Co-President, Morgan Stanley
90% of companies are upbeat around tech market and service demand, says Morgan Stanley's Simkowitz
Dan Simkowitz, Morgan Stanley, joins 'The Exchange' to discuss the high level takeaway from Morgan Stanley's latest conference ...
About Daniel Simkowitz
Dan Simkowitz, Co-President of Morgan Stanley, appeared on CNBC from the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 7, 2026. He discussed the financing of the AI transformation, stating that the firm is "doing GPU backed financings" and "Google TPU financings" for companies including xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini. He described Anthropic's revenue run rate as having grown "from 9 billion to 30 billion in the space of 30 days." Simkowitz also addressed the IPO market, noting a "healing and then and really robust IPO market starting to develop" after a slow period, and said "it's cooler to be public than it was a year ago." He characterized the current market environment as driven by "complexity," which he said is "driving the market" and "driving our business to a degree," while also noting that "there are very powerful growth forces still that are sort of countering the fear around geopolitics."
Transcript (9 segments)
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Deirdre Bosa0:01
Yesterday, Broadcom, Alphabet, AMD are also some of the names in the green. For more, let's get out to Deirdre Bosa at Morgan Stanley's Tech, Media and Telecom conference with a special guest.
Hey Kelly. Thank you so much. That's right, I'm joined by Dan Simkowitz. He is co-president at Morgan Stanley. Appreciate you taking the time.
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Daniel Simkowitz0:19
It's great to be here.
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Deirdre Bosa0:20
Over the next few days, you guys really have a who's who in the tech world. You've got Dario Amodei of Anthropic tonight, Elon Musk dropping in virtually tomorrow, Sam Altman on Thursday, CFOs of mega-caps. What is sort of the high level takeaway so far?
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Daniel Simkowitz0:34
I think what's most importantly on display is the power of innovation, how important it is to the markets and to the broader economy. You've got tariffs dominating some discussions, but the tech sector today, I'm not sure we can take full credit for it, outperforming pretty significantly. So that's number one. The second is a bit of a Morgan Stanley element, which is this is the purest expression of our strategy. We, you know, it's pretty simple and straightforward what we do. We help clients allocate capital, manage their capital. And so we have 1800 investors here at the conference, an all-time record. They're engaging with 360 companies. It's the 30th year we've been doing it. I've been coming to the conference for 25 years. And what you're just seeing is, again, the power of innovation and how that can create resiliency, for example, in the US economy, but especially growth. And I think you're hearing what we're sensing in a little survey action: 90% of the companies are pretty upbeat in their prospects around both the technology market and the demand for their services. So it's a pretty exciting time, despite all the market volatility that we're working through.
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Deirdre Bosa1:49
Certainly in the backdrop, when you're here at the Palace Hotel surrounded by all these tech leaders, it can feel like you're in a bubble. But I noticed that some walk by there, even taking note of the sell-off today, all the tariffs. How much is that factoring into some of the discussions today and yesterday?
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Daniel Simkowitz2:04
Some, I think to a degree. We're in the early days and I think we still have a way to go around trade policy being implemented by the administration that's creating volatility. That volatility impacts traders, it impacts investors, and it impacts companies. I think on the trading side, whether you're an FX or interest rate trader, or now an equity trader, especially globally, you got to deal with that day to day. Some of the people have to do that themselves here at the conference. Some have trading desks that they have to engage in. But on the investing side, I think they're trying to think long term, which is what is going to be the impact of tariffs to the PNL of their companies, but especially their supply chain. And then finally, for a company, you got to think about, you know, do I have to redo my income statement and my forecasting around tariffs? And then do I also have to think about longer term supply chain? I think over time if we can hit equilibrium, you know, we may not reverse but hit equilibrium around some of the policies, then some of the bullishness that I think was out there, I think represented, for example, by Stan Druckenmiller in December, which is this is going to be the most pro-growth, pro-action directed environment that he's seen in his career, that's still sitting out there. But right now I think it's on pause as we sort of adjust to a new trade regime.
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Deirdre Bosa3:29
Right. And I wonder sort of what is the Morgan Stanley view on the economy? We're less than just a few months into the new administration. I heard Jamie Dimon speak at Stanford last Friday. He was starting to get worried about inflation. What's your view and some of the uncertainties potentially around these new economic policies?
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Daniel Simkowitz3:45
I think if we had a bias, our concern is more on growth than it would be on inflation. I think what you've seen, for example, in the market is attuned to that. You know, the ten-year Treasury has gone from 460 down to 4.1 just in the last week or two. The probability of rate cuts has emerged back. And so I think what you're seeing in the marketplace today and the last few days is some concern around 2025, 2026 growth.