Davos 2026: Bill Gates 1/22/26

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0:56Productivity will go up and we get to decide, do we do new things? Do we reduce work week? Do we let people retire earlier? Eventually society is better off. Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. How AI will change the world and the workforce, even at the Gates Foundation. We're asking everybody to be creative about, OK, you know, could we have used third parties to do this or could we use AI to do it? And I'd say every organization should probably be asking those questions. And what tech advances and competition might mean for geopolitics. All this innovation should improve things, but it'll always be somewhat determined by how well we get along with each other.

1:45A little bit, I worry that we may not be as peaceful as we have been. Plus, the Gates Foundation's newest initiative with OpenAI to optimize health clinic care in Africa. You'll see the Gates Foundation working with Anthropic and Google and Microsoft and OpenAI. We have major things that we'll do with each of them. I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. Squawk Pod reports from Davos 2026. Bill Gates begins right now.

2:27While Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross-Sorkin are at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, they meet up and interview the greatest minds in technology, politics, and finance. And mostly, they're roughing it. Bundled, but very much outside in the mountains. It's peaceful and warm, actually. Not so terrible. One of Andrew's interviews this year was with Bill Gates. Bill's like, it's a little cold. Now, some of it you may have caught on Squawk Box on TV. But parts of the following interview you will only hear right here on Squawk Pod. The morning of this interview, OpenAI and the Gates Foundation announced a$50 million funding and tech commitment to 1 ,000 health clinics on the African continent.

3:16Here's Andrew kicking off his conversation with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. So Bill, you made a big announcement this morning. Gates Foundation partnering with OpenAI. How did this happen? Well, there's a great ongoing conversation with Sam and the whole team at OpenAI about the way they want to improve the world and how their AI can be used even in poor countries for issues like health and education. And so we decided to provide all the computer time and to support a pilot in a thousand health clinics in Africa, starting with Rwanda. So what does it actually look like in practice? Well, you as a patient will talk in your native language to the AI about your symptoms.

4:05You'll schedule your appointment through the AI. When you come in, instead of doing paperwork, the doctor or the clinician, usually it's not a doctor, will see that summary. They won't have to fill out paperwork like they've had in the past. So the idea is to make the quality of that encounter far higher, the weighting far shorter, and to take the very constrained resources that these countries have and have far better health care. And the initial pilot's a$50 million project? Exactly. And what does it ultimately look like? I mean, if this is the pilot and we're together in a couple years from now, what does it look like?

4:45Well, the goal here is that every citizen of the world, but let's just say in Africa, should, in their native language, have a virtual doctor that they can talk to. And it understands the health system. So if you're a pregnant woman, it'll remind you what to do and help schedule their appointments. If you're somebody living with HIV, you'll understand what to do. And if you're doing okay, you won't have to be a burden on the health system. So this will become just expected that we all have a doctor and it streamlines our interaction with the health system. Does it look like a separate app that people will have on their phone?

5:23Will it be through an OpenAI app? Will it be through a Gates Foundation app? What is it? No, essentially it's a tab of either ChatGPT or one of the other products. The nice thing about the Health tab is you know that that's partitioned so that when you're sharing about your health results, that's not feeding into other AI work that you're doing. And how did you decide, I know Microsoft has a partnership, of course, with OpenAI, but how did you decide to do it with OpenAI as opposed to, we just talked to Demis from DeepMinds or Anthropic or one of the other models? Yeah, so you'll see the Gates Foundation working with Anthropic and Google and Microsoft and OpenAI.

6:07We have major things that we'll do with each of them. OpenAI jumped up and was super generous on this. Of course, they have a foundation that owns a significant amount of their company. The value in that foundation actually rivals the world's biggest foundation, the Gates Foundation. And so they'll often, in terms of their capacity to donate, be a great partner. By the way, what do you think of that? The fact that OpenAI will ultimately, given the ownership structure, be perhaps the largest foundation in the world. It'll depend on how much the value goes up. over time. But I think that's incredible.

6:46I wish, you know, 25 % of lots of great companies was going to go to the poorest in the world. You know, essentially, my ownership of Microsoft indirectly has done exactly that. Right. But you've had what you've been one person, and in some cases, two people or more, you have a board, obviously, this isn't, you know, what they are going to do is to be very different in terms of how it's governed, I imagine. Yeah, they're hiring people in. They have a top-notch board that's encouraging them to put more activities into this philanthropic side. And I'd also say Google, philanthropic, Microsoft, they really want to see AI used for these societal purposes.

7:31And so we'll pick the best partner in different areas, but the quality of the work at all those companies is phenomenal. You know, Elon Musk is suing OpenAI over the sort of structure of the company and whether it can even go public and whether it can have this effective foundation longer term. And it has a huge impact long term on Microsoft, too, depending on how it all works out. What do you think is going to happen? I doubt that that will be successful. That's, you know, a little bit sour grapes on his part. I mean, after all, you have people, not just Microsoft, but lots of people investing many tens of billions into the company and feeling like, OK, this new structure is going to work well.

8:13They've renewed their board. I'm very impressed. They've gotten through a lot of challenges and, you know, they've got to raise the money. And so their their new approach has provided the confidence that they'll succeed. But this is going to I think it's going to trial. Yeah, I mean, look, the number of lawsuits that are out there is very high, but I'd predict that OpenAI will continue to do well. One of the things that we've talked about a lot before is jobs and AI and just what's going to happen. And you've talked about the idea that over time, you plan to cut staff in part because of AI, I imagine.

8:50No? To the foundation? Yeah, well... What does that look like? You know, for the foundation, we want to be as efficient as possible. Remember, we're saving lives for like$1 ,000 per life saved. And so always making sure that we are ultra efficient, measuring the impact of every grant. And so we're not going to make a substantial reduction, but we are going to go down a little bit in order to keep our operating expense around the 12 % level. And so we're asking everybody to be creative about, okay, you know, could we have used third parties to do this or could we use AI to do it? And I'd say every organization should probably be asking those questions.

9:36Do you think that when we look at employment already right now, and sometimes it seems a little soft, it's gotten a little softer, do you think that's a function of AI? Maybe not to date, but two years from now, four years from now, particularly in the white collar area, yes. The world will be more efficient. That will free up resources to do other things. As robots come along, then you'll see the same thing over in the blue collar space. As autonomous driving comes along, you'll see that in that particular vertical. and so productivity will go up and we get to decide do we do new things do we reduce work week do we let people retire earlier eventually society is is is better off um here we are in davos the president's gonna be speaking later this afternoon there's a lot of hand-wringing going on among a lot of the political leaders uh about uh things you know what's happening with greenland and and and other pieces of the puzzle and i'm curious what you're talking to lots of people over the last 24, 48 hours here.

10:42What are you hearing? What are you thinking? Well, it's, you know, you never can guess what might happen next. It's a kind of an uncertain environment, you know, does that eventually erode business investment or, you know, these alliances that have been around for a long time? You know, I'm pretty focused on the global health work and getting, what's been a very challenging year with childhood deaths going up for the first time in 25 years, trying to make sure that between restoring the generosity there and the innovation, that we get back on track for the incredible reduction that we've had since 2000.

11:27And how confident or optimistic are you about that now, given all that uncertainty? Well, you know, the worst thing that can happen in the world is to have adversarial relationships leading to war. You know, that destroys a lot of resources. You know, so I'm hopeful. You know, I think the U.S. has had good alliances. You know, I hope we can take a long-term view of helping those countries. You know, all this innovation should improve things. but it will always be somewhat determined by how well we get along with each other, you know, advancing, avoiding conflict. And so, you know, a little bit, I worry that we may not be as peaceful as we have been.

12:20I was going to ask you, this has always been a global conversation here at Davos about globalization. Microsoft succeeded in large part because of globalization. and how you just feel about the sort of splintering of it and sort of what I think of as almost the end of neutrality. It used to be that businesses, especially big businesses, thought of themselves as these neutral global players. And now, at least in the U.S., we're back to the very idea of American or national champions, if you will. Well, I don't think we've gone that far. Maybe some of the rhetoric is in that direction. The challenge for the things I'm focused on is that the needs in Africa, with all of the tension around Ukraine and the Middle East and the polarization and, you know, are the old alliances working?

13:11Do we really believe in promoting democracy? It's meant that the continent where the majority of children will be born during this century is getting less help, you know, less debt relief. And so it really challenges us as a foundation to tell people, look, great work has been done here. New tools, including AI, will let us do better. You know, so can we get that back on the agenda? You know, we're reaching out to religious leaders, to medical workers, to diaspora members and trying to say, you know, the results are miraculous and let's let's work together on this. And it's tough in a very noisy environment.

13:56So far, we're not we're not succeeding in that. Right. And then finally, U.S. budget looks like it actually might include a lot of the things that seem to have gone away last year. Well, the congressional budget always included full funding for malaria and vaccines and things. And it's fantastic that the bill is going through Congress that it looks like will get passed by the end of the month, really maintain. it's less than 1 % of the budget, but it's very, very important because it saves millions of lives. It looks like that'll be maintained. And so, you know, I'm really pleased because it's Republicans and Democrats coming together, which, you know, sometimes they don't nowadays on this, they did.

14:44Could the White House ultimately decide, though, not to spend that money the way it's been directed? I mean, that's the big question. Well, that's why I continue to have a strong dialogue with the president and with the key members of the cabinet saying, you know, you can shape this, you can make sure it's very well spent. But, you know, let's all take the power of the purse that the Congress has and get that money out there. Last year, because of Doge, that didn't happen. This year, I think we can avoid those type of reductions. Right. Thank you. I appreciate it. This is great.

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17:24Thank you for listening to this special Squawk Pod reports from Davos. There are plenty more interviews from Davos. Joe's interview with President Donald Trump. Becky's interview with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. OpenAI's CFO Sarah Fryer. Follow us on Squawk Pod wherever you're listening now, and each of those episodes will pop up on your podcast feed automatically. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross-Sorkin. Squawk Pod is produced by me, Cameron Costa, and Zach Valisi. Our editor is Julie Trass, and Katie Kramer is in Davos this whole week. Have a great day.

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