One of the world’s most powerful men was trapped in a central London basement this morning. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, had come down to the lower ground floor of Chatham House to talk to the former chief mandarin of the Foreign Office about artificial intelligence. He had precisely 40 minutes, our host said, because he needed to catch a plane to Davos. ‘Thank you for choosing Chatham House for your London destination’, Nadella was told, in the same way that passengers are thanked for ‘choosing’ Ryanair to Dublin. Chatham House was the perfect stage: if you want somewhere to talk about the impact of things, how to harness things, and how to discover the potential of things, you come here. This is lanyard Valhalla.
Nadella is arguably the most impressive CEO of the 21st century after Microsoft last year overtook Apple to become the world’s most valuable company. He was born in Hyderabad, India, moved to the US, and joined Microsoft as an engineer in 1992.
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