Davos 2026: Fragmentation a global concern that could slow the pace of AI innovation, says WEF’s Stephan Mergenthaler

Davos 2026: There is a massive potential for deploying AI to make governments more efficient, says Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer at the World Economic Forum

• AI fragmentation risks innovation and energy use, says WEF CTO Mergenthaler
• WEF highlights AI's potential for public sector efficiency and global impact
• WEF uses AI agent Eva to help attendees navigate its annual meeting

Did our AI summary help?

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes central to security and geopolitics, fragmentation is emerging as a real global concern, Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer at the World Economic Forum (WEF), told Moneycontrol in an interview.

"It is not just because there is a risk that it slows down innovation, but also because it can lead countries to build duplicate infrastructure. There is also concern about the energy impact of all of this," Mergenthaler said on the sidelines of the 56th edition of the World Economic Forum, held at Davos-Klosters.

"But the real focus is on truly understanding within different sectors the areas where we can reap the most benefits," he added. "We see a real thirst from companies around the world, regardless of that fragmentation, to understand how to deploy AI in a meaningful and transformative way across different sectors."

Mergenthaler noted that there is also a massive potential for deploying AI in the public sector to make governments more efficient.

"That's an area that we've worked a lot on, raising more visibility on the overall public impact of deploying technology and AI across the public sector," he said "We see some interesting examples, including in India, the strong investment in digital public infrastructure. We hope to see more of it in countries around the world."

AI at the heart of Davos as focus shifts to practical applications

AI has been at the heart of the discussions in Davos for several years, but what has shifted is looking at the technology through the lens of practical applications, Mergenthaler said.

"We see a little bit of paradox here. On one hand, we see the amazing capabilities of AI models and how we can deploy them in a productive way," Mergenthaler noted.

However, he explained that unlocking this potential at scale requires a fundamental review of workflows and a redesign of how organizations work.

"That is hard to do, and many organizations are struggling with it," he added.

Mergenthaler said this has been the core focus of their work with communities and the Center for AI Excellence. "We want to identify the most transformative use cases and applications across different sectors and companies around the world, and help others learn from them in order to accelerate adoption and, ultimately, the productivity and welfare gains that we expect to see from this technology."

How is AI helping WEF prepare for the annual meeting?

WEF has launched an AI agent, Eva, in partnership with Salesforce that enables attendees to set up bilateral meetings, find the right sessions for them and navigate the entire event.

"With the advent of agentic AI, this is our effort to operate like a fully agentic enterprise. It's a good illustration of what agentic AI can do today built on a strong integrated data foundation we have in the backend," Mergenthaler said.