DAVOS, Switzerland—After nearly a decade, you really get to know somebody. So the global elite, gathered here for the World Economic Forum and crammed into this ski hamlet in the Swiss Alps, say they are buckled up and ready for President Trump’s second term .

“We’ve learned that he goes out maximalist and then he starts negotiating. This wasn’t really known to us last time. This is now factored in,” Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide , said during an interview on the sidelines of the annual conference.

He also said he has learned to take Trump seriously but not always literally. “If we run around commenting [on] every Truth Social post, you know, we will have nothing else to do.” The minister said he still had questions, such as how Trump would handle Ukraine, U.S. support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and even how America would work with the world should there be another global pandemic.

“We will go in and discuss this with the new administration and see,” he said.

That posture is widespread in Davos, marking a contrast to 2017, when Trump sent shock waves and unease through many corporate boardrooms and foreign capitals. Eight years later, many top diplomatic officials and titans of business are greeting Trump’s second presidency with cautious optimism that he can help advance their interests. Some described the 45th and 47th president’s desire for more nationalist U.S. immigration and trade policies as an expected—not surprising—part of the bargain of doing business with the U.S.

Antonio Neri , the chief executive of information-technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise , said he is optimistic for the incoming Trump administration, but cautioned it is still early days—literally, Day 2. And he will want to see the final outcome of policies and how they are implemented. Neri said he thinks the U.S. is “incredibly well-poised to take advantage of these massive inflection points,” such as artificial intelligence.

HPE works with the Defense and Energy departments, providing supercomputing capacity that is built in the U.S. Neri said that when it comes to immigration, such as access to H-1B visas to recruit technology talent , he hopes the administration listens and engages—and that the private sector needs to “feed into the process what our needs and wants are and then be part of the solution.”

Trump was sworn in as president on the opening day of the conference, prompting watch parties over Champagne and passed hors d’oeuvres. Thousands of miles away in Washington, seated behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda, were a plethora of CEOs who witnessed the inauguration in person. Among them: Google’s Sundar Pichai , Meta Platforms ’ Mark Zuckerberg , and Tesla ’s Elon Musk , a close Trump ally and leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, the president’s cost-and-regulatory slashing effort.

Several executives said they had little or no access to former President Joe Biden , casting the recently out-of-office Democrat as having kept the business community at arm’s length. A number of the CEOs here said they had spoken to Trump since the election, whereas during the Biden administration, their interactions with the federal government were via surrogates such as cabinet officials or staffers.

It is against that meh-on-business perception of the single-term Biden presidency that Trump’s second era in Washington has been greeted warmly by big corporations. Allies of the president had been soliciting $10 million to $15 million donations to spread across various Trump groups, The Wall Street Journal previously reported , citing people familiar with the fundraising. The inauguration raised more than $200 million, the Journal reported, and could double what it raised eight years ago when Trump was first sworn in.

Swedish tech company Ericsson donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, its first such donation.

“We are a critical provider of infrastructure in the U.S. So…it’s critical to have a natural relationship with any administration,” CEO Börje Ekholm told the Journal.

Ekholm said it is too soon to say what impact Trump will have on the business environment, but “the mindset of actually simplifying, reducing the regulatory burden will be positive for the economy.” He added, “That’s a different perspective from Europe where the regulation has continued.”

Trump, on his first day in office, signed orders and memorandums to cut regulations around energy production and reduce inflation. They include eliminating Biden ’s climate regulations tied to electric-vehicle production, Trump said. Cutting government red tape was a pillar of his campaign.

“When it comes to the economy, in terms of less regulation and so on, the effects we think are going to be in the short term quite positive,” said Nicolai Tangen , CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management , which runs Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign-wealth fund.

Tangen said he thinks Trump’s policies will raise the specter of inflation, and he was disappointed by the new president’s decisions on the climate and social issues—still a cornerstone of the forum in Davos.

“The ESG [environment, social and governance investing] backlash is worrying me,” he said in an interview. “We continue to advocate board-level diversity…but we’re probably a bit less vocal about it, because you have to pick your fights.”

Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com , Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com