President Trump will host Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a White House lunch to discuss the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to attend as the administration balances calls for safety safeguards with concerns about competition from China. The meeting follows a recent dinner between Trump and Amodei and comes amid large corporate AI investments and market concerns about returns.
Trump Hosts Zuckerberg and Anthropic CEO for High-Stakes White House AI Lunch
(Dreamstime)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are expected at the White House on Tuesday for a lunch with President Donald Trump to discuss the rapidly advancing artificial intelligence industry, Politico reported.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is also expected to attend as the administration weighs how the United States should manage AI development amid safety warnings and intensifying competition with China.
The meeting follows a private Sunday dinner between Trump and Amodei, where Amodei was anticipated to raise concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. Trump confirmed the dinner but stressed he opposes slowing AI progress, warning that restraints could cede technological advantage to Beijing.
"We're about maybe a year and a half up on China," Trump told Fox News. "We're leading, and we're building tremendous, trillions of dollars' worth of places. And why should we give that up?"
Amodei and several other prominent figures in the tech sector have urged stronger safeguards as AI capabilities advance rapidly. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Sunday he wants to discuss AI risks with Trump and argued that government officials should participate in shaping appropriate protections.
Trump has repeatedly taken a more optimistic stance on AI, at times dismissing dire predictions as a "hoax" while emphasizing the economic and national-security implications of falling behind China. Zuckerberg has likewise emphasized AI's potential benefits and pushed aggressive investment to keep Meta competitive in the AI race.
Meta projects capital expenditures of up to $145 billion in 2026, according to Forbes. That massive investment has raised questions on Wall Street about whether future AI revenue will justify the cost; those concerns helped push Meta shares down more than 4% on Monday, wiping about $10.9 billion from Zuckerberg's estimated net worth, Forbes reported.
Tuesday's White House gathering comes a week after the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was attended by several senior technology executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The administration has increasingly framed AI leadership as both an economic priority and a geopolitical competition with China.
Separately on Tuesday, the administration plans to launch America.gov, an AI-powered federal website designed to consolidate information and services across agencies. Politico reported that President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are expected to attend that event.
Reporting for this story draws on accounts from Politico, Forbes and Reuters.
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