Jamie Dimon has embarked on a major charm offensive in San Francisco. „We have separated artificial intelligence from our usual tech structure because the topic is so important and will change everything,“ said the CEO of J.P. Morgan at this week's „Data + AI Summit“ hosted by cloud service provider Databricks. The assembled developers and start-up entrepreneurs were hanging on every word uttered by the CEO of the largest US bank, who was announced as the „Titan of Wall Street“.

They listened spellbound as Dimon digressed far beyond applications of artificial intelligence in finance and cybersecurity concerns during his onstage discussion with Databricks founder Ali Ghodsi. From the importance of US military supremacy to the evils of banking regulation, the J.P. Morgan boss, with his gruff New York accent, tackled a range of topics that the Silicon Valley tech bubble rarely deals with in its day-to-day business.

Ghodsi found Dimon's slogan that America is „irreplaceable“ and must „defend its values against China“ instead of tearing itself apart so „inspiring“ that he blurted out a question: „Would you run for president in three and a half years?“ Dimon jokingly covers his eyes and responds with a counter-question: „How many people would vote for me?“ And promptly, hands shot up in the event hall of the Moscone Convention Centre.

Dimon does not need speak the language of coders and start-up founders. He doesn't need to know exactly how a lithium-ion battery works, but rather understand what it can do, the CEO emphasises – the same applies to data processing models and artificial intelligence applications. Rather, Dimon is so popular because the powerful Wall Street figure confirms Silicon Valley's self-image.

„We have spent 200 billion dollars on AI so far and are constantly feeding more and more data into our systems,“ saidf the 69-year-old on the podium, emphasising that J.P. Morgan and other leading institutions need to invest more in order to be prepared for the growing dangers posed by cyber attacks. For 2025 alone, the largest US financial institution has estimated an IT budget of 18 billion dollars. It employs thousands of its own developers who, according to the CEO, are tasked with harnessing AI to increase efficiency in every business area, from credit cards to foreign exchange trading.

For listeners, Dimon's words contained a clear message: Wall Street will help keep the artificial intelligence boom going. At the same time, doubts about the sustainability of Big Tech's enormous investment spending on AI applications have grown in recent months. The ball started rolling when Chinese start-up Deepseek launched its chatbot „R1“ at the beginning of the year. Its performance quickly rivalled that of large language models from the US, even though export controls meant that developers in China had access to far less advanced chips than their counterparts in the US, even during President Joe Biden's term in office.

The global trade war started by Biden's successor Donald Trump is causing serious concerns about stagflation in the US among economists such as Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Analysts warn that the severely clouded economic environment is likely to weigh on customer spending in the core business areas of US technology giants, such as the advertising market and e-commerce. Amazon recently issued an extremely cautious outlook for the current quarter.

Despite the uncertainty, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta Platforms are expected to spend up to 320 billion dollars on AI applications and related data centres in the current year, according to the latest outlooks and CEO comments. Nvidia, whose processors form the most important infrastructure basis for the AI boom, is seeking to reduce its dependence on a small and extremely concentrated customer group and broaden its revenue base by doing more business with nation states.

Most recently, the chip designer signed a billion-dollar agreement with the Saudi AI company Humain. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates, in coordination with the US government, wants to build one of the world's largest data centres and has secured supply options for millions of Nvidia processors. Under Biden, Washington had severely restricted the export of chips to the Emirates. The reason for this is the concern that US technology could find its way to China via detours – something that Dimon, celebrated in Silicon Valley, also warns about.

Daniel Holz, Vice President for Central Europe at Databricks, responsible for the German-speaking market, expects „massive demand“ for data solutions from nation states. „Countries like Germany need to overhaul the digitisation of their entire public sector,“ Holz said in an interview with Börsen-Zeitung. At the same time, the former Oracle and Google manager expects the so-called „hyperscalers“ – the largest cloud service providers Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft – to step up their efforts in the race for AI supremacy.

„If one of them achieves breakthroughs with a new generation of large language models, the others cannot afford not to be involved,“ Holz explains. The arms race will probably continue until there are clear signs that the costs of inference – the ability of AI models to recognise patterns from the data fed into them as part of machine learning and thus draw conclusions from unknown information – are falling.

CEO Ghodsi describes the hyperscalers as partners whose ongoing investments in AI are important for customers such as Databricks. „But we are also very important for the hyperscalers, as we make extensive use of their infrastructure and in turn generate billions in investments based on this infrastructure,“ emphasises the founder of the company, which develops solutions for the storage and management of large amounts of data as well as analysis tools based on this data.

Databricks is „not really dependent on outside capital, but is independently capable of investing aggressively,“ said Ghodsi during a media roundtable last Wednesday, in response to a question from Börsen-Zeitung. Databricks wants to hire 3,000 new employees this year – but if the global macro environment deteriorates significantly and the AI boom loses momentum, no new hires will be possible in the worst-case scenario. „But we'll still be fine,“ Ghodsi assures.

Meanwhile, technology companies such as OpenAI, which became an AI pioneer with its text generator ChatGPT, are also trying to distance themselves from major partners such as Microsoft. The start-up has secured 11.6 billion dollars in investment commitments to expand a data centre in Texas, through which it aims to secure higher computing capacity in the long term. Alternatives specialist Blue Owl Capital is contributing cash to the deal – and Wall Street is also showing great interest in driving the AI boom with financing.

But Databricks manager Holz emphasises that banks, asset managers and insurers are also very important as customers. „We love working with financial services providers because they are already well versed in data management and have a high need to reduce their risk exposure,“ says the vice president, referring to statements by Dimon that J.P. Morgan runs „100 internal stress tests per week.“

The statement by the bank CEO, who was charming Silicon Valley, is intended as a side swipe at the Federal Reserve – one of the „hysterical“ authorities that, according to the 69-year-old, are „not prepared for the next crisis“ despite all their zeal. Dimon's appearance suggests that the J.P. Morgan boss sees overly complex and burdensome banking regulation as just as great a threat to America's future as losing technological supremacy to China.

When Ghodsi probed further to ask whether Dimon himself would be willing to take political responsibility and stand up against the developments that bother him, the bank CEO waved him off. „You'd have to appoint me, I could never run for office,“ says Dimon, referring to his already busy schedule – but adds, to laughter from all sides in the exhibition hall, that he could perhaps „use one of Databricks' AI agents as a campaign team“.