Artificial intelligence executives occupied the center of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts along the Swiss town's main promenade. TechCrunch described AI discussions overshadowing established subjects such as climate change and global poverty. Chief executives debated trade policy, defended investment, warned about a possible bubble, and presented their own companies as builders of the next economic order. The annual meeting has long mixed public officials with private wealth. This edition gave the technology industry control over both the agenda and much of the visible street.

A storefront is a small form of government during a conference. It decides who enters, which conversation receives a stage, and what image survives in photographs from the week. The companies arrived with budgets large enough to turn rented facades into extensions of their authority. Ministers and regulators then discussed AI inside a setting designed by the firms they may need to restrain. Climate and poverty did not disappear from the official program, but they lost physical and rhetorical space to models, chips, funding rounds, and forecasts of automated growth. Davos offered a rehearsal for policy made under corporate hospitality. The public question entered through security while the companies already held the keys, the microphones, and the best addresses on the promenade.