US President Donald Trump on Thursday hosted a high-powered group of tech executives at the White House, as he showcased research on artificial intelligence and boasted of investments that companies are
making around the United States.
The guest list included multiple prominent figures from major artificial intelligence and technology firms.
Notably absent from the guest list was Elon Musk, once a close ally of Trump who was tasked with running the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk had a public breakup with Trump mid this year.
At the table instead was one of Musk’s rivals in artificial intelligence, Sam Altman of OpenAI.
Hosting the dinner, Trump praised those assembled at the table as “brilliant people with a high intelligence quotient” and said he knows all of them indirectly.
“It’s an honour to be here with this group of people. They’re leading a revolution in business and in genius, and in every other work you can imagine. There has never been anything like it,” the US President said.
“The most brilliant people are gathered around this table. This is definitely a high-IQ group, and I’m very proud of them,” he said.
“I know all of them indirectly, I know some of them very well, but I know everybody at the table indirectly, through reading about you, and studying… knowing a lot about your business. We’re making it very easy for you in terms of electric capacity in getting it for you,” Trump added.
While the executives praised Trump and talked about their hopes for technological advancement, the US President was focused on dollar signs.
He went around the table and asked executives how much they were investing in the country.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who sat to Trump’s right, said USD 600 billion. Apple’s Tim Cook said the same. Google’s Sundar Pichai said USD 250 billion.
“What about Microsoft?” Trump asked.
“That’s a big number,” CEO Satya Nadella said, adding it was up to USD 80 billion per year.
“Good, very good,” Trump responded.
In another reflection of shifting loyalties in Trump’s world, the dinner included Jared Isaacman, who founded the payment processing company Shift4.
Isaacman was a Musk ally chosen by Trump to lead NASA, only to have his nomination withdrawn because he was, in Trump’s words, “totally a Democrat”.
The event followed an afternoon meeting of the White House’s new artificial intelligence education task force, which was chaired by First Lady Melania Trump, along with some tech leaders.
According to the Associated Press, the White House confirmed that the guest list for the dinner also included Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Google founder Sergey Brin, OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Blue Origin CEO David Limp, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO Software chairman Vivek Ranadive, Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.
Trump’s outreach to top tech executives has occasionally been divisive within the Republican Party.
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