CEO Sessions: Navigating AI’s promise – opportunities and realities in healthcare and technology

Ali Dibadj: Hey everyone, it’s Ali Dibadj. I’m here in New York at our Partnerships for a Brighter Future conference. I’m really pleased to have with us Richard Clode from our Technology team, and Agustin Mohedas from our Healthcare team.

Guys, you were just on stage talking about AI in technology and in healthcare. What are some of the highlights about that session, Agustin maybe starting with you?

Agustin Mohedas:  Yeah. So, we really discussing how AI is going to impact innovation in healthcare and really trying to double click and go to kind of that next order, not just kind of the, you know, the high level. So, things that we talked about, for example, it takes on average seven years to develop a drug. Could we improve that by both the front end, how we discover molecules, how we, how those molecules interact with proteins, protein folding? Can we improve that from, you know, two to three years, down to one year?

But what about on the back end? Right now, the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] takes over a year to review a new drug application. Could that take three months by using AI, these large language models? Right. So that’s really exciting.

Other areas of innovation where AI can play a role: how our physicians interact with us, instead of being on the computer, inputting billing codes and diagnostic codes, they can be talking to us and the AI can be doing that all in the background, and really unlocking a lot of tremendous value over time in these really giant markets.

Dibadj: Okay, Richard, how about you in technology?

Richard Clode: I think we were talking about us being at the knee of the curve, that actually innovation from here was actually going to accelerate rather than slow down. And I think everyone’s heard the mantra, you know, data is the new oil. I think that’s a little outdated and actually tokens are the new oil.

And that’s going to really open the door to a lot of advances we’re going to see in all of our lives in the next few years. So, whether that be, you know, these reasoning models that are allowing agentic AI and that’s going to come into the enterprise landscape, as well as our consumer life. And then also, you know, this whole concept of physical AI, the fact that we didn’t have physical data, we didn’t understand how proteins worked, or gravity worked, or friction worked or, you know, driving cars.

These large language models, this tokenisation can really advance that and be a catalyst to these technologies developing. And we’re seeing that in terms of robotaxis. We’re seeing that on the humanoid front, a much more accelerated curve of innovation. And now these are trillion-dollar markets, so they should create some great investment opportunities for us.

Dibadj: So, as soon as you guys got off stage, I saw you were mobbed by clients. We had over 100 clients in the room, they’re asking lots of questions. Richard, maybe start with you. What our clients ask you, what are you talking about these days? Where are some of the opportunities?

Clode: I think post-DeepSeek and then some growing concerns around the use cases of AI and the return on all of this capital spending we’re seeing. You know, is it real? Is the kind of number one question. And I think we’re seeing that innovation curve really accelerate into real use cases. And I think we’ll see that particularly in the next couple of years. There’s always a lag between the capital spending, building the platforms and ultimately us using this technology.

And then I think the other sort of misunderstanding was the fact that, you know, technology gets cheaper as if that’s a bad thing. I mean, that’s always proliferated and democratised these technologies. But obviously, we’re in a world where, you know, the investment landscape is very different to, you know, 2020 or actually much of the last decade where money was free [funding costs were very low].

And you can’t just buy something in an ETF that’s got something to do with AI anymore. You’ve actually got to identify the true winners. You know, this is an industry where winner takes most. Which companies are actually going to demonstrate real profit growth? That’s the type of investment that’s being rewarded by the market. And, you know, our clients are looking for people and teams that can identify those.

Dibadj: Agustin, what were clients mobbing you with?

Mohedas: Look, I think there’s a lot of excitement in AI and how it might, you know, accelerate innovation in healthcare. And I think, you know, what’s important, the clients just want to know, okay, where are the opportunities? Where can I invest?

But I think at the end of the day, you have to stick to the fundamentals as well. You have to identify the companies that are not only using AI. That can’t be the whole story, right? Show me the drugs, show me the data and allow me to invest behind kind of that true innovation and value creation and not just kind of on a story only basis.

And so, I think that’s really important. While, yes, these technologies are exciting and they’re going to proliferate, we still got to get down to fundamentals and picking the right opportunities and the right companies that are making the most and taking the most advantage of these technologies, not just kind of selling a story. So, I think there’s you know, it’s two sides of the coin there.

Dibadj: Well, you guys have been really insightful here in snippet form, very insightful on stage. And as we’ve talked before, these gentlemen are in healthcare and in technology. Examples of the 350 people we have all around the world doing fundamental work to figure out wheat from chaff, haves and have nots, investing for you and your clients.

Thanks very much for joining.