Episode summary
The Top CEOs of 2026. Plus, Corning's Wendell Weeks Talks A.I. and Glass. | Barron's Streetwise
Barron's Streetwise
· · 30 min · Hosts: Jack, Andrew Bary
Summary
Barron’s annual top CEOs list focused on operators who have delivered both strategically and financially, with the host and a guest emphasizing operational excellence, long-term execution, and some notable AI beneficiaries. The discussion highlighted JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon for steady leadership and strong returns, Broadcom’s Hock Tan for turning custom chips into a key AI play, and Eli Lilly’s Dave Ricks for building manufacturing capacity behind the obesity-drug boom.
Key takeaways
- Jamie Dimon was singled out as one of the world’s best CEOs because JPMorgan Chase combines management discipline, industry leadership, and strong shareholder returns.
- Hock Tan’s Broadcom is benefiting from AI demand as hyperscalers look for custom ASICs instead of only Nvidia’s general-purpose chips.
- Dave Ricks has turned Eli Lilly’s obesity-drug opportunity into a manufacturing and distribution execution story, not just a product story.
- James Dolan’s three companies were said to be winning on the strength of Sphere Entertainment, with the Sphere becoming a major profit driver.
- Wendell Weeks’s Corning was highlighted as a major AI infrastructure beneficiary because its optical-fiber and connectivity products help link massive GPU clusters.
Notable quotes
“I think one of the unquestioned top CEOs in the world is Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase”
“what we try to do is share with our customers the risk of how much of our product they're going to take”
“they have found is the more and more compute you put together, the better and better your results are, the smarter and smarter the models get”
“I think it trades for almost 50 times earnings which is just a how just shows how much the market appreciates”
How the episode opens
Hello and welcome to the Baron Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack How. Today we're going to be talking about the top CEOs issue. I'm going to be speaking with my colleague Andrew Barry about some of the names that turned up on the list. We'll hear later from one of our CEOs, Wendell Weeks at Corning. That's next. Andrew Barry as I live and breathe. How are you, my friend? Good to see you.
Good to be here with you, Jack. — Ready to talk CEOs. — Yep.
We have uh Baron's all-star Andrew Barry to help run us down the list. We've got uh we do this each year. We have 25 names that we have called out.
Um we start with a screening process. We look for signs of operational excellence and then we get together in a in a group and we have nominations and debate and so forth. How would you describe the process?
Collegial mostly. Yeah, I would say collegial. There there were some notable disagreements, but uh I think uh we we came up I think overall with a good list.
We got past it. We came out mostly on friendly terms at the end. So we're not going to run through all 25 of them.
For that people can see the u the latest issue of Barren. Let's do let's do a few a piece. We each of each of us handled some of these individual writeups.
We're going to hear from one of these CEOs, uh, Wendel Weeks at Corning later in this episode. Start us off with G, give me a CEO that's on the list that you wrote about that, uh, is is one of the Baron's top CEOs this year.
Well, I think one of the unquestioned top CEOs in the world is Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, and he's been at it now for about 20 years.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- top ceos
- ai
- glass
- leadership
- corporate strategy
Companies and tickers mentioned
- GLW
- Corning
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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