Donald Trump, seated between Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Elon Musk, at the White House AI luncheon on 29 September 2026 Credit: The White House via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) President Donald Trump left a White House lunch with more than two dozen tech leaders on Tuesday, still set against the backdrop of new AI safety rules. He told reporters the executives had agreed that companies should police themselves, NBC News reported. “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. But the self-regulation is very important,” Trump said. He also said he would sign an order later that day, making “super intelligence” the official US term for AI.
He first pitched the new name at the UN General Assembly last week, arguing that the word artificial made the technology sound fake. Trump spoke in the East Room with the executives standing behind him, and he was full of praise for them, CNN reported. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang had sat to his right at lunch and Elon Musk to his left, according to a seating chart Trump posted online. “Unbelievable feeling in this room,” Trump said, adding that the executives “want to do the right things.” He said the group had also discussed the growing local opposition to data centers, and that the companies would work to win over the towns where they build. “You’re going to see, data centers are going to be very popular,” he said. “We can’t stifle it, and we’re leading by a lot,” Trump said of the technology. Not everyone at the table displayed the same tone.
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei raised AI safety concerns during the talks, according to a chief executive who attended. On his way in, Palantir’s Alex Karp said that the industry must own up to the risks it already knows about. The 31 guests on an RSVP list obtained by Axios included Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Lisa Su, with House Speaker Mike Johnson co-hosting. OpenAI sent its president, Greg Brockman, while Sam Altman stayed at the company’s conference.
But before this lunch, Trump launched America.gov, an AI-powered site for federal services. “This kind of innovation in government is just a preview of what is possible with super intelligence, or SI, and that’s the official name in the United States,” he said at the launch event. At the same event, he ruled out China as a partner on AI safety, saying that doing so would help Beijing catch up. The meeting followed weeks of alarm from inside the industry. Amodei called this month for a slowdown in the most advanced AI work, backed by Altman and Musk, and had a private dinner with Trump on Sunday.
The White House is tired of that message, and Trump’s advisers are annoyed that certain executives have fueled fears that AI could destroy humanity, CNN reported. Still, the lunch produced no new rules. Checks on the most powerful models remain voluntary under an order Trump signed in June, and the administration still wants companies to set their own guardrails.
