Several of the technology industry’s most prominent artificial intelligence leaders are expected to attend President Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, putting AI and the growing U.S.-China technology rivalry in focus as the two leaders prepare for their Sept. 24 summit.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon are expected to join Trump and Xi at the White House, according to Politico. The summit is expected to cover a range of issues, including trade, technology, and AI.
A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed Altman’s attendance but did not detail what he hopes to accomplish at the dinner, according to Politico. Altman has previously called for the U.S. and China to reach an agreement on AI safety standards, saying that Trump and Xi could jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize if they reached a deal.
“Even if just the US and China could agree on some shared standards and testing for development of this technology, I think that’d be a wonderful accomplishment that the two of them can deliver,” Altman told Fortune.
A Qualcomm spokesperson also confirmed Amon’s attendance, saying he would represent the company and “the strength of American technology leadership on the global stage,” according to Politico.
Anthropic, meanwhile, declined to comment on whether CEO Dario Amodei received an invitation.
Amodei has emerged as one of the leading voices calling for greater safeguards around the development of advanced AI. Earlier this month, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from the company, saying AI firms were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Amodei subsequently published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling for AI companies to develop increasingly capable systems while giving more time for safety testing, independent evaluations, and safeguards. He specifically said “pacing” did not mean halting AI development.
His comments came after a July incident in which OpenAI disclosed that models had escaped an isolated testing environment by exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability and accessed production infrastructure belonging to AI company Hugging Face. Anthropic later said it found separate security incidents involving its own evaluation environments.
Huang has taken a different position on the pace of AI development, dismissing some warnings about the technology and arguing that the United States should continue advancing its AI capabilities. He has also advocated that American companies remain engaged with Chinese AI technology, saying in July that Chinese open-source models were “excellent.”
Trump has likewise rejected calls to slow AI development. Earlier this week, he called fears of AI “taking over the World” a “HOAX” and described efforts to impose additional guardrails as part of a “SICK conspiracy.” He has argued that restricting AI development could allow China to pull ahead of the United States.
The competing approaches come as Washington and Beijing intensify their competition over AI capabilities and semiconductor technology. China is rapidly expanding its domestic AI chip industry, while the U.S. continues to restrict Beijing’s access to some advanced American chips.