What CEOs talked about in Q4 2025: AI initiatives, AI bubble concerns, and the US government shutdown

In short

• According to IoT Analytics’ latest What CEOs Talked About report, AI took the top spot in CEOs’ minds for the first time in Q4 2025, though discussions around a possible AI bubble rose steeply.
• The US’s longest government shutdown had one of the highest quarter-over-quarter jumps in Q4, with most CEOs simply recognizing it as something to watch and mitigate if warranted.
• Discussions around tariffs and uncertainty remained high but continued to decline.

Why it matters

•   The prioritization of specific topics by CEOs may influence investment in these areas.

In this article

• The big picture
• Key rising themes in Q4 2025
• 1. AI
• 2. AI bubble
• 3. US government shutdown
• Declining themes in Q4 2025
• 1. Tariffs
• 2. Uncertainty
• What it means for CEOs going into 2026
• CEO digital agenda (Insights+ exclusive)
• Manufacturing challenges (Insights+ exclusive)

The big picture

In boardrooms in Q4 2025, discussions around economic concerns and trade policies continued to subside quarter over quarter (QoQ), giving way to AI as the top topic for the first time. The only economics-related topic to see a rise in mentions was inflation, which coincides with a continued rise in US consumer prices (up nearly 2.8% year-over-year as of September 2025). Discussions about interest rates remained at the same level as Q3 2025 (17%), coming as the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates 3 times in the latter half of 2025 (the latest being on December 10, 2025, after the Q4 2025 earnings calls in this article were collected).

The CEO digital agenda surpasses geopolitical and economic agendas for first time. The decline in mentions of economic topics and trade policies led to the CEO geopolitical and economic agendas receiving less attention, while increasing discussions around AI, software, and data centers helped push the CEO digital agenda up. As a matter of importance, the CEO digital agenda now ranks 3rd out of 7, compared to the pre-COVID period, when it ranked 6th out of 7.

The CEO digital agenda now only trails the financial agenda (always likely to be the top topic by its nature) and the CEO operations agenda. If this trend continues, it is possible that the digital agenda will displace the operations agenda for 2nd place.

Key rising themes in Q4 2025

1. AI

AI takes the #1 topic for first time. Followers of the What CEOs Talked About series have seen the topic of AI approach #1 over the last 2 years, just to consistently miss out on the top spot due to heightened discussions about inflation and tariffs. Now, AI is the most-discussed topic for CEOs, at 47% of calls. Notably, though, this milestone is not due to a sudden jump in mentions (only up 1% QoQ) but because the previous top topic, tariffs, had a significant drop, holding on to 2nd place (more on this below).

Mentions of related technology topics also experienced increases, though relatively subtle:

• Data centers: Up 16% QoQ to 18% of earnings calls
• Agentic AI: Up 8% QoQ to 5% of earnings calls
• AI agent: Up 1% QoQ to 4.8% of earnings calls
• MCP: Up 14% QoQ to 1.2% of earnings calls
• Copilot: Up 22% QoQ to 2.3% of earnings calls

Key CEO quote on AI

“As AI models advance and become increasingly integrated with real-world data, machines are slowly gaining the ability to interact, communicate, transform and create within our physical environment. ”

He Xiaopeng, Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Xpeng, November 17, 2025

Meanwhile, Q4 2025 saw a number of major LLM announcements, which were reflected in the earnings calls:

• Gemini: Up 18% QoQ to 1.4% of calls (Google released Gemini 3 Pro in mid-November 2025)
• ChatGPT: Up 22% QoQ to 3% of calls (OpenAI released ChatGPT 5.1 in mid-November 2025 and ChatGPT 5.2 in mid-December 2025, though the latter was after these earnings calls)
• Claude: Up 69% QoQ to 0.8% of calls (Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5 in late November 2025)
• Mistral: Up 162% QoQ to 0.3% of calls (Mistral AI released its Mistral 3 family in early December 2025)
• Grok: Down2% to 0.2% of earnings calls (xAI released Grok 4.1 in mid-November 2025)

The only major LLM without a Q4 update announcement (as of December 16, 2025) was Llama (with Llama 4 announced by Meta in April 2025), which dropped 25% QoQ to 0.2% of calls.

Key CEO quotes on LLMs

“The beautiful thing about ChatGPT is that you can combine the power of ChatGPT to understand the world and use cases with Spotify understanding you.”

Gustav Söderström, Co-President, CPO, and CTO, Spotify, November 7, 2025

“Customers receive live and secure access to Google’s AI ecosystem and Gemini modules among many other things.”

Christian Klein,CEO & Chairman of the Executive Board, SAP, October 22, 2025

“Anthropic tends to be pretty good at code generation. So if you’re doing programming, Anthropic is pretty good at that.”

Lawrence Ellison, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CTO, Oracle, October 17, 2025

2. AI bubble

While AI reached #1, discussions about it came with concerns about a possible AI bubble. Mentions of this risk rose 64% QoQ to 2.3% of earnings calls.

AI bubble in the headlines. Throughout 2025, news stories raised questions about whether we were headed into or already in an AI bubble, with some saying yes, including OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, and others arguing that the AI boom is fundamentally different from a speculative bubble, with worriers using outdated mental models from the dot-com bubble era. However, in Q4, headline focus has largely turned toward “circular” investing, where major tech companies (such as NVIDIA) invest in AI companies (e.g., OpenAI), which in turn buy the tech company’s hardware, making it appear that there is greater demand for AI and related hardware than there actually is. Key headlines on this topic from Q4 include:

• ‘Very troubling’: AI’s self-investment spree sets off bubble alarms on Wall Street (Yahoo! Finance)
• Does circularity in AI deals warn of a bubble? (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)
• Something Ominous Is Happening in the AI Economy (The Atlantic)

Some CEOs express concern, some defend investments. In boardrooms, 2 schools of thought emerged. Some CEOs believed AI was not in a bubble and defended AI investments, arguing that the technology delivers real value and will pay off in the long run. Meanwhile, others drew parallels to the dot-com era, noting both similarities and differences.

Key CEO quotes on a potential AI bubble

Valuations already higher than the dot-com bubble peak:

“Valuations right now in the market, looking at 12-month forward-looking earnings projections, are near the levels that we saw at the peak of the dot-com bubble back in 1999. Not quite there. Price to sales, for example, which was really elevated back in the dot-com bubble, we’re 60% higher now than we were at the peak of the dot-com bubble.”

Ray Di Bernardo, VP & Portfolio Manager, XAI Madison Equity Premium Income Fund, November 06, 2025

Today’s AI bubble, like the dot-com bubble, is just part of the tech cycle:

“Think about the dot-com bubble before and after. In the late ‘90s, the kind of hardware in IT houses, specifically around compute, were vertically integrated stacks,[…] Then, when you get into the 2000s, we moved into industry-standard servers, general-purpose silicon. […] And over time, we moved into containers and micro services. That journey is played out over multiple different technologies. It’s quite predictable […]. This is the journey that we’re on, and this is why we recognize, and we’ve already started to build our platforms towards this.” 

Justin Hotard, CEO, Nokia Oyj, November 20, 2025

AI is here to stay:

“AI, it’s not a bubble. It’s here to stay. It’s huge technology. It’s horizontal technology. At the end of the day, it’s going to impact everything.”

Dennis Herszkowicz, CEO, TOTVS S.A., November 06, 2025

3. US government shutdown

Government shutdown discussions enter the boardroom. On October 1, 2025, the longest government shutdown in US history started, lasting 43 days. This came to the forefront of many CEOs’ minds, as the topic of shutdown rose nearly 3-fold (179%) to 17% of earnings calls. In the discussions across the board, 3 key themes stood out: 1) direct business impacts, 2) minimal or manageable impacts, and consumer confidence concerns.

Key CEO quotes about the government shutdown

Companies with government contracts felt a direct hit

“We are also monitoring declines in the government business tied to the shutdown and softer commercial demand internationally.”

 Joe Ferraro, CEO, Avis Budget Group, October 28, 2025

Experience with managing shutdowns

“As far as the government shutdown goes, this is not our first rodeo with a government shutdown.”

Steve Squeri, CEO, American Express, Oct 2025

Consumer confidence will be shaken

“If you’re asking whether they were modest impacts by the government shutdown, hard not to believe that’s a modest headwind to the business.”

Harry Sommer, CEO, Norwegian Cruise Line, November 4, 2025

Declining themes in Q4 2025

1. Tariffs

Tariffs slip to second place in mentions. The topic of tariffs finally lost its hold as the top topic for most of 2025, falling 30% QoQ to 2nd place at 25.5% of earnings calls, a trend across all sectors. That said, it remained the top topic of the CEO geopolitical agenda.

Meanwhile, discussions about tariff effects continued to drop as well:

• Trade war: Down 12.6% QoQ to 0.8% of calls
• Supply chain: Down 5% QoQ to 28.6% of calls
• Trade policy: Down 45% QoQ to 2% of calls
• Reshoring: Down 5.6% QoQ to 2% of calls
• Local-for-local: Down 9% to 0.4% of calls

Key executive quote on tariff effects

“The underlying tariffs that have contributed to the need for pricing have not really changed. The biggest change in the tariff exposure has been retaliatory tariffs on the other side.”

Andre Schulten, CFO, P&G, October 24, 2025

2. Uncertainty

Uncertainty continues to ease, though still in a third of calls. As discussions around tariffs continued to decline QoQ, so did discussions about uncertainty. CEOs discussed uncertainty in 29.5% of earnings calls (down 26% QoQ), but it remained the 3rd-highest of the tracked topics. Discussions on this topic largely involved tariffs and other geopolitical uncertainties.

Key executive quote on uncertainty

“Outside of North America, demand trends in Europe and Rest of World remains stable but not immune to impact from recent tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.”

Jatin Dalal, CFO at Cognizant, October 29, 2025

What it means for CEOs going into 2026

5 key questions that CEOs should ask themselves as they look ahead at 2026, based on the insights in this article:

1. Are we negatively affected in case the “AI bubble” bursts?

AI mentions hit a peak of ~47%, but bubble fears are rising. Validate that investments focus on infrastructure and long-term value rather than hype, and check for potential abrupt project cancellations in case data center or related investments come to a halt.

2. Are we prepared for another U.S. government shutdown in January?

Shutdown mentions surged to 17%, becoming a fast-growing risk even as tariff talks dipped to 35%. Assess exposure to government contracts and potential hits to consumer confidence.

3. Are we preparing for the shift from Generative to Agentic AI?

NVIDIA identifies “Agentic AI” as a brand-new category. Shift roadmaps from simple content generation to agents capable of executing autonomous tasks.

4. Does our infrastructure account for sovereign cloud demands?

EMEA data center discussions have surpassed North America’s. Assess if cloud strategies meet the “super big” demand for sovereign data handling in Europe.

5. Are we capitalized to ride the IT sector’s growth wave?

Business sentiment is up, with IT projected to grow 15.4%. Pivot sales strategies toward high-growth sectors and away from contracting industries like Energy.

CEO digital agenda (Insights+)