00:00Let's get up to speed on where you are. You wrote a really interesting article about the capacity of financial markets to provide the capital needed for this transition. How important is that? And does that put America in the lead?
00:11Well, so I do think that one of the things that everyone here has converged on is the fact that AI is a transformational technology. I've heard it from policymakers. I've heard it from politicians. I've heard it from the private sector and from and from those that serve the private sector and the public sector.
00:26So there's no doubt that this is a technology that's going to redefine every industry. So therefore, it needs to be financed and needs to be built out.
00:36And as we've seen in other transformational moments in our history with technology, the amount of investment that's required could can range from two to five percent of GDP in terms of what's been put to the into the ground and literally into the ground.
00:48So far for AI is about one percent of GDP. And so we still have an opportunity to continue to accelerate and escalate the investment in order to really accelerate the potential of this technology.
01:00So that's really the foundational capabilities that we need to be able to start to take advantage of what this technology really will have to offer.
01:08Now it's a matter of how do you diffuse that technology into the economy. And that goes to enterprise use cases, enterprise integration of the technology.
01:17And that's where I think people are wondering why it's taking as long as it's taking. Now, it's only been three years.
01:22And yes, there are a lot of incredible startups that have been born that have like found problems and may have solved them very quickly and scale their businesses very quickly.
01:31But as you bring that technology into the enterprise, all enterprises, there's a different level of obligation that you have security, resiliency, scalability.
01:41And within the organization, the level of change management that's going to be required in order to really transform your organization to be able to take the technology in and make the most of it.
01:51But that's what's taking the time. But what we're seeing is those that have been using it, a lot of companies are starting to.
01:57They're showing proof cases 2.8 times return on their money in a very short period of time.
02:03That obviously gives a lot of people confidence to say, OK, top down, we've got to manage the change.
02:08We've got to make sure that we're finding the right partners and we've got to scale this up.
02:12I think the J curve is going to be very steep very quickly now that the proof is there.
02:16Can we stand the financing just for a bit? A lot of the financing is coming from private markets.
02:21Open AI has developed into a B-snap. They might go public. I don't know.
02:24Your thoughts on the role that public markets will play in the financing of this?
02:27I mean, I think as we talked about, with that level of financing and the fact that a lot, I would say, a lot of it's happened in the private markets,
02:34but also the hyperscalers and the large semiconductor players who are public companies are also financing this technology.
02:41But as we've been thinking about what is necessary, a whole new power structure, a whole new set of data centers, a whole new level of connectivity, all of those things,
02:50that means you need to bring more expertise in. You need to bring more pockets of capital in.
02:55So you see very large scale firms like Blackstone and Brookfield and others coming in with their capital.
03:00But then also the industry players themselves, most of whom are public, are going to be starting to really bring the capital to bear as well.
03:08And then those companies, those innovators, we would love to see these amazing innovators come to the public markets and broaden out their capital base.
03:16And I think that's what is really exciting about what could come.
03:19So this is this week marks the one year mark for the second term of President Trump's presidency.
03:25Have you already seen rules change, regulations change that pave the way to more public offerings?
03:32So I would say that it's still at the very beginning.
03:35I mean, if you think about what's had to happen in the first year of the administration, he had to build a team.
03:41He had to make sure that he had the right people in the right seats to be able to start to work on that agenda.
03:45He had to then we we've been engaging with the regulators to understand what are the priorities within that agenda.
03:51And the whole notion of making IPOs great again, I think, has got an enormous amount of support within the regulatory agencies.
03:57And now it's a matter of putting that into action.
04:00I think this year is going to be all about the rulemaking and rule changes.
04:04And we're very, very excited about that.
04:06We're very aligned with our our primary regulator, the SEC, on ways to reform proxy, ways to reform disclosures,
04:14and even ways to consider changes in litigation for the public company model that will make the public company model more attractive.
04:22So we're excited to continue that engagement.
04:24U.S. markets have traditionally been a destination for a lot of international companies.
04:28This is the deepest, most liquid pool of capital out there.
04:32This Davos has all been about the rest of the world saying, how can we diversify away from the United States?
04:36Have you seen any sense of that in the flows and the companies desiring to go public in the United States?
04:42So I think the first thing you would say is flows are always going to be really dominated by returns.
04:48I mean, the flows are just about returns.
04:49So if you see flows in and out of an economy, it's really the you know, the investment firms are obligated to find the best returns.
04:57And so if you actually look over the last year, there was a three trillion dollar increase in equity flows into the United States from foreign investors.
05:05So that's been a really interesting phenomenon.
05:07But I also would say that that we just have to continue to drive those outsized returns in our economy to continue those flows coming in.
05:14In terms of companies looking to go public, the U.S. markets are the deepest and most liquid markets.
05:19They have the deepest investor bases.
05:20People understand these, especially for innovative tech companies.
05:23I think that they understand that by coming to the United States, they're going to get access to the best analysts and the best investors to help maximize their valuation.
05:31So we have not seen a fundamental shift in that.
05:34But we also support a great innovative markets here in the Nordics, in Europe.
05:39And they also have seen a real growth in IPOs by the last year.
05:42We had the largest IPO since 2022 occur in Sweden with the Verashor IPO.
05:47And so we actually are seeing a lot of vibrancy in the in the in the Nordic markets as well.
05:52I won't ask you about Greenland.
05:53We'll let you go.
05:54I'll let you skip that.
05:55All right.
05:55He's looking to IPOs.
05:56You know, well, you know, we're getting closer to that part of the world.
05:58All right.
05:59We're opening up an exchange.
06:01Let's not cause any trouble here.
06:02All right.
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