00:00Well, congratulations for you both being our inaugural winners.
00:04Now, you've both spent through your careers making bets before the outcome was obvious.
00:08So this goes to risk-taking, you know, having the appetite to go a little bit further.
00:12So, Joe, let me start with you.
00:14Many companies grow, but far fewer become part of an infrastructure.
00:18So what do you think makes Alibaba's success?
00:21How do you become that leap?
00:23Well, first of all, I don't deserve this award.
00:26I think you're looking at Alibaba today, what we've been doing in AI over the last several years.
00:32I really want to give credit to my team, our colleagues, you know, around the world, many of them, most
00:41of them in China, that have put in the hard work.
00:43So, you know, this is really for them.
00:46I'm accepting the award on behalf of them.
00:51And so talk about the, I think what's important in Alibaba's journey is really two things.
01:00Number one is associate yourself with good people, people that you want to work with.
01:05And because if you don't have a team, you can't scale.
01:09And the second thing is just risk-taking, being willing to take that risk.
01:15And this is why a lot of companies that are, let's say, no longer run by founders kind of flounder
01:21a little bit because management teams are a lot more risk-averse.
01:26But, you know, when you have founding teams that are in place, people are willing to take risks.
01:32And, Jeanette, your work is really also about seeing potential before the market has fully priced it in.
01:38So when you're looking at a startup, what do you see that no one else sees?
01:42Well, I see the founders.
01:43And to your point, Joyce, like it really, I think this award belongs to all the founders that I got
01:48lucky to spend time with over the last decade.
01:50And what I will say is I always focus on people.
01:54I always try to see people that actually, you know, can imagine a different world.
01:58I think imagination is incredibly important.
02:00Joe and I just discussed how important storytelling is and actually the ability to inspire people.
02:05And I think I deeply care about Europe.
02:08Part of the reason why I do what I do is because I really feel like these people can be
02:11the changemakers that can actually carry us into the next decade of a thriving continent.
02:17And so identifying these people and then being able to help them with unfair advantages and really help them make
02:23these leaps and work towards big ambitions is a privilege.
02:27Joe, Alibaba has made also this dramatic transformation into AI.
02:31I mean, this is something that not even Amazon has done.
02:34So how did you make that leap?
02:37Oh, well, I think we always say when the world changes, you have to change.
02:45You have to change yourself.
02:46And we saw this coming, especially with we're in the era of transformer models and generative AI.
02:55And we felt that this was definitely the direction.
02:58But it requires a lot of will, a lot of capital to be invested.
03:04And in order to do that and turn things around toward those, you know, pretty heavy capex investments, you really
03:12have to have the will to do it.
03:13And we did.
03:14We decided that this was going to be the future.
03:17And I've said this earlier today, AI is not just about a technology that is going after the IT budgets
03:28or the software budgets of enterprises or consumers.
03:32It's going to be the TAM and AI is a $50 trillion economy because it's all about human productivity and
03:40human intelligence.
03:41And roughly in the world, there's about $110 trillion GDP and about 60% of that is labor, right?
03:50So, so AI is going after that segment and it's going to be huge.
03:58Jeanette, in this environment, I guess capital alone isn't enough.
04:01So what do you see the role of investor to be?
04:03Is it, you know, build companies or actually also instill a bit of competition between the regions?
04:08You know, actually, I think what you said is really interesting.
04:10So if you look at the position Europe is in relative to China and the U.S., we have a
04:15different problem to solve.
04:16You're building a lot of, you know, very strong AI capabilities and so is the U.S.
04:20I think from a European point of view, exactly the service and the sort of $50 trillion service market is
04:27something that we cannot afford to lose.
04:29If you look at the gap between European and U.S. GDP is roughly $12 trillion.
04:33And that's exactly sort of the accumulated market capitalization of the big five.
04:38And that's only services.
04:39If we now think about labor and we don't lean into actually owning our own destiny in terms of building
04:44all the technology from energy to infrastructure all the way up to the application layer,
04:48at least to some degree, then we will be seeing the largest involuntary transfer of wealth from Europe and, quite
04:53frankly, other regions of the world towards the U.S.
04:55So I think it's just something that as much as I work with an American company, as much as I
04:59love the U.S., I kind of feel like we do need to do something about that.
05:02And so that's why I do what I do.
05:05And that's fundamentally where I feel like the direction of travel is and where the most ambitious founders are building
05:09towards.
05:10And the role of investors.
05:11Joe, talk to me a little bit about, you know, if you become of scale a very, very big company
05:17like Alibaba, then the challenges also differ.
05:20What do you see as the biggest difference in changing direction or actually getting things done at a larger scale
05:25compared to a small startup?
05:28Well, the difference going from a marketplace business, which is capital light into AI, in AI, you have to deploy
05:36capital and we become a heavy balance sheet company pretty quickly over the last few years.
05:45But I don't think there is a fundamental difference in the sense that in both types of businesses, you have
05:53to make investment and you're investing for the future and you have to have a view of where the future
05:59is going to be.
06:01And if that view is very clear, then you could you could have a high degree of confidence on the
06:08ROI of that investment, whether it's investing in a capital, you know, software type capital light business or you're putting
06:16it investing into consumers and things like that versus CapEx investments.
06:20I think it's financially it's the same thing, you know, from an ROI standpoint, but I think that the biggest
06:30differentiator is you need to have a view of what's going to happen in the future.
06:37Jeanette, does AI make the next generation of technologies more open to challengers?
06:43Is it like a, you know, level or is it is there really a first mover advantage?
06:48It's interesting. We're actually, I think it depends on which level of the stack you're looking.
06:52We're seeing, definitely seeing a second mover advantage in the application layer.
06:56You see several examples there of companies that are actually like building faster because you have my market maturity that
07:02you can sell into.
07:03I think the question is different on the infrastructure level and not because the technology is defined like that because
07:10AI per definition is not a disruptive technology, it's a transformative technology.
07:14But it becomes very much the binding constraint is capital and so like having the actual big balance sheets that
07:20the big companies do such as yourselves to actually put up the capital and make these large investments is obviously
07:26like a reinforcement function that makes it harder to challenge.
07:29I do think that, and we just had this discussion backstage around like new model developments and like sort of
07:34next generation architectures that can be built.
07:36So we're actually very excited to spend time there and also in domains where AI intersects with material science, with
07:42bio, with all sorts of new adjacent, also physical properties.
07:47I think there's a lot to do.
07:49Joe, 10 years from now, we'll have fixed climate change, so we'll have, it'll be less, less hot than it
07:54is in the room currently.
07:55And I think everyone will be happier for that, but we'll be celebrating Viva Tech's 20th anniversary.
08:01How will we look back at 2026?
08:03What will we have misunderstood about this market?
08:06Well, people may mistake, you know, taking leisurely breaks and taking holidays with not working or equate that, but it's
08:19actually a mistake.
08:21In the future, you could be sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Paris, you know, I see a lot of
08:27that, and you think that they're just sort of chilling, but in reality, they've deployed hundreds of agents working for
08:36them 24-7.
08:38So I think that's what's going to happen in the future.
08:41Human productivity will go up multiple X because you now have AI and agents working for you.
08:48There you go.
08:50You know, we're looking forward to that, especially if you live in Paris with all those nice cafes.
08:54Thank you both for joining us, and again, congratulations on your awards.
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