Washington DC: US President Donald Trump on Thursday, September 4, hosted a select group of top tech executives to the White House for a high-profile dinner focused on artificial intelligence and national investments, pointedly excluding his former ally Elon Musk from the guest list.
Describing those in attendance as a "high-IQ group", Trump highlighted the intelligence and business influence of the assembled leaders, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“It’s an honour to be here with this group of people. They’re leading a revolution in business and in genius. The most brilliant people are gathered around this table, Trump said, as quoted by AP.
Here are some visuals from the evening:
Musk Absent, Altman Present
Elon Musk, once a close Trump ally and a former appointee to the Department of Government Efficiency, was conspicuously missing from the gathering. His exclusion comes after a public fallout with Trump earlier this year. In his place, Sam Altman, a rival in the AI space and head of OpenAI, joined the dinner.
Another former Musk associate, Jared Isaacman, was also present despite having his NASA nomination withdrawn by Trump, who later described him as "totally a Democrat".
The dinner followed a meeting of the White House’s new artificial intelligence education task force, chaired by First Lady Melania Trump alongside tech leaders.
'Focus On Investment, Not Just Innovation'
Trump used the evening to showcase the economic scale of the tech sector, directly questioning executives about their investment commitments in the United States.
Zuckerberg and Cook each cited $600 billion, while Google’s Sundar Pichai noted $250 billion. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella responded that his company was investing up to $80 billion annually. “Good, very good,” Trump replied.
Other attendees included Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Blue Origin’s David Limp, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO’s Vivek Ranadive, Palantir’s Shyam Sankar, and Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang.
Trump’s outreach to tech giants continues to spark debate within the Republican Party, reflecting the shifting alliances.
