Donald Trump's meal alongside China's leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday was a glitzy gathering of the biggest names in tech.
AMD CEO Lisa Su stated during a fireside conversation at the New York Stock Exchange that she volition be attending Thursday's White House event, joining executives expected to contain Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Amazon originator Jeff Bezos.
Plenty is riding on the talks. Washington and Beijing are negotiating amid a commerce truce, alongside tariffs, crucial minerals, and semiconductors among the issues at stake. The US has additionally projected a conduit for the two countries to notify all another concerning important AI safety incidents, which remains under discussion.
"I think innovation is one of those areas anywhere we depend on the earth ecosystem to arrive together," Su told Fox Business's Liz Claman in a fireside conversation on Wednesday, adding she is "honored" to associate the White House dinner.
"So, yes, I think we're anxiously looking at what volition arrive out of it," Su said. "And the fact is, we desire to justify that there's fine stability throughout the earth ecosystem as it relates to technology."
The seating arrangement
In clockwise order, Trump's array consisted of himself, archetypal female Melania Trump, Musk, Su and her spouse, Daniel Lin, Jensen Huang and his spouse, Lori Huang, former Apple CEO Tim Cook, China's archetypal female Peng Liyuan, and China's chief Xi Jinping.
Vice President JD Vance and Usha Vance were seen seated at a distinct array to the right.
Altman spotted chatting alongside Mark Zuckerberg
The two tech CEOs have the two lately weighed in on AI safety issues, as the topic is expected to be discussed alongside China's leader.
Altman has backed environment shared safety standards, including rules for whenever companies should dilatory or halt evolving additional mighty models, during Zuckerberg has stated that AI labs have powerful incentives to create their models harmless and can decide for themselves whenever to dilatory down.
Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO who additionally led the call for additional careful AI development, is notably absent from the dinner.
Jensen Huang said to another guests at the center table
Huang, dressed in additional traditional endeavor attire, was seated at the chief array alongside Trump and Xi.
Nvidia has felt the tech rivalry between the US and China acutely complete the former few years. After Washington imposed new export restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chips in April 2025, the business stated it missed out on $2.5 milliard in shipments that fourth and took a $4.5 milliard accusation tied to unsold inventory and acquisition commitments.
As lately as August, Nvidia was motionless assuming no China data center part income in its forecast.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk mingled alongside guests, including Anna Brockman
Musk and Brockman, who is the partner of OpenAI cofounder and chairman Greg Brockman, are the two heavyweight Trump donors.
Musk, in particular, holds important endeavor interests in China because of Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai, which produces concerning fractional of the automaker's deliveries.
The world's richest man stated before this month, during a podcast appearance, that the US and China should concur to equal assessment or test AI models from the foremost firms in all other's countries.
Musk's SpaceX is additionally arguably the sole most crucial business to the US area competition against China, providing the bulk of American orbital launches and maintaining the world's largest moon constellation.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
The Google CEO was seen having an animated conversation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Google, among the foremost AI labs in the US, is investing heavily in AI capacity, alongside a total capex forecast of $195 milliard to $205 milliard this year. That's higher than most of the remainder of Big Tech, except for Amazon, which estimates $220 milliard in total capex in 2026.
Amazon originator Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos
Amazon doesn't run its market in China, which has its own, far additional domestically prosperous e-commerce platforms.
But the nation has rotate into a important provision and export hub for Amazon, to the item that the business built a earth warehousing and allocation network this twelvemonth in three important Chinese shipping ports to chimney products to the US.
Bezos and Sánchez were fair two representatives of America's company choose welcomed to Thursday's meal — guide executives for BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, and Lockheed Martin were additionally among those present.
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Katherine Li is a newsman on Business Insider's West Coast endeavor news team. She covers career, the forthcoming of work, and how AI is changing hiring practices and office trends.Previously, she was a newsroom chap who wrote global breaking news and produced newsletters for Semafor. Before that, she wrote concerning climate policies for The Lever, covered the AAPI community for the SF Chronicle as a freelancer, and wrote concerning the 2019 Hong Kong protests as an intern for The New York Times.She is an alumna of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and a alumnus of the global reporting program at Hong Kong Baptist University alongside minors in French and English literature. Email Katherine at [email protected] and prosecute her on Bluesky @katherineli.bsky.social.
Matthew is a elder newsman at Business Insider's Singapore bureau. He covers the defence industry, armed forces technology, and evolving strategies in Ukraine, the US, and the Asia-Pacific region.He joined the squad in June 2021, earlier focusing on net infringement and labor, examining how these issues effect contemporary community in Asia, alongside a particular accent on China.Matthew's former activity has been featured in the South China Morning Post, as fine as Singaporean news companies TODAY and The Business Times.
