AI fever takes over Davos pushing crypto aside as the new cool kid on the block – CNBC

This change highlights the rapid rise in investment and interest in AI over the past year, triggered by the explosion in popularity of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in late 2022.

Global technology companies are competing to establish a leading position in the field of AI, and hope that their big statement on the Davos Promenade will help them demonstrate their prowess in this field. it might be.

Companies from U.S. semiconductor company Intel to Salesforce have branded AI slogans on the assets they inherited. and AI House, an event space sponsored by companies such as the Swiss telecommunications company Swisscom.

AI is dominating the promenade far more than crypto companies, reversing the trend of the past few years.

For example, at the World Economic Forum in January 2022, companies were promoting “Bitcoin Pizza Day” and so-called non-fungible tokens even after the cryptocurrency's price crashed. In January 2023, when crypto winter began, companies pulled back from dispersing funds at Davos, but there was still a large presence from the industry, including a mysterious orange Bitcoin car.

AI's advantage makes sense.

PitchBook's Emerging Tech Indicator, which tracks angel, seed, and early-stage investments in 15 of the world's most successful venture companies, finds AI and machine learning startups receiving significantly more investment in the third quarter. It turned out that it did. This topical technology raised about $600 million in three months, while Web3 and the decentralized finance company raised just over $100 million.

Nvidia, the poster child for AI in the public markets, saw its stock price rise 239% in 2023. The AI ​​hype shows little sign of slowing down.

The crypto industry appears to be okay with the changes coming out of Davos.

Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer at Circle, publisher of the popular USD-pegged stablecoin USDC, is a regular at Davos. Disparte told CNBC that over the past eight years, the blockchain and crypto industry has had to “tell the story of the technology, not the story of the results.”

“Currently, there are very few crypto houses along the Promenade. They are all AI houses, and that is a good thing,” Disparte said. “That suggests this is becoming a background technology.”

Disparte, who has worked extensively with lawmakers to pass the stablecoin bill, said the surviving companies and stakeholders will be merged with traditional banking, finance and payments.

“This is similar to how the Internet had to go through the dot-com bubble period in order to hand over the development of the Internet to more durable, reliable and secure hands,” Disparte said. Ta.

“There are new technology kids coming on the block, so it means I can be a vintage player. And I don't have to explain the technology too much, so that's encouraging,” he added. .

This is not to say that crypto companies don't exist. The Circle had a large presence on the Promenade. A Swiss non-profit industry organization called the Global Blockchain Business Council also set up an event space. And CasperLabs, a blockchain company that has been participating for the past few years, also had a big space. However, even though 2023 appeared to be a better year for the crypto industry and investors than 2022, the overall situation was certainly more subdued. Bitcoin rose more than 150% in 2023.

There is a theory in the industry that crypto companies no longer need to prove themselves. Some see the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of a Bitcoin ETF last week as the moment when cryptocurrencies established themselves as a legitimate asset class.

— CNBC's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.