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RAG Ag. | Fortune

RAG Ag. Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Oil prices remain volatile, artificial intelligence is demanding more power than the electrical grid can easily handle, and energy CFOs are deciding where billions of capital will flow next.
Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner joins Fortune Daily to discuss how one of America’s largest energy giants (No. 21 on the Fortune 500) is navigating these shifts—from continuing investments in Venezuela to signing a 20-year natural-gas supply agreement for Microsoft’s massive data center project in Texas. Bonner breaks down energy security, AI’s unprecedented power appetite, and what consumers should expect on their energy bills as winter approaches.
Also on today's episode: • Term Sheet Preview: How did prebiotic soda brand Poppi scale from a local farmers' market booth into a $1.95 billion beverage powerhouse? Senior Writer and Editor Allie Garfinkle talks with the founder to uncover the blueprint behind their rapid growth.
- watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcD2QIeEH8
Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 - Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner on AI & Energy Demand 
14:04 - Term Sheet: How Poppi Became a $1.95B Soda Brand


Inside Chevron’s Massive Bet on AI & Energy | Fortune Daily

Features

fortunedaily

I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and one of the main topics of conversation is the price of our energy bills right now. We hear the concerns and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market as we can. Hello, I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. Energy is rarely out of the headlines these days and oil prices continue to be volatile. At the same time, AI needs more power than the grid can easily deliver. At the center of all of this are CFOs, Chief Financial Officers, because they're the ones deciding where energy companies invest their money. Ema Bonner is the CFO of Chevron, which is number 21 on our Fortune 500 list. And she's helping steer one of America's largest oil companies through all of it, from deciding to double down on rigs in Venezuela. To a 20 year deal with Microsoft to supply natural gas power to a massive data center that it's building in Texas and that project alone could deliver power roughly equivalent to 2 million homes. Bonna joins me to talk about energy security, about AI's voracious appetite for electricity, and also about what she'd say to consumers, panicked that as we head into winter, that already very pricey energy bills are about to skyrocket. Eva, thank you so much for joining us. So it's the UN General Assembly this week in New York, and there's real hopes that U.S.Iran talks there could help stabilize global oil prices. What's it like to manage this volatility, this ongoing volatility from the CFO chair of a major oil company like Chevron? Well, thanks, Ellie, for having me. It's buzzing here in New York at Ongo Week. Look, things Very volatile and very uncertain and that's something that we don't try and predict as a company we plan for it and so from a CFO chair I'm involved in planning for all of that uncertainty. Our business is cyclical, so we're used to every few years having some shocks and cycles, and we have to make sure, and I have to make sure from the CFO's chair that we can weather all of that disruption. So what I pay attention to are things that are within our control. How does the portfolio perform at high and low prices? What investment choices make sense? Investment choices that make sense over the long term that will be profitable and deliver high returns even if prices. are lower. How to manage risks around the world, we have operations. Around the world and so each country is different and so we think about that as a company and the CFO plays a key role in looking at all the enterprise risks and ensuring that we can manage those risks. And then third is really to ensure that every day we're safely and reliably operating all of the assets we have because it's that platform of performance that is so important, important, especially given the disruption that we're managing today when Delivering supply to the market to delivering products to customers, and it's even more important when you've got constraints in the system. Chevron has announced that it's planning to more than double its red count in Venezuela following a deal struck with the Trump administration. You've negotiated or the company has negotiated stability clauses and arbitration rights as part of that deal. But this is still a deal that's tied to a certain political administration. What protects that money that Chevron has invested if the politics change over the next couple of years? The new terms that we were able to negotiate it unlocked this growth opportunity for us. It had long duration growth possibilities. It was a low cost. Operations 3 low cost operations and higher returns. So those 3 things came together to give us confidence that we could grow our investment in Venezuela. So when we think about Venezuela, we have 3 operating. Joint ventures today we've been in the country for 100 years, so we understand the country very well. We understand the stakeholders very well. We have exceptional employees in Venezuela, so our human capital is there. Our partnership has been developed over many years. So that's where we're starting from when we got these new terms and additional acreage, it made the outlook for. Venezuela compete with everything else that we have in the portfolio. The extra protections that we put in place, the stability clauses, protects the terms of all of those new agreements regardless of who's in power, regardless, regardless. So the stability clause, and these stability clauses are like what we would have in other parts of the world, so they're no different than what we have in Kazakhstan, for example, and that really protects the investment and that's really important to know when you're in a country that the investment that you're making for the long term is protected. So in addition to the additional acreage, we also got those additional protections. And then we got the right to resolve disputes through international arbitration, which is something that we would typically have in other assets of scale around the world. So it was the terms and it was these protections, the protections on the economics and the protections, legal protections that gave us that overall confidence to grow, and we'll grow production. We'll double production over the next five years. That will require gross $7 billion of commitment. And what we'll unlock at a gross level is roughly 9 billion barrels of commercial. Commercial reserves before becoming CFO you were CTO, um, so you're particularly uniquely placed to talk about what we're seeing now with the AI boom and its potential impact on, um, the energy market. So every week is bringing another story about AI agents and what they can, they can't do, how they might. Behave. AI is now selling utilities protection against that, um, to try and guarantee safety. You're about to sell power to these companies. Um, what goes through your mind? How are you thinking about this moment in time and specifically the conversation we're having right now about AI and long term safety? So we see the opportunity in two areas. One, how to leverage the technology to improve performance, and it's one focus area. And the other area is how to power the energy, the AI growth, and the energy that's needed, that's needed for the AI growth. So we're playing kind of both sides of the equation. I'd start with, you know, leveraging AI. I mean from a CTO perspective, when I was the CTO, we stood up the enterprise AI team, so the team in Chevron that has grown over the last couple of years that has deployed AI across the organization. We're using AI in our assets to improve performance. We're using it in our reservoirs to help us make the right decision on how to increase recovery. We're using it across the organization for personal productivity and team products. Oh, I use it every day. In fact, I can't remember a day where I did not use AI. I'm using it every day to help me synthesize information. There's a huge amount of information that comes obviously across my desk every day. And one of the challenges to discern what really matters and what doesn't. And so it's really helping me with discern discern. Things I should pay attention to. It's helping me with my personal efficiency, and that gives me more time to think about some of these longer term decisions that are important to me. One of the topics that has been mentioned in these doomsday debates that have been swirling over the past week or so is the possibility of AI hacking the energy grid. Is that in your perspective, is that something that's likely within the next decade and sort of all the repercussions that could happen as a result of that? Well, I can talk about the framework that we have in our company around AI. So what regulations and what safety guardrails are you putting in place to make sure that that doesn't happen at Chevron? Yeah, we have a framework in place, a responsible AI framework, and so since the very beginning when we started up our AI team a couple of years ago, everything that we developed and everything we pushed out was consistent with that framework, and that was the third party. Um, um, this third party, um, thought leaders on AI that had developed this framework in the early days and we were able to participate in some of that work and also implement it, you know, for us we have to think every day about cybersecurity risk, risks in general, safety risk. Health risks and so this framework helped us think about the new risks associated with AI. So everything that we've developed is within that in that framework and so for us it's really important that as we leverage the technology we think about it like every other new technology that we deployed. We have good risk management. We test it. And we deploy it responsibly and safely and so that's the approach that we're taking with AI. I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and I have a WhatsApp chat with all the other kind of apartment holders in my building and one of the main topics of conversation. Is the price of our energy bills right now and specifically going into winter, people are very nervous about, hey, if my kind of energy bill costs this in June in New York City, what's it going to cost in December? What's your response to the consumer and those concerns they have given everything that's going on in the Strait of Hormuz and The soaring prices of energy that we've seen, we hear the concerns, you know, prices impact consumers, businesses, economies. They're very hard to predict prices. And so, you know, given the disruption that we've seen this year, not only to the crude supply that's on the market, but also now to refinery capacity, those things are showing up in the price. Over the last couple of months, all of the buffers that existed at the beginning of the conflict have been drawn down. You know, there were commercial inventories. There were strategic petroleum reserve releases. There were sanctioned barrels that were on the water, and so all of those, all of that supply buffered the price for a while and so now a lot of that is drawn down and so we're seeing that increased pressure in price. In addition to that, refinery. Capacity globally has been decreased as well with some of the some of the conflict and so those two things together are creating creating the challenge and so there's a lot of pressure on prices right now and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market and that we run our refineries. Reliably and as efficiently as we can and that's what we're doing so we're growing production this year we're putting more supply in the market and that's what you were saying with Venezuela Venezuela is even in addition to the 7 to 10% that we are growing this year. Venezuela will bring more growth. We've grown Venezuela 15% this year already. So what we're focused on is bringing supply to the market and executing our plans with excellence. And then on the refinery side is really running our refineries at maximum throughput and in fact in the 3rd quarter we shared the production records that we are achieving and the refinery throughput records. So that's how we're part of the solution. Bringing supply and refinery throughput, and I think that is the message that operationally, operationally, operationally as best as you can, but you don't know the price is to an extent out of your, we don't control prices. What we control is putting supply in the market and running refineries well operationally, and that's what we're doing. You have had a really interesting career trajectory, Ema. So you started as an offshore. Petroleum engineer in the UK, um, my homeland, um, and then you went on to become Chevron's first female chief technology officer in 2021, um, and then first female CFO, not the first female CFO. OK, that's good news that that someone else had had held that role before you. But becoming the first female CTO, did that have any significance to you? Did you have any relationship with that milestone? It was, you know, exciting milestone. There were a few things that happened at the same time. I moved to Houston. I, um, was part of the executive leadership team and I was the CTO. So all of those things together was, was just, it was such a privilege to get that, get that opportunity. So it was significant on many, many levels. It gives me the opportunity to leverage all of the operational experience. I've had, you know, from multiple parts of the world, the UK, Asia, and Eurasia and really think about what was important in terms of the priorities for, for technology. And so what I learned through the role was that um technology can make what you think's impossible possible and technology can allow you to break through what's limiting performance. And again, the technology needs to be focused. It's got to be focused on the business, and you've got to at the end of the day see a result because that's the return that you get for all the technology programs is that you ultimately achieve a different step change in performance and so that's what I learned in the role and had a lot of fun in that role and then I. I took that lens when I became CFO because it helped me look at the asset performance just with that lens all the time. So I asked myself a lot, what's possible? What's possible? And I think that question came from that time. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. Thanks, Ellie. Cheers. How did Poppy go from a farmer's market stand to a nearly $2 billion soda brand? Here's a preview of Fortune's term sheet where senior writer and editor Ali Garfinkel got the story direct from the founder. What do you think most large companies are getting wrong about Gen Z? 100% of everything that they do. What is this? This is Poppy, the digital first soda brand Pepsi bought for $1.95 billion. Stop spiraling. Get a poppy. In the multi-billion dollar soda market, 3 companies dominate the shelves, and breaking in is notoriously difficult. Poppy, defied the odds. 53 days is the cycle. If you can't hit within that 3 days, you'll be the first to move at the speed of culture, what are you doing? And big corporations. Cannot move that quick, but executing that fast nearly bankrupt them. We had $75,000 in the bank and almost ran out of money. Today I asked Poppy co-founder Alison Ellsworth, how do you outmaneuver legacy giants, survive near bankruptcy and execute one of the largest consumer brand exits in beverage history. A lot of founders tend to cling to a CEO title. You really didn't. Why not? So it's so funny, and I'm here to tell you entrepreneurs, being CEO is just a glorified HR person. Like the last thing I want to do is deal with a ton of people problems and run a P&O. And, and, and in a day, no, CEOs are incredible and they, they have amazing vision and I adored ours at PPI. That's not what I'm saying, but it's like this title that people are so obsessed. with. And it's like, find your superpower. My superpower was running the creative and brand because I was the brand. I I I loved every aspect of it. There wasn't a can that I didn't design with my team, like all of those things. And so why would I want to do the CEO role? And it was the same with my husband. He was incredibly talented in the innovation and supply chain. And his team, I think other than our sales team was like the largest team. He was like managing like 80 people, right? You can find your superpower and not be CEO and I'm here to tell you, like you holding onto it for too long can be, it can hurt the business. To be a CEO, I think that it comes with experience and so Poppy with the crazy growth that we had, me and my husband looked at each other. It was like a year we're going from I think we were looking at going from 50 million to 200 million. We were looking at buying super wads and we looked at each other like we've never done this before. Why don't we bring in people that know more than us and be part of the conversation. And partner with them instead, instead of it getting forced upon you. Because if you have a board and you have investment and you have growth and you hold on for so long and let your ego get in the way of growth, it's going to get forced upon you and it's going to go sour real quick versus acknowledging it and learning from it. And I love that we're able to learn from these people who had been so seasoned in it before. So you can watch the full interview with Alison Ellsworth on our Fortune YouTube channel and we'll also drop the link um to that interview into the show notes for this episode. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, remember to like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about oil prices or maybe what your favorite coffee flavor is. I'll see you next week.

Asia’s shift to digital money has been swift: QR codes, super-apps, and online brokerages have fostered high levels of digital literacy and confidence among consumers. A new phase is now taking shape, as stablecoins reshape cross-border payments, central banks test digital currencies, and payment infrastructure adapts to an agentic future. The promise is faster, cheaper, and more inclusive finance—but it also raises difficult questions around security, fraud, and privacy. Two finance leaders chart the future of digital money, and its impact on consumers, institutions and global markets. 

Zhuoqun Bian, President, Ant Digital Technologies
Benson Wong, Managing Director, Head of Digital, J.P. Morgan Private Bank 
Fang Wang, Executive Editor, Shanghai, Fortune China 

Paying It Forward: What's Next in Digital Finance?

Conferences

Zhou Qing, I want to start with you. Good afternoon. So and has fundamentally reshaped how people across China and Asia pay over the last 10 years. Looking 10 years ahead, how do you see the very act of paying? evolve? Will it become increasingly more invisible embedded into our daily um routines um until we no longer feel we're making transactions at all. Thanks for the question. As I'm from N Group, payment is the DNA of our business, and I'm very famous to talk about the payment. In the past 10 years, I think everybody left home need to carry a wallet. Then after that maybe 5 or 6 years ago we called it e-wallet. Maybe the phone is the is the e-wallet, but now especially in Hangzhou we when we do the payment we just put down the we we tap the machine then boom it's done. So we can say the payment ah is disappeared. We even don't know. To happen and just to just to process this so it's amazing. So, ah, let's looking forward the next 10 years, ah, we see the payment will be invisible invisible because a lot of AIOT there's a biometrics you can use your phone, watch, even your glasses. So, so it's invisible. And they, uh, it also becomes very intelligent. Maybe your agent pay the do the payment on behalf of you. You have the agent. You authorize the agent. The agent has its own wallet, e-wallet, and they have the credit line. They pay buy the things on the line with the with the authorization from your side and ah. Ah, choose the service. Let's imagine if you, ah, if you go to the, it's good to have a vacation, you needed to book the hotel, you needed to, to reserve the table, you needed to have your ticket, air ticket, the train tickets. A lot of things you need to do by yourself in currently, but after, after that, maybe in the following 5 years or maybe only 1 or 2 years, your agents, your steward agents help you do all the stuff. They match the price. They purchase the service. They do a lot of the broth. They just pick, pick the very reasonable good price. For you, it's a, it's such an amazing for a future. There was before that, ah, I have to say, ah, ah, technology need to improve very quickly. AI and the blockchain makes it happen because it's the payment is instant. It's micro. It's 24 24/7 7 days and I think AI is your agent. They, they performed all the activities on behalf of you, but still need a super ledger which is blockchain. They, they record the transaction. Even the transaction is very micro, very ancient. They record on the. on the ladder and I think the infra is AI and blockchain is the info for future payment. That's a very exciting um future we're looking at, but we will come back to Agentic commerce in a while. But I want to return to Benson. Um, you at JPMorgan Private Bank, um, you serve clients who Uh, are managing complex multi-generational wealth across borders. In that environment, how do you see AI augmenting a private banker and where do you draw the line that ensures the final relationship with your clients remains deeply human? Great, that's a great question. And, and firstly, thank you for the opportunity to be here. I, I couldn't agree more with what Duo Chuan had said in relation to AI in the context of payments and I draw the analogy if we look at and I think with technology 10 years is really far. I would just say in however cycles and events. I think we're seeing a change in private banking or frankly investments in general that has historically been more episodic, right, like unique events to something more continuous and integrated in your day to day. So historically you would just check your investments once in a while, maybe talk to your private banker once a month. Now I fully agree that things have to be more continuous. I also think that the accessing of this information is likely gonna be moving away from an atlas world and obviously products are becoming more commoditized in terms of financial products. Fully agree with the trajectory of the, the direction of where this industry is going. With that being said, I think as it pertains to private banking, where we look at differentiation, which I'll come back to why AI can't or would in the context of integration is in private banking. We're differentiated not if we're just pushing a product. If you're just pushing a product, pushing a specific thing, you're being very transactional and that's very commoditized. I think differentiation we're looking at as a business model is one where the answers are not clear cut. To the point about you have a large sale, to the point that you have complex situations, you have succession planning, these are all Trust, judgment, and access that has not been able to be replicated with technology, if you will. And so they would look at this is with AI and relationship management advisors. I don't think it's actually a replacement or displacement of it. I think it's a redistribution of labor. I think what ends up happening is that where it comes to identifying what is the best solution when it comes to thought leadership, providing access, knowing where to provide that service, that's something where that has to be something where the human gets involved. I think then that AI can help the prep work in gathering on the side before there. I also would think that just to not to be remiss, I actually do believe that AI can be in the front facing the client alongside the advisor. We actually at JPMorgan have invested and have rolled out a lot of really great directed client AI capabilities that don't have human in the middle that are reg approved. But I think the important part here is that where our clients demand something that is speed, convenient, low stake information. We should definitely let them deal with AI because that actually has served their benefit where there's trust, judgment, complexity, then those things should definitely be something enabled through digital and managed by a human by a trusted advisor in that contract. It sounds to me that AI is not replacing trust, it's just reallocating it. So, uh, Zhou Qing, let me come back to you, um, more on agentic commerce, uh, that is coming to us. So as AI agents, um, are not just doing recommending, uh, products, um, services. To us, uh, they start to actually purchase, book and pay on our behalf. I wonder what does this mean to merchants and banks, uh, what kind of preparation and technology they have to deploy so that they will eventually one day start to deal with algorithms as their counterparts. Ah, it's a, it's a good question. Um, we are talking about economy, agentic economy, we have to say, ah, actually we are experienced that just like I mentioned in the we are looking forward the the payment may be the payment between the agent agents. We call the agentic payment. Ah, the, the, it's the version we are experienced, but ecos is still needed to catch up or I have to say that the eco ecos had to be replicated this kind of changes. And then when we talk about the ecos, we have to to to reference to ah financial institutions, financial systems, compliance and the regulator and enterprises. All those stakeholders are the ecos participants. So, ah, to from ah from ah a financial institution perspective. Ah, when we initiate the transaction, we have to do the KYC, know your clients, but in the, ah, aging, aging economy, we have to say you need to know your agents. Who's the agent you you you belong to or you get ah properly authorized or you, you, when you, when the agent does things in your mouth, who takes the responsibility. So all these things. to from human to agent. So the technology, especially for new new new agents, 24 hours, 1010 24 hours in the 7 days instant, all the infra need to be improved or rebuilt. The in the in the past few years, all the infra are built for humans, but looking forward. All the infra needs to be rebuilt or enhanced to aging because all the participants may be human, may be aging. You need to know to your to know your agents much more than know your customers. I think it is very important. Technology may technology needs to provide this kind of service to the to the financial institution and the regulatory systems. I said from the it's it's from the financial perspective, but from the enterprises perspective, ah, every company, every business goes to the go to the place that your customer spend the time. 10 years ago maybe website and 5 years ago maybe app. Now you may go to the aging marketplace. So from end of end group or NDT we provided this kind of service to to bring the tech to bring the enterprises the know-how, the skills into Agentic service that agents can find your service through agent marketplace and how to skillize or agentize your business into agent and could be find through the market. So I think it's very important from from from the enterprises prospective they need. to join this kind of the innovation and skills life. They are know-how skills life, their database and make the business into agents and could be find easily find friendly find by other agents. OK, so, ah, Ben, you run a very tight ship on compliance and security, um. So how do you think about AI agents inside that parameter? Um, are AI agents coming to high value payments too? I, um, I, I, I don't know if there's any regulators here, but I just wanna say yes I do run a tight ship, um, but I think, I think the reality of it is that it comes to agents we're all moving away from the pilot phase, so I think a lot of organizations do have some sort of agentech workflow agents if you will, but I think at the end of the day we've never or I personally have never come across a situation where the technology of an agent failed us or rather led to an undesirable outcome. I think at the end of the day it's always around the operating model, the processes, and the compliance, the controls, if you will, and I think the challenge that with Agentech workflows where it's vastly different is if you ask an agent a harness, whatever it is, you ask it an information seeking question. If you answer wrongly, it's not good, but you have an embarrassing moment. If you don't get agentic workflows correct, there are much more vastly scaled impact as that way. And I think that's something at JPMorgan, which we're very intentional about, which is the tone from up top. And I don't mean just the culture of embedding AI. I think that's a given. I think it's actually our intentionality as it pertains to making sure that our infrastructure and processes allow for it. So again, when I use the word infrastructure, people tend to talk about technical infrastructure, data infrastructure. Obviously data has to be clean. Data needs to be in one resort. All those things are given. But even simple things like thinking about, OK, you have 10 different workflows. One of them is agentic, 2 of them are sort of not agentic, semi-aggentic, etc. The whole ecosystem that was mentioned before falls behind and so there's an importance for us to not only get the technology right. The orchestration right and as mentioned before, the governance look, protecting our clients, protecting our clients' wealth, protecting our clients' data is paramount, and I think it's very important that in a gente world all practices of here's a workflow, approve it needs to go away. We're very intentional to have either hired or retrained anyone from legal risk compliance to our technologists to our operations to have a. Workflow by design in all their DNA. So yes, it's automated, but is it explainable? Can you actually be audited? Can you actually explain it? These are all things we've actually gone back. So I think in that context, agentic payment is a very, very important part, but I think it's the journey to help us get to something as high value. All these different steps are things we've done in place to help position ourselves to get there. Mhm. So it sounds to me that uh BNS is. the roads, but Benson JPMorgan is more mindful of the traffic lights. So talking about roads, we're changing gear a little bit. So and has long championed financial inclusion using technology to bring financial services to those previously outside the financial system. In the age of AI, do you see these more technological tools narrowing the access. Um, gap further or will, um, actually, um, technology as some people are worried, uh, actually widen the gap. I think technology is definitely um bridge the gap because yes just as you mentioned, inclusive is our DNA of our business as well and you can imagine that especially JPMorgan is quite it is a private bank and I don't think a lot of people can have their service. Ah, I don't, I cannot say it's expensive, it's reasonable, but a genetic economy aging AI can make this kind of service much more inclusive, much more accessible to to to to people. They are not so wealth, they are, but they still need this kind of service, financial service, insurance service, hair hair care, legal service. They now they can have their agents. They can, they can let their agents uh find the proper service in a very efficient way. Would it be costly for each of us to get an agent? Uh, and I cannot say it's, it's reasonable or less expensive. Because you, you can have your, your service by the agents through the agents. Ah, maybe, maybe in the traditional ways, the service may cost thousands of dollars in a few weeks, in a few weeks, and the result is good. But, ah, but I think normal people maybe not they cannot afford that. They just needed the opinion. They need to just need the information. They just needed the service they can affordable. I think AI can do that. I think so the technology before that. As quite a bridge the difference, bridge the, the, the, the gap. It's it's, it's, we can see, uh, AI and the kind of the, the technology, uh, bring the service, bring the financial services to the normal people. When will the moment arrive when each of us will have our own agent doing all the banking and buying and purchasing and transaction for us? When do you see that day coming? I think it is as soon as possible. I, I believe that. So Benson, AI can make sophisticated insights available to more people, which is another sort of aspect of uh inclusion. But JPMorgan is a private bank. Um, how do you use AI to broaden access without diluting the quality of your service? Thank you. And, and I do wanna, I would agree that our fees are also very reasonable. So, so thank you for that. I I, I think there's a couple of different things. I, I like the analogy, and, and I've always said this before, where the technology is always gonna progress and it should. Innovation should never stop in that way. I think the intentionality around the usage of that technology, how we guard around it is what's really key here. And so for example, a lot of times private equity is something that used to be lack of access. Now it's commoditized, but that doesn't mean that everyone should buy private equity without understanding the checks and balance suitability in that way. And I think as it pertains to financial inclusion, at least from a private bank perspective, that hasn't changed our mentality in that way there. I think the way we look at inclusion as it pertains to clients who need private banking levels of service, I think we've leveraged AI and digital and technology to actually widen people who can engage with us as early as possible. So historically in a lot of private banks, what ends up happening is you have to actually become a client before you get access to a lot of information, get to see what it's like. We've actually recently launched a prospect portal which actually allows people who are not clients yet to actually start having access to our thought leadership, to actually start seeing what it's like in terms of our capabilities, our advice, understanding their portfolio, and that's two things that again for those who want a private bank, they can experience the JPMorgan experience, but equally for those who are not yet but soon to be on their liquidity journey, it's a great access point. I think the second thing I would also say is. The traditional private bank context is you have multi-generational wealth, you have a single decision maker, and usually that single decision maker decides everything. I think with technology and AI, I think the other people and decision makers around that generational wealth, be it the next gen, etc. will have better access. Transparency and ability to get started earlier on the way there. And sorry, last but not least, I would also say that the cost of providing these type of services is going down even though the human element is still there. And so it does allow us to venture to an economic threshold that might be lower than what currently is there, which again includes includes or rather promotes inclusion, but again still ensuring the right guardrails and the right services for our client segments. So the the product you just mentioned, it's like a. Uh, we don't need to be, uh, like ultra high net, uh, I, I think, um, individuals to enjoy absolutely. I think it's, uh, I think it's also by invite only, but I think it's one of those things where instead of relying in the old school pitchbook PowerPoints, PDFs, there's a digital way for people to engage and know what feels what it's like to be a JPMorgan private bank client. I think that's really what people expect nowadays, right? So, uh, whether in the future we'll be dealing with agents or human bankers. I think the task ahead is to build a system that is faster, smarter, more inclusive without losing sight of what makes finance work in the first place, which is trust. Thank you very much. Thank you for this wonderful and insightful conversation. Thank you.

As volatility and complexity reshape the global business environment, leaders are compelled to rethink strategy, investment, and decision-making. A real-time reimagining of the playbook is required to adroitly navigate geopolitical tensions, technological disruption, supply chain risks, and economic uncertainty. What leadership capabilities matter most in a more fragmented and unpredictable world? And how should organizations prepare for the risks and opportunities emerging across Asia and the global economy in the years ahead? Senior leaders share the lessons they’ve learnt steering global businesses in an era that rewards adaptability. 

Carol Liao, Chair, Managing Director & Senior Partner, BCG Greater China 
Chanda Beppu, President, Starbucks Asia Pacific 
Feroz Sheikh, Chief Information and Digital Officer , Syngenta Group 
Andrew Staples, Co-chair, Fortune Leaders Forum; Editorial Director, Asia , Fortune 

The Leadership Agenda: Navigating Complexity

Global growth has remained surprisingly robust despite a succession of shocks, including geopolitical tensions, trade fragmentation, policy uncertainty, and the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s. Asia continues to anchor global expansion, while investment in AI and strategic industries is reconfiguring markets, supply chains, and competitiveness. Yet significant downside risks persist, including escalating geopolitical rivalries, mounting fiscal pressures, and structural economic shifts. Setting the scene for the day’s conversations, this opening panel will offer a clear-eyed perspective on the economy in 2027 and beyond.

Ziad Haider, Partner, Global Director of Geopolitics , McKinsey & Company 
Louis-Vincent Gave, Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Gavekal 
Andrew Staples, Co-chair, Fortune Leaders Forum; Editorial Director, Asia, Fortune 

RAG Ag.

RAG Ag. in Fortune Rankings

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