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• For the 20th anniversary of “High School Musical,” Business Insider spoke to director Kenny Ortega.
• Ortega revealed how the cast’s tight-knit relationships behind the scenes helped shape the movie.
• Though he’s not attached to a fourth movie, Ortega said he’d be open to getting the cast and crew back together.

Do you remember what you were doing on this day 20 years ago? If you were an avid Disney Channel viewer, chances are, the answer is living and breathing “High School Musical.”

In January 2006, a direct-to-TV movie musical starring a cast of largely unknown teenagers set a single-night audience record on the Disney Channel. It was such a hit that the house of mouse promptly doubled down with repeat screenings, sing-along versions, piles of merchandise, and a live concert tour that packed arenas across the country. By the time the year was out, the soundtrack had become the top-selling album of 2006.

No one could have known that a Disney Channel Original Movie would eventually become a hit trilogy and multibillion-dollar franchise, but director Kenny Ortega was never in the business of half-heartedness. He’d already made a name for himself as a choreographer (“Dirty Dancing,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Madonna’s “Material Girl”) and a director (“Newsies,” “Hocus Pocus”). He’d signed on to choreograph and direct “High School Musical” because he recognized his younger self in the story — but also because he saw potential for an ambitious production, complete with original songs and colorful dance sequences.

Ortega successfully won support from Disney Channel executives to turn the original script into a “full-on musical,” which, at the time, was not a popular format for the network.

“The musical was dead, according to the industry,” Ortega told Business Insider. “The budget came in, and I was like, how the heck am I going to be able to do this?”

With only about a month to shoot and a few million dollars to spend, it was crucial to ensure that each piece to the puzzle fit perfectly.

“We made every dollar stretch and every minute mean something,” Ortega said. “We didn’t waste any time. Nothing ended up on the cutting room floor.”

Ortega and his team eventually landed on Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens to play Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez, a basketball star and a whiz kid who discover an unlikely love for theater. The high schoolers resolve to follow their dreams and, of course, fall in love in the process. Offscreen, Efron and Hudgens followed suit, dating for several years.

As “High School Musical” celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, Business Insider spoke with Ortega about the movie’s key casting decisions, the actors’ real-life relationships, and the potential for another sequel.

The sibling dynamic between Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel led Ortega to make their characters siblings

Is it true that you wanted to run the auditions for “High School Musical” like Broadway auditions?

I did. And I got in a little trouble for that in the beginning.

I remember Judy Taylor, who I adore, who was head of casting at Disney Channel for many, many years, came to me during our big final testing. We had about 25 and 30 kids for the finals. And then we narrowed it down to about 18. And I had them in the room for about six hours — they were playing basketball, they were dancing, they were singing, they were improvising. I was flipping them around and switching them around and looking at the chemistry that was in the room and looking at the promise that was in front of me.

The next day, Judy came back and said, “The agents are flipping out. They want to know what the heck’s going on over here. These kids have other auditions, other people to meet, and you’re holding them ransom.”

But then the next day, Judy came back to me and said that Zac Efron’s agent called her and said, “Zac said it’s the best audition he’s ever been to.” And that even if he didn’t get the part, it was worth being a part of the auditioning.

It was such fun. The kids in that room with me were having an absolute ball. I don’t think they’d ever been put through any kind of an audition like that, being West Coast actors and not East Coast theater actors. I put them through the mill.

Were any of the main cast members almost passed over because there were concerns about their stamina, or their singing and dancing abilities?

There were questions. I mean, I think everybody saw the chemistry between Zac and Vanessa from the very, very beginning and knew that it was palpable and that that was going to be hard to top, but there were also concerns about whether they could handle the responsibility. They were young. Vanessa was 15, Zac was 16, and we were putting them in a full-on musical that they had to carry.

Fortunately, we also had the support of Ashley Tisdale and all the other brilliant [actors], Corbin Bleu and Lucas Grabeel and Monique Coleman. And beyond that, with people like Alyson Reed and Bart Johnson. And so we had them surrounded with a lot of great energy and intelligence, and we did it.

But no, I don’t think anyone really was averse to any of the choices that we made. It was hard for me to get Ashley because she was already a big star for Disney Channel, and I think they were priming her for her own movie. And I was like, “Please!” I was crazy in love with what I knew she could do with this role, and she was delicious to work with.

I can’t imagine anyone else playing Sharpay.

Honestly, every day she brought something to the party, to the game. There were days where she would come in and she would say to me, “Don’t say anything! Don’t say anything! Can I show you something?” She was just really an improvisational genius, and she really had her arms wrapped around Sharpay, and we had the most fun developing that role together and working with [screenwriter] Peter Barsocchini, of course.

You know, in the beginning, Ryan and Sharpay weren’t brother and sister. They weren’t twins. They were just two characters in the high school that were both in the theater department. But the chemistry that they had together in the auditions, I said, “I think we should make them twins.” I said, “They’ve got something here that I think we could have a heck of a lot of fun with.” And everybody agreed, and we moved forward with that idea.

This is an interesting point, because Ryan and Sharpay are auditioning to play a couple in the musical, are they not?

Yes. [Laughs.] We didn’t change that. I don’t think we thought it through. I think we were a little busy.

Did any of the actors butt heads behind the scenes?

No. I mean, there was some really fun rapport between Lucas and Ashley that they incorporated into their work.

There was this wonderful kind of tug of war between the two of them. And then when the lights came on, and the cameras were rolling, it was just like they were onstage. They put it on.

We felt that. We saw that. We saw them bickering or challenging one another, and we just found it to be really great. And I didn’t have to ask them to be anything. All I had to do was just turn on the camera and get out of the way.

I was there to guide and direct and suggest and mold, but these kids brought a lot. They really did that. They studied, they cared. Day one, Zac said, “Don’t worry about time. Don’t worry about working us, Kenny. We all committed to do this. Let’s make it worth something. Let’s make this worth us all being here.”

Zac was initially really helpful in me sort of raising the bar on what I could expect from these young people. Because before that, other than “Newsies,” I hadn’t been really experienced in working with kids that young.

Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens lobbied for their characters to kiss in the first movie

Was there any concern about Zac and Vanessa potentially breaking up during the trilogy?

Well, I think you quietly have concern because you know that that could impact a kind of energy and comfort. And especially with younger kids, you want to make sure that it doesn’t change the sort of climate and ease that we walk into every day. But it didn’t weigh heavily on me. They were all friendly. They all got along. They all enjoyed each other’s company. There was no one that was over here and everybody over here. They really all enjoyed each other’s company. They were a tight-knit group of kids all through it. They were serving of one another, helpful to one another. And I don’t remember that weighing on me.

Certainly, no one said, “Hey, be careful.” No one really brought it up. And I wasn’t aware that they even had a kind of romance, a kind of care for one another in that capacity, until almost the end of the first movie. And I thought it was so silly that I didn’t pick up on it, but I was a little busy.

Was there a version of the movie in which Troy and Gabriella do kiss at the end?

I don’t think at the end of one, no. I don’t think we wanted that. And not because we knew that there would be a two. I just think that we felt that that was something that we could all hope and wish for, but that it wasn’t time for it.

I think Zac and Vanessa wanted it, if I’m not mistaken. I think both of them were like, “We could do a little kiss. I think that it would end the movie in a really lovely place.” And we said, “You already have. You’ve already ended the movie in a really, really lovely place. There’s all kinds of promise about where these two kids are going.”

Troy Bolton’s voice was originally a mix of Zac Efron’s and Drew Seeley’s, but Efron did all his own singing for the sequels

Zac has gone on to do other musicals like “Hairspray” and “The Greatest Showman,” which is maybe a surprise, given that he didn’t do all his vocals in the first movie.

He did part of it. A lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people think that he was lip-syncing the whole movie. He wasn’t.

Drew [Seeley] did an incredible job. Drew’s an amazing composer and lyricist and performer and actor and singer, and he helped us. But because the music for one was written before we had Zac, the music wasn’t written for Zac. And so there was some of the music there that was just out of his range. But he did a lot of it. And then Drew filled in some of the higher-register parts. But “High School Musical 2” and three is all Zac.

Whose decision was that? Was it Zac coming to you, saying, “I want to do the singing now,” or was it your call?

We all wanted him to do it because we all wanted everybody to be doing their own work. And it was hard for him. It was a challenge, but God bless him, he accepted the role, and he went along with us, and he sang all through all those scenes where you see him, he’s singing along with the track.

When we knew that we were going to make a second, it was on everybody’s plate. We’re going to write the songs now, knowing Zac’s voice, knowing Zac’s range and register, so he can deliver all the music for the next movie.

Ortega would sign on to do a fourth ‘High School Musical’ if the cast and crew were all in this together

In your mind, would Troy and Gabriella have made it as a couple? Twenty years later, are they still together?

Well, that would be unfair of me. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of Peter Barsocchini being able to write a fourth movie, if that’s the plan. So I wouldn’t want to throw anything out there, because as a director, I would want to be open to either way, whether they stayed together or whether they didn’t stay together, that if I was fortunate enough to be invited to come back and do it again and everyone wanted to, that I would be open to looking at whatever Peter wanted to put in front of us as what he would think the future brought for those characters.

I think all of us hope that they would be together, but maybe not necessarily as a couple, maybe just connected in some kind of wonderful, soulful, spiritual way. Friends, even. Who knows? We’ll see. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but it’s been talked about.

So you’re not connected to a fourth movie right now?

No, no, I’m not. No one has reached out to me and said, “We’re doing it.” But I know that the fans have been asking, could we do some kind of coming back together, some kind of a reunion show? And hey, I’d just be happy with a nice dinner with everybody present and with no rush to get out after dessert.

But for the fans, I hope we could do something. I think that would be lovely. They’re deserving. They’ve been amazing. They’ve changed all of our lives.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

• TikTok’s owner has closed a deal to sell a portion of its US assets to a consortium of investors.
• Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX combined will own 45% of the new joint venture.
• ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, will maintain a 19.9% ownership stake.

Who’s grabbing control of TikTok’s US assets?

TikTok announced on Thursday that it had closed a deal that will establish a joint venture for parts of its US business with a group of investors.

Three managing investors will each hold a 15% stake in the new venture: Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX.

ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, will maintain a 19.9% minority stake — the maximum allowed by the divest-or-ban law that spurred TikTok’s sale. The remaining 35.1% will be controlled by a consortium of investors, including affiliates of some existing ByteDance investors.

Some individuals are also getting a piece of TikTok US, including the family office of Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies.

The new TikTok US joint venture said it’s appointing a seven-person board of directors, which will include TikTok CEO Shou Chew, as well as representatives from investors like Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.

Meanwhile, Adam Presser, a TikTok trust and safety executive, will act as CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

While the company did not provide a valuation for the joint venture in its announcement, the Trump administration said in September that the entity was worth around $14 billion.

The goal for the new joint venture is to secure US user data, trust and safety, and content moderation.

“The safeguards provided by the joint venture will also cover CapCut, and Lemon8, and a portfolio of other apps and websites in the US,” the company said in its January announcement.

ByteDance, meanwhile, will continue to oversee key commercial areas like e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.

Here are the key players in TikTok’s US business going forward:

Larry Ellison’s Oracle will have a 15% stake in the new joint venture

Software giant Oracle will take a 15% stake in TikTok’s US joint venture.

Kenneth Glueck, an EVP at Oracle who advises the company’s CEO, will join the board of directors.

Prior to the joint venture deal, Oracle was already working closely with TikTok’s US Data Security division (USDS). The company has stored US TikTok users’ data for years.

Larry Ellison, who is also a financial participant in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s business, is the chairman and cofounder of Oracle and a longtime Trump ally.

Oracle, which currently works with TikTok on data security, is expected to remain its “trusted security partner” tasked with safeguarding “sensitive US user data,” Chew wrote in a December memo to staffers.

TikTok’s new US owners will retrain the content recommendation algorithm on US user data “to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” per the December memo.

Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Abu Dhabi’s MGX is one of three ‘managing investors’ taking over TikTok US

MGX is a state-owned investment firm in Abu Dhabi.

It will also take a 15% stake in the new TikTok entity as one of three managing investors.

The firm is focused on AI.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal ruling family, is the firm’s chairman. The fund participated in OpenAI’s $6.6 billion investment round in 2024.

David Scott, MGX’s chief strategy and safety officer, will serve on the joint venture’s board of directors and security committee, according to TikTok’s blog post announcing the joint venture.

MGX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Private equity firm Silver Lake will also hold 15% of TikTok US

Silver Lake is a tech-focused private equity firm.

The firm will take a 15% stake in the new TikTok entity.

Its current investments include Klarna, Carta, Dell Technologies, Genies, and Waymo, per the firm’s website. Previous investments include Airbnb, Twitter, and Tesla.

Egon Durban and Greg Mondre both act as co-CEOs and managing partners at the private equity firm.

Durban will join the TikTok US joint venture’s board of directors.

Silver Lake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Michael Dell’s family office is one of several new investors

Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell is also involved in the deal.

Dell’s family office is one of several new investors TikTok listed as being part of a consortium. It’s not clear how much control Dell’s investment will have.

In September, Trump said Dell would be involved in the deal.

Seven other investors will be part of the consortium

In addition to Michael Dell’s family office, TikTok named seven other investors as being part of the joint venture. Some are tied to existing ByteDance investors, such as Vastmere Strategic Investments, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group.

Here are the seven other investors:

• Vastmere Strategic Investments, LLC, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group, LLP, a ByteDance investor and global trading company.
• Revolution, an investment firm where Vice President JD Vance previously worked.
• Merritt Way, LLC, which is controlled and managed by partners of the investment group Dragoneer. Dragoneer previously invested in ByteDance.
• Via Nova, an affiliate of existing ByteDance investor General Atlantic.
• Virgo LI, Inc., the investment arm of a foundation established by Russia-born Israeli tech entrepreneur and investor Yuri Milner, alongside his wife, Julia. Milner founded DST Global, a ByteDance investor.
• NJJ Capital, the family office of Xavier Niel, a French billionaire who sits on ByteDance’s board of directors.
• Alpha Wave Partners, an investment firm headquartered in New York that has invested in companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and MrBeast’s Beast Industries

ByteDance will have 19.9% of the venture and control key business lines

ByteDance will own 19.9% of the new joint venture, the most it can legally hold according to the terms of the divest-or-ban law.

The company will also retain control key business areas like TikTok Shop, advertising, and marketing, according to Chew’s December memo.

In January, the company began splitting its US workers into different entities based on whether they would continue to work under ByteDance or move under the USDS joint venture, Business Insider first reported.

• David Ellison is making data a key pillar of Paramount Skydance.
• Paramount is broadening the scope of Jason Kim, head of streaming data and insights.
• The move shows how Ellison is trying to remake Paramount into a tech-first company.

David Ellison is showing that his tech-first vision for Paramount Skydance isn’t just talk.

Ellison is taking his data-focused strategy to a new level by elevating Jason Kim, Paramount’s EVP of data and insights, to oversee data for the entire company, instead of just the direct-to-consumer division.

The change was announced by Domenic DiMeglio — who heads up marketing as well as data and insights for Paramount’s streaming division — in a Thursday afternoon staff meeting, a recording of which was obtained by Business Insider.

Kim’s increased remit comes a day after Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, met with company leadership in its New York offices.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for Jason — and for the team overall — to start playing a bigger role for what’s happening at Paramount as we move forward,” DiMeglio said in the meeting.

DiMeglio added that Kim’s bigger role is part of “David’s vision of trying to transform ourselves into being a tech-first media company — and, really, the most tech-forward media company in this space.”

Ellison has remade Paramount in other ways since taking control of the company in August, including securing US UFC rights, hiring Bari Weiss to lead CBS News, and attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

While Paramount already had data and analytics teams across the company, it now has a new point person to oversee those efforts.

“I would hope and expect that, little by little, we’re going to bring those silos down,” DiMeglio said. He added it’s “not easy work.”

Dane Glasgow, Paramount’s chief product officer, said in an email to employees that “these updates are part of a broader effort to focus our investments, reduce fragmentation, and move faster as one team.”

Paramount’s streaming team has become familiar with change. Last week, Paramount’s streaming product and tech chief, Vibol Hou, told colleagues he was leaving at the end of January, Business Insider reported.

“You could probably sense that there’s been some musical chairs stuff going on within the organization at large,” Kim said. “And that’s not unique. That’s sort of true of any company that’s undergoing a large-scale organizational transformation, like the one that we’re in the midst of now.”

Continuing the musical chairs analogy, Kim said that this change signals that “this is our chair — we’re here to stay.”

Although Paramount laid off about 1,000 employees in October, a few months after its Skydance merger closed, Kim downplayed the idea that this data and insights shake-up signals that more cuts are ahead.

“I don’t think our scope is going to get smaller here. It is only going to get larger,” Kim said. “And I think those are all exciting tailwinds for us as a team.”

Kim added that “there might be more consolidation in the future, but that’s going to be into our team.”

Two Paramount employees in the meeting told Business Insider they were happy to hear about the change.

“It is exciting, given that we will have a lot more visibility than we used to,” one employee on this team said.

Another staffer said this change indicates that Paramount is “somewhat serious about the ‘tech’-ification of the company.”

• Elon Musk said aging is a “very solvable problem” at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
• As people live longer, Musk said, we might risk an “ossification of society.”
• “It may become stultifying. A lack of vibrancy,” Musk said.

Elon Musk says he thinks aging will one day be solved.

The world’s richest man said getting older was a “very solvable problem” during a conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.

“When we figure out what causes aging, I think we’ll find it’s incredibly obvious. It’s not a subtle thing,” Musk said. “The reason I say it’s not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body, you know, pretty much age at the same rate. I’ve never seen someone with an old left arm and a young right arm ever in my life, so why is that? There must be a clock that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body,”

But Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said there would be some downsides to longer lives.

“You know, there is some benefit to death, by the way. There’s a reason why we don’t actually have a longer lifespan, because if people do live for a very long time, I think there’s some risk of an ossification of society. Of things getting locked in place,” he said. “It may become stultifying. A lack of vibrancy, but that said, do I think we’ll figure out ways to extend life and maybe even reverse aging? I think that’s highly likely.”

Musk’s surprise appearance was his first time onstage at the World Economic Forum, which he’d previously called “boring af.” His conversation with Fink was wide-ranging, but didn’t reveal much new information.

Dozens of political and business leaders from across the globe gathered in Davos, Switzerland, this week to attend the World Economic Forum. The guest list included President Donald Trump, who made his case for the US to annex Greenland and the US’s economic agenda during his address on Wednesday.

Trump’s push for Greenland has rattled European leaders and the US markets. It’s also shocked Greenlanders, who have spoken against the annexation and the Trump administration.

“We’re not for sale,” one resident said.

Trump said the US would not use military force to take Greenland, but has leveraged tariffs against European countries in his campaign.

The weeklong event ends on Friday with closing remarks from WEF President Børge Brende and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Economy and Planning.

If Wednesday was Trump day at the World Economic Forum, then Thursday was all about Elon Musk.

Musk, the world’s richest person, made his first-ever appearance at Davos, taking the stage in conversation with Larry Fink, the WEF’s cochair.

We’re bringing you live updates from Musk and the rest of Davos here. Follow along for the latest.

That’s it for our Davos liveblog!

On Thursday, we got to see Elon Musk grace the stage of the World Economic Forum for the first time. He didn’t make much of a splash.

Earlier in the day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was “living rent-free in Trump’s head,” and Business Insider’s Dan DeFrancesco got turned away from a cloakroom for not having sufficiently high WEF status.

On the geopolitical front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked businesses to open offices in his country and got two standing ovations, while Trump formally launched his Board of Peace.

Business Insider won’t be liveblogging on Friday as Davos wraps up around midday local time.

So that’s it.

Goodbye, and thanks for reading!

What we learned from Elon Musk’s surprise appearance at Davos: not much

Elon Musk once called Davos “boring af.” After his first appearance, some attendees might agree with him.

The billionaire took to the stage at the World Economic Forum in a surprise appearance on Thursday for an interview that touched on many points of his sprawling business empire — but offered few new details.

Read full story

Bank CEOs used Davos to question Trump’s credit card cap plan

The CEOs of three major banks — Citi, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs — made clear their feelings about plans to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.

Their feelings: pretty negative.

Read full story

Japan’s bond-market rebellion is a warning sign that the US needs to shape up its finances: hedge fund titan

The bond vigilantes could make a comeback soon.

That’s the big message Citadel CEO Ken Griffin thinks the US got this week.

Speaking to Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Griffin pointed to the sharp sell-off in Japan’s bond market as investors balked at a potential pause on food taxes, a policy proposal that caused the nation’s 40-year government bond yield to hit a record high.

Read full story

Trump’s 29-hour flying visit

Speaking of Trump’s journey home, Air Force One took off from Zurich Airport at 5:37 p.m. local time (11:37 a.m. ET).

Trump’s convoy was seen earlier driving away from Davos before Elon Musk’s speech.

From touchdown to take off, the president spent about 29 hours in Switzerland.

Davos is starting to wind down

With Musk’s appearance over and Trump on his way back home, we’re coming into the final stretch of the 2026 World Economic Forum. Private events and cocktail parties will continue long into Thursday night, but there are only a handful of talks and discussions left today, and just a few more scheduled on Friday morning.

Things will officially wrap up with closing remarks from the WEF President Børge Brende and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Economy and Planning at midday tomorrow.

Musk played many of his greatest hits

In his 30 minutes onstage, there wasn’t a whole lot from Musk that we haven’t heard before. He talked about his vision for a robot-powered future, plans to go to Mars, and the rollout of Tesla’s robotaxis.

Whether he has any further engagements at Davos is currently unclear.

We come to the end of Musk’s appearance

“I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future,” he says.

“For quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than being a pessimist and right,” he says to laughter.

And with that, Musk’s first time at Davos comes to an end.

Musk gets a laugh from the audience

“People ask me do I want to die on Mars, and I’m like ‘yes, but not on impact.'”

‘5 years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively’

“The rate at which AI is progressing, I think we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than the end of next year.”

Musk moves on to robotaxis

“Tesla has rolled out a robotaxi service in a few cities, and it will be very widespread by the end of this year within the US,” he says.

Musk says Tesla hopes to get approval for its robotaxis in Europe next month. He doesn’t specify where.

Optimus robots will be on sale to the public by the end of next year, Musk says

“Humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. We do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory,” Musk says.

“By the end of this year, I think they will be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment,” he adds.

“By the end of next year, I think we’ll be selling humanoid robots to the public. That’s when we are confident that it’s very high liability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is high.”

Musk said in 2024 that he wanted to sell Optimus in 2026.

Fifteen minutes in, it isn’t entirely clear why Musk came to Davos. So far, his comments are mostly familiar.

Fink asks Musk if he wants to solve human aging

“I do think it is a very solvable problem,” he says.

“When we figure out what causes ageing, I think we’ll find it’s incredibly obvious.”

Stopping aging isn’t necessarily a good thing, he adds.

“There is a reason we don’t have a longer life span. There is some risk of an ossification of society, of things getting locked in place.”

Almost everyone on the planet will have a robot, Musk says

“We will actually make so many robots and AI that they will actually saturate human needs.”

“My prediction is that there will be more robots than people.”

“Who wouldn’t want a robot to, assuming it’s very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pets?”

Musk quickly turns to AI and robotics, saying they will lead to a huge economic boom

“If we have ubiquitous AI, which is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.”

”I’m often asked: ‘Are there aliens among us?”’

“And I say, I am one, but they don’t believe me. If anyone would know if there were aliens among us, it would be me.”

Musk starts with a joke

“I heard about the formation of the peace summit. And I was like, is that piece? A little piece of Greenland. A little piece of Venezuela,” Musk says after Fink mentions Greenland.

Not many laughs for that one.

Musk and Larry Fink arrive onstage to muted applause

“That was not a large applause. Start again,” Fink tells the audience.

Musk is scheduled to speak for 30 minutes

Yesterday, President Donald Trump was on the agenda for 45 minutes, and ended up speaking for nearly 90 including his brief Q&A with WEF President Børge Brende.

There is an interesting energy in the room prior to Musk’s speech

Lots of smiles and small talk. Like a bunch of kids happily discussing their summer plans on the last day of school.

And why shouldn’t they? After all, for many, the crisis had already been averted over the past 24 hours. A Greenland deal was cut, and many were feeling optimistic about the future.

Musk asks X followers what to talk about

Speaking @wef in 20 mins.

What should I say? 🤭

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026

Hype is building inside the Congress Hall

We spoke to 3 robotics experts at Davos. They said this was the next big challenge for humanoid robots.

Humanoid robots can do kung-fu and parkour. But can they make your morning coffee?

At a Davos panel on Thursday, moderated by Business Insider’s Jamie Heller, three robotics experts said humanoid robots needed to move beyond flashy demos and perform useful tasks in the real world at scale.

Jake Loosararian, the CEO of infrastructure startup Gecko Robotics, said that deploying robots into real-world environments was the major challenge facing the much-hyped industry.

Read full story

Attendees are queuing up to see Musk

Just over 30 minutes until Elon Musk is due to speak

Open offices in Ukraine, Zelenskyy urges business leaders at Davos

“Open offices in Ukraine. Yes, a little bit of a risk, but we decided to be honest today,” the Ukrainian president said to some laughs.

“Give jobs to our people.”

“This is real support: jobs, money, investment.”

As he left the stage after his speech, he got a second standing ovation from the Davos crowd.

A standing ovation for President Zelenskyy in the Congress Hall

“Today we met with President Trump. Our teams are working every single day. It’s not simple. The documents ending this war are nearly there and that really matters.”

Citadel’s CEO on the AI boom: ‘Is it hype? Of course’

Hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin has a blunt message for anyone expecting artificial intelligence to instantly rewrite the global economy: the hype is real — and it’s there to justify enormous spending.

Speaking in Davos yesterday the Citadel CEO said the AI boom is being fueled as much by narrative as by real productivity gains. Griffin, the world’s 39th richest person, said that doesn’t mean AI isn’t powerful — but expectations have run far ahead of reality.

Read full story

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech starts around 30 minutes late

A previous speech, given by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, overran significantly.

Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump prior to his speech.

Trump appears to be heading home

Photos show the presidential motorcade heading down the mountain and out of Davos just before 3 p.m. local time.

Elon Musk’s plane has landed

Flight-tracking data shows Elon Musk’s Gulfstream G650 has reached Zurich. It landed at 2:22 p.m. local time, some 10 hours after departing San Jose.

Zurich is 75 miles from Davos, where Musk is scheduled to speak at the World Economic Forum at 4:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. ET).

As was US Secretary of State Marco Rubio

World Economic Forum cochair Larry Fink was in the building

The media is gathering ahead of Zelenskyy’s speech

Zelenskyy is due to speak in roughly 20 minutes.

Musk’s first Davos trip

Despite being probably the most prominent figure in the world of business over the past decade, today’s appearance will be Musk’s first in Davos.

He has a difficult history with the conference, having frequently criticized it in the past, famously calling it “boring af” ahead of the 2023 edition. That incident sparked the WEF into publicly saying it had not invited Musk since 2015.

He was invited last year, when he was heading up Trump’s shortlived Department of Government Efficiency, but did not attend.

Musk crosses paths with his new adversary: budget airline Ryanair

Elon Musk’s private jet is back in tracking range, flying over France and about 200 miles from Zurich.

For much of the past week, Musk has been locked in a war of words with Michael O’Leary, CEO of Europe’s biggest airline Ryanair, over Starlink.

Perhaps ironically, Musk’s jet earlier crossed paths with a Ryanair flight from Madrid to Dublin, which passed behind it by about 70 miles, with their flight paths intersecting roughly 10 minutes apart.

During their spat, Musk and O’Leary called each other idiots and Musk polled X users on purchasing the airline and installing a new boss named Ryan.

Then, on Wednesday, the Irish airline used the beef to promote its January sale and said it would hand-deliver a ticket to X’s Dublin offices. Musk is yet to reply.

Davos day 4 highlights

After the massive buzz around Trump’s speech yesterday, things are a little lighter in terms of big name speakers at the World Economic Forum on Thursday. Still, it’s Davos, so even a light day would be the envy of pretty much any other conference on earth.

The day’s main event, of course, is Elon Musk’s appearance at 4:30 p.m. local time (10:30 a.m. ET), but other highlights include a special address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at 2:30 local time (8:30 ET). Zelenskyy, who initially planned to skip Davos this year, will also meet Trump while he is in Switzerland.

Elsewhere, Business Insider Editor In Chief Jamie Heller has just kicked off a discussion about living autonomously with MIT academic Daniela Rus, Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian, and Shao Tianlan, CEO of Mech-Mind.

There are levels to this game

Continuing our coverage of coat rooms across Davos, I was turned away from Cloakroom A in the Congress Center today.

“We’re only taking white badges today. Sorry.”

White badges are the top dogs in Davos’ weird caste system, having access to basically everything. That’s followed by silver (government officials), orange (media-types like me), black (security), and finally hotel badges.

There was a free coat room for us non-white-badgers just around the corner. But that didn’t stop some from feeling offended.

I heard one attendee who was turned down muttering “discrimination” under his breath.

Trump has signed the charter of the Board of Peace, and posed for his customary picture with the document

After leaving the Congress Hall, Trump thanked onlookers, but didn’t take questions from reporters.

Davos’ hottest jet: The Gulfstream G650

It looks like Elon Musk is heading to Davos on his Gulfstream G650 private jet — the model of choice among the very wealthy. When I was tracking private jet arrivals on Monday, it was the most frequent type, representing 31 of 157 landings at nearby airports.

According to JetSpy data, G650s that have landed near Davos this week include ones owned by: Aramco, Bill Gates, BlackRock (twice), Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Google, and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg also own G650s, per JetSpy.

Not everyone is entirely happy with the Board of Peace

None of Europe’s three largest economies, Germany, the UK, and France, will be signatories to the board today.

In an interview with the BBC from Davos this morning, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that this was in part due to “concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace when we still haven’t seen any signs from Putin there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine.”

The Kremlin earlier this week said Putin had been invited to join the initiative, which is focused on overseeing Gaza as part of plans to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Trump is back onstage launching the Board of Peace

Though Trump’s centerpiece appearance at Davos was his 70-minute-long speech yesterday afternoon, the president is back onstage this morning.

He’s launching his Board of Peace, alongside other world leaders, including Argentine President Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“Just about every country wants to be a part of it,” he tells the crowd.

He then describes the world’s troubles as “really calming down,” saying: “Just one year ago, the world was actually on fire.”

When might Elon arrive?

Elon Musk’s private jet is somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean as he makes a last-minute trip to Davos.

The Gulfstream G650 took off from San Jose International at 7:12 p.m. PT. About six hours later, ADS-B Exchange data had it some 2,200 miles away from Zurich.

The airplane was last recorded traveling at 660 miles per hour, which means it should land in Switzerland before 2 p.m. (8 a.m. ET). Davos is then about a 40-minute helicopter ride away.

We don’t know for sure Musk is on the jet, but it seems highly likely.

Unlike President Donald Trump, who was delayed yesterday due to a fault with Air Force One, Musk should have plenty of time to get to Davos on time.

Protesters are getting creative

There has been no shortage of protests at the World Economic Forum this week, with anti-billionaire, environmental, and anti-war demonstrators seen in the town.

One of the more creative demos we’ve seen, however, is this snow-based slogan. If you can’t quite read it, it says: “NO IMPERIALISM.”

‘I don’t think it’s going to put everyone out of work,’ says White House AI czar David Sacks on AI

David Sacks spoke on Wednesday at the USA House alongside Michael Kratsios, the White House’s director for science and tech policy. He pushed back on the most alarmist interpretations of Elon Musk’s warnings about AI and jobs, arguing they strip out a crucial part of Musk’s broader vision.

According to Sacks, Musk isn’t predicting a sudden mass-unemployment crisis so much as a radically different economic system, closer to a “Star Trek”-style world where technology supplies basic needs.

“Look, I think that Elon is directionally correct about the future. I think we are heading towards a country of abundance. Rising living standards for everybody, greater productivity. I think that will lead to rising wages. I don’t think it’s going to put everyone out of work.”

Davos has turned into a tech conference

I’ve usually thought of Davos as being more dominated by finance and blue-chip companies, but clearly, tech has taken over.

Walking down the main thoroughfare in Davos is always fun because all the shops that are open the rest of the year are taken over this week by companies that host “houses” to showcase their brands and host clients and events.

Walking along the street this year, it seems like 80% of the houses are tech. Palantir and Meta (with its free hot chocolate stand) had the most visible presence. Amazon’s house was surprisingly small. Google was far away from the main action. Lightspeed was the only venture capital firm I saw, with its odd retro “Lighthouse.”

It is also interesting to see who is not here. OpenAI has no house, and Sam Altman did not come, though some executives are here. Elon Musk was not originally part of the program but was a last-minute addition today.

Davos feels like San Francisco this week

There were so many techies here that sometimes I felt like I was in San Francisco.

I asked a couple of startup founders why they came so far to be here, and the consensus was that there’s nothing like Davos for the efficiency of meeting potential customers and investors who are all packed into a tiny Swiss village for the week.

Waiting in the cold in a long line for a party for General Catalyst and Lightspeed, I asked one founder why he traveled here.

He told me Alexandr Wang, founder and former CEO of Scale AI, who is now Chief AI Officer at Meta, advised him that Davos was highly useful because Wang said last year he signed almost a third of Scale’s customers in the short time he was there.

Harvey cofounder CEO Winston Weinberg told me that dealmaking started even before I arrived, with many transactions happening in the business-class sections of flights to Zurich from San Francisco and New York.

Digital twins are the hot new thing in robotics

Jamie Heller, Business Insider’s editor in chief, led a panel on smart factories that dove into the future of physical AI and what’s needed before robots become mainstream in homes and factory floors.

One phrase dominated her conversation: digital twins. Execs from Siemens, Agility Robotics, and Automation Anywhere agreed that what once sounded like a possibility in the distant future is now delivering real productivity gains.

“You want to have this digital twin alive once you are running your production because it allows you to optimize all the time,” Siemens’ CEO Roland Busch said. “If you make a change, if there’s something going wrong, you see real-time what’s happening on the shop floor.”

Gavin Newsom: It’s ‘the rule of Don’ in the US

California Gov. Gavin Newsom spent most of his 30-minute interview at Davos with Semafor’s editor in chief slamming President Donald Trump and the administration. The US is living under “the rule of Don” rather than the rule of law, Newsom said.

“Co-equal branches of government, the rule of law, popular sovereignty,” he said. “Tell me that that reflects the America you read about today.”

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The ElonJet is in the air

Flight data from ADS-B Exchange showed that Musk’s private jet, a Gulfstream G650, took off from San Jose International Airport Wednesday night, local time, and is traveling east.

It’s not yet clear whether Musk is on the aircraft, but he’s scheduled to appear on a panel with Larry Fink at 4:30 p.m., Swiss time.

Read full story

Cisco’s president: ‘I don’t want anyone to be a full-time manager’

Management is a bug, not a feature, in a career path at Cisco.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, is a big proponent of the great flattening. In fact, if you’re only managing people at Cisco, you’re doing something wrong.

“I want everyone to be a player-coach. I don’t want anyone to be a full-time manager. We don’t need full-time managers at Cisco,” he told me on Wednesday.

He called the philosophy “foundational” to Cisco. People need to think about how they want to change the world and what they can do to contribute to that change, rather than focusing on specific job titles.

“If in the pursuit of that change, you have to go out and reluctantly manage some people, then go ahead and do that,” Patel said. “But management, in and of itself, is not a full-time job.”

JPM’s top European bankers on clients’ uncertainty

Conor Hillery and Matthieu Wiltz are well-versed in how European investors are feeling.

JPMorgan’s co-CEOs of EMEA took a two-week trip across Europe and the Middle East to meet with clients at the start of the year. It corresponded with escalating geopolitical situations in Venezuela and Greenland, making for a unique trip.

When I spoke to them on Wednesday morning, before Trump’s speech, they told me clients aren’t necessarily looking to pull the plug on things, but the questions are mounting.

“I think it’s just raising the spectre of uncertainty, so clients aren’t making any definitive assumptions at this stage,” Hillery told me. “In the back of their heads, they are starting to think that this could get a lot more complicated than it’s been for the last few years.”

And even since the trip, the situation is evolving almost minute by minute.

“There is a bit more of a question mark now compared to the first two weeks of January,” Wiltz added.

Newsom: ‘I’m living rent-free in Trump’s head’

There was a bit of show-and-tell from the California governor at his morning session. He took out a set of red kneepads, which he said are meant for the CEOs who kneel to Trump. He also accused some corporate leaders — he didn’t name them — of “selling out to this administration.”

No shortage of jabs at Trump, too. The governor called Trump an “invasive species,” among other things.

“I’m living rent-free in Trump’s head,” Newsom said.

Musk has slammed Davos in the past

He posted negatively about the forum in 2022 and 2023.

My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2022

Elon Musk will speak at Davos

Musk is a new addition to the programme — he’s now listed to speak with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at 4:30 p.m.

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Business Insider was in the room at Trump’s speech, and this is what went down

Business Insider’s Ben Bergman brought us to-the-minute updates from inside the room where Trump gave his speech.

Great to start my day in Davos for the second day in a row with @Elex_Michaelson.

Today I shared what it was like to be in the room for President Trump’s lengthy address. pic.twitter.com/MmEjTEBgea

— Ben Bergman (@thebenbergman) January 22, 2026

Check out the full story, too.

Read full story

Now it’s Gavin Newsom’s moment to shine

Newsom sparred with Scott Bessent and, on Wednesday, stared into the camera in the middle of Trump’s speech with a wry, knowing smile — giving his best imitation of Jim from “The Office.”

rent free pic.twitter.com/lLB7uVydkf

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 21, 2026

The California governor has also been making his rounds with the press, giving snappy soundbites about how the Democratic Party and world leaders should best deal with the president.

This morning in Davos, Newsom will get his share of the spotlight. He’s scheduled for a panel at 8:30 a.m. local time.

It was all about Trump on Wednesday

ICYMI, though we don’t know how you could’ve.

After a slight hiccup in his travel plans due to an electrical fault on Air Force One, President Donald Trump and his team swept into Davos on Wednesday for a much-anticipated speech.

The reactions? Mixed. Business Insider was in the room for his speech, and we fact-checked the president’s praise for the US economy.

And after all the panic over Greenland, Trump called off his new tariffs on Europe. There’s to be a “framework” in place, per an agreement with NATO, with more to come on what that’ll mean.

• Trump sued JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon for at least $5 billion.
• The president alleges that JPMorgan debanked him after the January 6 protests for political reasons.
• The bank has previously said it doesn’t close accounts for political reasons.

President Donald Trump is taking America’s biggest bank and its CEO to court.

Trump is suing JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for at least $5 billion over claims of politically motivated debanking on Thursday, making good on his threats from a Truth Social post over the weekend. In a complaint filed in Miami-Dade County state court, Trump accused JPMorgan of trade libel, among other claims, and Dimon of unfair and deceptive trade practices.

In his weekend Truth Social post, Trump said that he planned to sue JPMorgan for “incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest.”

The bank said that “the suit has no merit” in a statement.

“JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company,” the statement said. “We regret having to do so but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so. The firm said it has repeatedly asked current and previous administrations to update the regulations “that put us in this position” and backs efforts to prevent the politicization of banking.

A legal spokesperson for Trump declined to comment. In August, the bank said in a statement to Reuters that it does not close accounts for political reasons.

Inside the debanking claims

The lawsuit claims that JPMorgan caused Trump and his family financial and reputation harm when it unlawfully “debanked” them shortly after Trump left the White House in January 2021.

The suit says Trump and various of his businesses were notified on February 19, 2021, that their accounts would be closed and their relationships with JPMorgan “terminated by April 19, 2021.”

They said no reason was given and that Trump called Dimon personally to complain.

“After receiving the Termination letter, President Trump raised with Dimon JPMC’s debanking of Plaintiffs’ Accounts,” the lawsuit said. “Dimon assured President Trump that he would get back to him to address JPMC’s debanking of Plaintiffs’ Accounts but, ultimately, never did.”

Besides Trump, the suing parties are largely entities affiliated with Trump, including a golf club in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and his golf club in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

The suing parties said JPMorgan never provided a reason for parting ways, forcing them to scramble to find new banking relations and hindering their business transactions. JPMorgan’s decision, the lawsuit alleges, “caused the businesses operated by Plaintiffs and their affiliated entities to suffer considerable financial and reputational harm as a result of being debanked.”

The suit also claims that the bank put Trump, the Trump Organization and affiliated entities, and the Trump family on a “blacklist” available to other banks. The lawsuit mentioned the word “blacklist” 24 times. It claimed that Dimon “authorized” the addition of Trump and his affiliates’ names to the blacklist.

The addition “induced other federally regulated banks in the United States, all of which can access this blacklist, to not carry on business relationships” with Trump and the other suing parties.

The filing opens with a quote from Dimon himself, drawn from his 2021 annual letter to shareholders, which highlights the importance of safe disagreement. It also references the bank’s code of conduct, which mentions accountability and acting ethically, and in line with the law.

Trump escalates the debanking fight

Trump has previously claimed that some big banks deny services to conservatives, telling CNBC in August that JPMorgan and Bank of America had previously refused to accept his deposits. In August, the president signed an executive order directing federal banking regulators to eliminate guidance that encourages what he deems “politicized” or “unlawful” debanking.

The order instructs some federal regulators and agencies to “make reasonable efforts” to reinstate debanked customers, and the Treasury Department to develop new regulations to prevent “unlawful” debanking.

The Trump Organization has sued Capital One over similar debanking claims.

Before Trump began his second term, well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said that banks had cut off banking services for dozens of tech founders under former President Joe Biden.

Trump’s suit comes after a flurry of recent proposals that could impact Wall Street, including a proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates for 1 year and an effort to limit large investors’ ability to buy single-family homes.