A top secret meeting is kicking off in Madrid with the CEOs of Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Microsoft AI in attendance

The CEOs of artificial intelligence heavyweights Google DeepMind, Microsoft AI, Anthropic and Mistral AI are among the elite list of business and political leaders attending a secretive meeting kicking off in Madrid, Spain, on Thursday.

AI will once again dominate discussions at the annual Bilderberg Meeting after catapulting onto the agenda last year following the meteoric rise of the burgeoning technology.

The tech chiefs will be joined by business executives including Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, former Google CEO and chair Eric Schmidt, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Shell CEO Wael Sawan and investor Peter Thiel for wide-reaching talks spanning trade, finance and biology.

U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg are also among the political figures who will attend for geopolitical discussions including on China and Russia.

A total of around 130 participants, including former and current prime ministers, are set to attend the 70th annual private meeting, which this year runs from Thursday to Sunday in the Spanish capital.

The Bilderberg Meeting is an event shrouded in mystery, with clandestine talks held behind closed doors and subject to Chatham House rules, meaning the identity and affiliation of speakers must not be disclosed or reported on within the media.

According to its organizers, the closed nature of the event aims to foster "informal discussions about major issues." However, that secrecy has sparked conspiracy theories similar to those leveled against high-level meetings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with critics accusing attendees of exerting outsized influence on society.

Key topics up for discussion at