For one week, it felt a little like DC was getting the Davos treatment: fleets of large black SUVs lining up to deposit a steady stream of CEOs, Cabinet secretaries and burly security guards at a DC hotel halfway between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Washington is no stranger to VIPs gathering in tightly secured, nondescript hotels to speak before crowds of consultants, Hill and federal agency officials, reporters and the occasional embassy staffer. But Semafor’s new World Economy summit this year took that formula to a totally new level.
More than 500 CEOs, policymakers and Cabinet officials gathered in Washington for what Semafor called the largest U.S. convening of business and government leaders, against a backdrop of economic unease and geopolitical instability.
There were CEOs, Cabinet officials, lawmakers, investors, journalists and advisers everywhere. One second you’d see 23andMe Research Institute CEO Anne Wojcicki moving through a crowded hallway toward her standing-room only panel; the next, you’d be watching reporters crowd around Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla) on an escalator, phones outstretched to catch his remarks.
It was sprawling, a little overwhelming and not always easy to tell whether the main event was onstage or in the hallways. That seemed to be part of the design. In short, it felt a little like Coachella for policy nerds.
Business, Policy and AI collide
What Semafor assembled was more than a business conference with some political window dressing. It was a pretty direct expression of how much Washington is shaping the way companies think about growth, investment and risk. The event itself was built as a five-day convening in Washington around “growth” and “resilience” in an uncertain global economy, with a very large mix of business and government leaders in the room.
That tension ran through the week. The economy has held up better than a lot of people expected, but there was no shortage of concern expressed by CEOs about tariffs, geopolitical instability and the difficulty of planning ahead. Semafor’s own coverage of the week reflected that push and pull: a mood that was not exactly upbeat, but also not nearly as gloomy as some headlines might suggest.
As expected, AI was everywhere. Tired debates about doomers versus boomers have transitioned into more tactical and real questions about its impact, whether on the workforce or the energy capacity needed to run giant data centers. Constellation CEO Joseph Dominguez was just one of many CEOs who talked about the need to stay competitive globally on AI developments. He explained that the U.S. is already “very behind” China in building the energy capacity needed for data centers.
That was part of what made the event useful, if more than a little overwhelming. It put business leaders and policymakers into the same conversations without pretending they were all saying the same thing. Executives were talking about cost, demand, infrastructure and planning. Public officials were talking about competition, national priorities and strategy.
Sometimes those perspectives lined up. Sometimes they plainly did not.
The new center of economic gravity
The week was busy and occasionally exhausting. But it was also clarifying. For all the networking and branding, the event captured something interesting about this moment in America. CEOs now have to spend more time in Washington because Washington has much more to say about how their businesses operate.
As Semafor’s Ben Smith wrote, that shift has turned Washington “into the center of the global economy.” That may be a slightly grandiose way to put it. But after a conference like the one Semafor just put on, it is not hard to see what he means.
