—a prospect whose outcome is harder to predict than ever in the Trump administration.

Sarandos and Peters laid out the case Tuesday for why they believe the deal will get through the regulatory process, framing the deal as a boon for American jobs.

“This is going to allow us to significantly expand our production capacity in the U.S. and to keep investing in original content in the long term, which means more opportunities for creative talent and more jobs,” Sarandos said.

Referring to Warner Brothers’ television and film businesses, he added that “these folks have extensive experience and expertise. We want them to stay on and run those businesses. We’re expanding content creation not collapsing it.”

It’s a compelling story. But the co-CEOs may have neglected to study the most important script of all when it comes to getting government approval in the current administration; they forgot to recite the Trump lines. 

The example has been set over the past 12 months by peers such as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. The latter, with his company facing various federal regulatory threats, began publicly praising the Trump administration on an earnings call last January. 

And Nvidia’s Huang has already seen real dividends from a similar strategy. The chip company CEO has praised Trump repeatedly on earnings calls, in media interviews, and in conference keynote speeches, calling him “America’s unique advantage” in AI. Since then, the U.S. ban on selling Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China has been rescinded. The praise may have been coincidental to the outcome, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

In contrast, the president went unmentioned on Tuesday’s call. How significant Netflix’s omission of a Trump call-out turns out to be remains to be seen; maybe it won’t matter at all. But it’s worth noting that its competitor for Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance, is helmed by David Ellison, an outspoken Trump supporter. 

It’s a storyline that Netflix should have seen coming, and itmay still send the company back to rewrite.