CEOs are more optimistic about the global economy because they expect an interest rate cut by October

Good morning.

Fortune has a new CEO poll out this morning, conducted over the last month in collaboration with Deloitte, which sponsors this newsletter. The big takeaways:

—CEO optimism about the outlook for the global economy has improved significantly from our last survey. 27% of respondents said they were optimistic, compared to only 7% last fall, and just 24% said they were pessimistic, compared to 47% last fall. That optimism is partly fueled by the fact that 76% of the respondents expect interest rates to ease by the end of September.

—Geopolitics was the top source of concern for the CEOs we surveyed, outranking rising regulation, which came second. Inflation concerns fell to third place, with only 27% ranking it among their top three concerns, compared to 51% in the previous survey. The labor and skills shortage, which was near top-of-mind last year, has fallen even more.

—Generative AI has invaded the corporate agenda at a speed unmatched by any previous technology. 58% of respondents said they are already implementing it to “automate manual tasks,” 56% said they are using it to increase efficiencies, 50% are using it to generate content, and 42% are using it to help write new code.

We’ll be discussing these trends this evening at a dinner gathering of members of the Fortune CEO Initiative—a group of CEOs committed to maximizing their positive social impact along with their profits. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins—who also heads the Business Roundtable—will be leading the conversation, fresh from his $28 billion acquisition of data firm Splunk. I’ll report back here tomorrow.

More detail on the survey here. And check out our Leadership Next podcast with guest Priscilla Almodovar, CEO of Fannie Mae, on Apple or Spotify.

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Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com