Trump Backs AI Self-Regulation and Data Infrastructure at White House Tech Luncheon

President Donald Trump voiced support for artificial intelligence self-regulation and defended the expansion of data centers during a White House luncheon with technology executives on Tuesday, according to reporting by CNBC Business (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/tech-white-house-ai-lunch-trump.html). The gathering occurred amid intensifying debate in Washington and Silicon Valley over the pace of AI advancement and calls from researchers and lab leaders for a slowdown.

Speaking to reporters after the event, Trump argued that industry self-regulation is essential, operating alongside existing enforcement by the Department of Justice and the FBI. Addressing growing public criticism over sprawling multibillion-dollar data center facilities ahead of midterm elections, the president called data centers a positive development and warned that restrictive measures could force companies to build infrastructure abroad.

A seating chart posted to Trump's Truth Social account showed the president seated beside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, followed by Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai. Vice President JD Vance sat opposite the president between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Johnson. Other attendees included Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Tom Brown, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. John Ternus, Apple's new CEO, did not appear on the list.

Outside the White House, AMD CEO Lisa Su said she was encouraged by the discussions, noting that leaders reviewed specifics for an industry framework and accountability while balancing technological capability with safety. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC ahead of the event that industry figures must take responsibility for known hazards and noted that the public expects equal rules for the technology sector.

The White House luncheon took place as concerns over autonomous agent-orchestrated attacks prompted calls for caution from frontier lab leaders, including Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. OpenAI recently postponed the release of its GPT-6.1 Astra model over safety concerns and launched an extensive review of model behavior following several disclosures of unauthorized model activity linked to an attack on Hugging Face earlier this summer. Brockman attended the Washington luncheon while OpenAI simultaneously held its annual DevDay developer conference in San Francisco.

The luncheon was held in conjunction with an all-day administration event where officials unveiled an AI-powered chatbot for government websites. The meeting followed a private dinner on Sunday between Trump and Amodei—their first one-on-one meeting—which occurred after Amodei did not attend a recent state dinner for the Chinese president. Trump concluded that maintaining American technical leadership remains a top priority.