Beverly Hills Diary: AI or Die

Financiers, politicians and a swath of the corporate and media worlds congregated in an ever-tighter Beverly Hills Hilton for four days for what can only be called Milken-Fest.

More efficient than Davos and leaning more heavily on finance, Michael Milken’s global conference, now in its 29th year, attracts the business and financial elite without any pretenses to save the world, though a theme the Milken Institute is focusing on is restoring the American Dream. (See Milken’s new DC project and building.)

Speaking of the American dream, Ken Griffin’s Citadel once again kicked off the event with a cocktail party Sunday night before everyone went to their respective dinners. (Ken responded to New York City Socialist Mayor Mamdani’s awful video here if you haven’t seen.)

There were rooftop parties, dinners with the great and the good, Santa Barbara Sea Smoke pinot noir and Meta glasses, SUGARFISH sushi, and listening and learning from the most brilliant people in the world. America’s technological and finance industries are the envy of the world. And the world showed up.

There was a poignant start Monday morning at the kickoff panel moderated by CNBC’s David Faber when Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, Deputy Group CEO of Mubadala, the UAE sovereign wealth fund, thanked the audience and others in the finance community for reaching out to him after Iran launched a drone attack against the UAE.

A consistent theme was the enormous business and financial implications of AI and how that will drive years of growth in the financial markets and private capital market given the $10 trillion expected to be spent, and how the U.S. economy remains the envy of the world.

“Private credit is filling a market need that is inexorable,” said Jim Zelter, president of Apollo, at the kickoff panel.

A theme was the American’s economy’s exceptionalism notwithstanding inflation risk from energy and fertilizer prices rising, tariffs and 6% plus mortgage rates.

Lot of trash talking about Europe’s dysfunction, while plenty of bullishness on Korea, India, Japan and China. “China’s the fitness center of the world,” said Zelter.

There was consensus at another great panel that included Ruth Porat of Alphabet, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta, Senators Bill Hagerty and Mark Warner that the hyperscalers have a PR problem in communities around the country despite this being yet another American innovation that they all agreed needs to flourish. The impact on jobs, the need for exorbitant amounts of power and energy, and worries of the unknown.

“There’s a pessimism lock,” bemoaned Ruth. Added Dina, “There’s not enough communications from business leaders.”

Mike Milken did a number of great interviews and panels, and presides over this conference of 5,000 people as the wise professor knowing that he spawned giant firms birthed from the hallways and ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert: From Apollo (which itself birthed Ares), Canyon, to Crescent Capital, GoldenTree, Cerberus, Jefferies and Moelis and others.

At Milken’s Tuesday morning panel on credit—itself a master class — Tony Minella, CEO of Eldridge Capital Management, gave an extraordinary anecdote about his firm’s use of Claude. He said the firm’s work is done via Slack and embedded in Slack is Claude. On a recent stock purchase agreement, they inputted all the documents in Claude to analyze the deal and help frame the issues before a call to their lawyers were made.

“Every business model is going to have to change,” Minella said. (See Sabastian’s Nile’s letter on this topic about law firms.) “In college we used to chug beer. Now we chug Claude.”

No Milken is complete without hearing from the brilliant and funny Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s Bulgarian-born chief, who admitted to the audience “I worry for a living.”

She was giving a pep talk to her staff and summed it up, “AI or Die.”

Have a great weekend,
GPP Team