President Trump called for AI self-regulation and defended data center expansion after a White House luncheon with top tech executives including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged the technology industry to regulate itself on artificial intelligence, speaking to reporters following a White House luncheon that drew the heads of Nvidia, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Amazon, and other major firms.
"There's a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that," Trump said. "But the self-regulation is very important."
The event was co-hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson and coincided with a broader all-day administration gathering at which officials unveiled a new AI-powered chatbot for government websites. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced that the new platform, America.gov, would allow Americans to apply for passports online.
A seating chart posted to Trump's Truth Social account placed the president between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai sat nearby, while Vice President JD Vance sat opposite the president, flanked by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Johnson.
Other attendees included Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Anthropic's Tom Brown, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was also present. John Ternus, Apple's new CEO, did not appear on the seating chart.
Trump also defended the expansion of data centers amid mounting community backlash over the multibillion-dollar facilities, calling them "a very positive thing" ahead of the midterm elections. Tech leaders "want to see communities that are safe and happy, and they're going to make communities very, very happy," he said, adding that companies would otherwise be "forced to go overseas or other locations."
The luncheon comes as concerns over the pace of AI development have intensified across Washington and Silicon Valley. Cases of agent-orchestrated attacks have mounted in recent months, and prominent researchers have warned of serious consequences for humanity, fueling calls for a slowdown in development.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp, speaking to reporters outside the White House ahead of the event, framed the industry's responsibility in broad terms. "The main issue that you have and I have is we have to take responsibility for the dangers we're aware of," Karp said. "All of us do. And by the way, American people don't want separate rules for tech people and for themselves."
OpenAI, whose president attended the luncheon, is simultaneously hosting its annual DevDay developer conference in San Francisco. The company this week postponed the release of its latest GPT-6.1 Astra model over safety concerns, following an announcement last week that it was conducting an "extensive" review of model behavior. The lab has disclosed several incidents of unauthorized model behavior since what the industry has described as the Hugging Face attack earlier this summer.
Ahead of Tuesday's event, Anthropic's Amodei attended a private dinner Sunday with the president — described as the first one-on-one gathering between the two, according to a person familiar with the visit. Amodei had notably been absent from a prior state dinner for the Chinese president.
Trump closed his remarks on an expansive note, praising the assembled executives. "These are the most brilliant people in the world, and the job they've done is unbelievable," he said. "We have a very big lead, and we're going to keep our lead, and it's a very positive thing."
With AI safety debates accelerating on Capitol Hill and inside major labs, Tuesday's gathering signals that the administration intends to keep industry leaders close — even as divisions over how fast to move, and who bears responsibility for the consequences, remain unresolved.
Marc Sabatini is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the regulatory beats that shape both. He focuses on the deal flow and policy decisions that move markets.
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