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E86: AI's Race for Real-World Data

Research @ Citi Podcast  •  Podcast  •  August 27, 2026
Podcast Thumbnail with title AI's Race for Real-World Data and  headshots of Elise Badoy and Martin Wilkie
Research

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Physical AI merges artificial intelligence with the physical world, enabling machines to sense, reason and act using vision, language and action
  • Data scarcity and siloed industrial databases are major hurdles, but physics-based simulation models help bridge the gap to train these systems
  • Success will be driven by land grabs for proprietary installed bases and the deployment of edge data centers to solve critical latency issues

Physical AI will see artificial intelligence move beyond the digital realm into factories, warehouses, transportation networks and everyday life, with profound impacts on companies, supply chains and the broader economy. Ahead of Citi's Global TMT Conference in New York, Elise Badoy and Martin Wilkie explore this fascinating frontier and its implications.


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Elise Badoy is a Managing Director and Head of Equity Research in EMEA. Elise joined Citi in February 2010 and is a member of the Global Research Executive Committee. Prior to Citi, Elise worked at Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2009, initially on the buy-side at GSAM and from 2001 in GS's Global Investment Research division covering the Consumer Staples sector. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, she worked at Daiwa Securities in Equity Capital Markets and at ING Barings in Investment Banking.

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Martin Wilkie heads the European Capital Goods Research team, and also heads the Global Capital Goods research pod and the Automation Theme Group at Citi Research. He has been an industrials analyst since 2003, having had various other roles in banking since 1994. He is based in London and started with Citi in 2015. Martin previously worked at Deutsche Bank from 2006 to 2015 also covering the Capital Goods sector, having also worked previously at Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan.

image of Martin Wilkie

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