Citadel founder and chief executive officer Kenneth C. Griffin says the surge in artificial intelligence spending is reshaping corporate priorities in the United States and reinforcing its economic position, even as the most ambitious promises of generative AI have yet to fully materialise.
Speaking in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Griffin said AI has shifted power and budgetary control toward chief technology officers, accelerating digitisation across corporate America. While AI has become the dominant narrative, he described it as part of a broader push by US companies to invest more heavily in technology.
“What AI has done is it has re-empowered the head of technology in every business in the United States,” Griffin said, adding that the trend has redirected significant resources toward digitisation “writ large,” with AI serving as the catalyst that has made deeper technology adoption politically and financially possible inside firms.
Griffin said expectations around generative AI remain high, but tangible productivity gains are still uneven. Recounting discussions with senior executives in China about AI use cases, he said many of the most compelling examples did not involve generative models, raising questions about how quickly tools such as large language models will deliver economy-wide benefits.
The scale of investment reflects the magnitude of those expectations. Griffin said data centre spending in the US alone is set to exceed $500 billion this year, a level of capital deployment that requires investors to believe AI will fundamentally reshape business models. That dynamic, he said, has inevitably fuelled hype.
“Of course there’s hype,” Griffin said. “How else are you going to get people to write $500 billion of cheques?”
He cautioned that while AI is likely to deliver clear gains in areas such as call centres and software development, its impact across white-collar work remains uncertain. Griffin cited recent academic research suggesting that AI-generated output can appear polished while lacking substance, a pattern he said he has observed firsthand.
Griffin said Citadel has seen instances where AI-generated reports offer strong initial insights before deteriorating in quality, underscoring the limitations of current models. As a result, he said AI should not be viewed as a near-term solution to offset broader economic challenges.
Still, Griffin said the broader wave of technology investment is already benefiting the US economy, regardless of how quickly generative AI reaches maturity. At a time when geopolitics, economic policy and technological competition are increasingly intertwined, he said the current moment favours scale and capital depth.
When asked which economies stand to gain the most from this convergence, Griffin pointed to the world’s two largest powers. “When it’s all said and done,” he said, “it’s somewhat ironic, but it’s the United States and China that are the two big beneficiaries of this moment.”
