Trump Welcomes Tech Titans to White House, Musk Notably Absent
Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, September 4, 2025, President Donald Trump hosted a prominent group of technology executives for a dinner at the White House, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) policy and U.S. investments. The guest list, confirmed by the White House, included industry leaders such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Notably absent was Elon Musk, a former ally of Trump, who was once tasked with leading the Department of Government Efficiency but parted ways with the president earlier this year after a public dispute.
The event, initially planned for the Rose Garden, was moved to the State Dining Room due to rain, as reported by an unnamed White House official to the Associated Press. The Rose Garden, recently renovated with paving and setups reminiscent of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was intended to host the gathering. The dinner followed a meeting of the White House’s Artificial Intelligence Education task force, chaired by First Lady Melania Trump, with participation from some attendees, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, and Code.org’s Cameron Wilson.
Other notable guests included Google founder Sergey Brin, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Blue Origin’s David Limp, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO’s Vivek Ranadive, Palantir’s Shyam Sankar, Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, and Shift4 Payments’ Jared Isaacman. Isaacman, previously nominated by Trump to lead NASA but later withdrawn, was described by Trump as a Democrat, contributing to tensions with Musk.
The dinner, first reported by The Hill, highlighted Trump’s engagement with tech leaders but also exposed divisions within the Republican Party. Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump ally, criticized the tech industry’s lack of AI regulation during a speech at a conservative conference, targeting companies like Meta and ChatGPT.