US President Donald Trump convened an exclusive dinner at the White House on Thursday, hosting a star-studded group of technology executives to discuss artificial intelligence and showcase new research. The event reflected both Trump’s pride in attracting the attention of Silicon Valley and the industry’s careful balancing act in staying close to a president known for his unpredictability.
“This is taking our country to a new level,” Trump declared, seated at the centre of a long table filled with executives he called “high IQ people.”
There were at least five Indian-origin moguls on the list attending the Rose Garden event, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO Software chairman Vivek Ranadive, and Palantir executive Shyam Sankar.
Big Numbers, Big Promises
Trump asked leaders to outline their investments in the United States. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook each pledged $600 billion, while Google’s Sundar Pichai said $250 billion. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told the president the company spends “up to $80 billion per year.” Trump’s reply was blunt: “Good. Very good.”
Noticeably absent was Elon Musk, once a close Trump ally, who split publicly with the president earlier this year. Instead, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took a prominent seat, reflecting shifting allegiances in the AI sector.
The guest list also included Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Safra Catz, Sanjay Mehrotra, David Limp, Alexandr Wang, Vivek Ranadive, Shyam Sankar, Greg Brockman, and Jared Isaacman.
Melania Trump Leads AI Task Force
Earlier in the day, First Lady Melania Trump chaired the White House’s new Artificial Intelligence Education task force, joined by executives such as Pichai, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, and Code.org’s Cameron Wilson.
“The robots are here. Our future is no longer science fiction,” she told the gathering. She urged leaders to balance ambition with responsibility: “During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children — empowering, but with watchful guidance.”
She has also launched a nationwide AI student competition and lobbied Congress for stronger laws against online exploitation, including deepfakes.
Divisions Within the GOP
Not all Republicans welcomed Trump’s embrace of Big Tech. Senator Josh Hawley sharply criticised Meta and ChatGPT at a conservative conference, calling for government inspection of “frontier AI systems” to regulate what the industry builds.
Despite such resistance, Trump has enthusiastically embraced AI-generated content online, frequently sharing memes and altered videos. “If something happens that’s really bad, maybe I’ll have to just blame AI,” he joked earlier in the week.
The dinner, originally planned for the Rose Garden but moved indoors due to rain, capped off a day that underlined how AI has become central to both Trump’s political messaging and the tech industry’s positioning in Washington.