Tech
An annotated photo of who attended the tech dinner at the White House.
(Photo illustration: Sherwood News; Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

An interactive who's-who of the tech execs at Trump's White House dinner

The White House invited a gaggle of top founders and tech executives for an intimate dinner at the White House.

Jon Keegan
3h

A who’s-who of tech executives and AI power players sat side-by-side at a long table in the White House on Thursday evening to lather President Trump with praise for his leadership on AI.

Billed by White House spokesperson Davis Ingle as “the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world,” the exclusive dinner was packed with “the most brilliant people,” according to Trump, who said “this is a high IQ group.”

Proximity is power, and none of the tech figures was closer to Trump than Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photos from the dinner showed the two laughing and chumming it up, a remarkable turn of fortune for Zuckerberg, who Trump once famously warned might “spend the rest of his life in prison,” if he interfered in the presidential election.

GettyImages-2233060790
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump at The White House. (Photo: SAUL LOEB / Getty Images)

Attendees included:

  • Dylan Field, Figma CEO

  • Sunny Madra, Groq president

  • Jason Chang, CSBio CEO

  • Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer

  • Nathalie Dompé

  • Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital CEO

  • David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar

  • Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO

  • President Trump

  • Melania Trump, First Lady

  • Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder

  • Safra Catz, Oracle CEO

  • Gal Tirosh

  • Jamie Siminoff, Ring founder

  • David Limp, Blue Origin CEO

  • Mark Pincus, Zynga co-founder

  • John Hering, Lookout co-founder

  • Lisa Su, Advanced Micro Devices CEO

  • Meredith O’Rourke

  • Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff

  • Shyam Sankar, Palantir CTO

  • Sergey Brin, Google co-founder

  • Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto

  • Tim Cook, Apple CEO

  • Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO

  • Greg Brockman, OpenAI President

  • Anna Brockman

  • Tony Fabrizio

  • Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron CEO

  • Vivek Ranadivé, former TIBCO Software CEO, current CEO of Sacramento Kings

  • Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

  • Sundar Pichai, Google CEO

  • Jared Isaacman, Shift4 CEO

Notable absences

Perhaps more interesting than who was invited to the dinner was who didn’t attend.

Never one to hold a grudge, former “First Buddy” and Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X that he was invited, but would send a representative. It’s unclear if the Musk / Trump beef is heating up again.

Also absent was a representative from the company that is powering all of the AI that everyone was gushing about and recently struck a remarkably unusual trade deal with the White House — Nvidia. Jensen Huang was notably absent from the gathering, but maybe he prefers one-on-one dinners at Mar-a-lago.

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Meta has a youth problem that it keeps trying to fix using old stuff. This time it’s trying to bring back “pokes” — a feature from yesteryear the social media company had buried that allows users to digitally nudge others without having to say anything.

To make the feature shiny and new, the company is adding “counts,” along with a dedicated poke button and page, so users can keep track of who they poked or were poked by and how much.

Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes by Meta. Social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before for similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.

The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.

Facebook is trying to make 'pokes' happen again | TechCrunch

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Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes by Meta. Social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before for similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.

The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.

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The company announced plans for the OpenAI Jobs Platform, in partnership with Walmart, John Deere, and Accenture, to help workers looking to level up their AI skills, and match them with companies seeking such candidates.

In a blog post announcing the plan, the company wrote:

“But AI will also be disruptive. Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways. At OpenAI, we can’t eliminate that disruption. But what we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities. “

Using AI-powered instruction, users can receive certification for their training, and OpenAI said it is committing to certifying 10 million Americans on its platform by 2030.

Expanding economic opportunity with AI

Expanding economic opportunity with AI

The company announced plans for the OpenAI Jobs Platform, in partnership with Walmart, John Deere, and Accenture, to help workers looking to level up their AI skills, and match them with companies seeking such candidates.

In a blog post announcing the plan, the company wrote:

“But AI will also be disruptive. Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways. At OpenAI, we can’t eliminate that disruption. But what we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities. “

Using AI-powered instruction, users can receive certification for their training, and OpenAI said it is committing to certifying 10 million Americans on its platform by 2030.

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“Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were written for vehicles with human drivers and need to be updated for autonomous vehicles. Removing these requirements will reduce costs and enhance safety,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said in a statement.

Earlier this year NHTSA announced it was loosening other rules around autonomous cars, including exempting them from certain federal safety rules for research and demonstration purposes. This time around, however, stocks like Tesla, which is banking on autonomous driving as part of the future of the company, aren’t moving as much on the news.

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“Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were written for vehicles with human drivers and need to be updated for autonomous vehicles. Removing these requirements will reduce costs and enhance safety,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said in a statement.

Earlier this year NHTSA announced it was loosening other rules around autonomous cars, including exempting them from certain federal safety rules for research and demonstration purposes. This time around, however, stocks like Tesla, which is banking on autonomous driving as part of the future of the company, aren’t moving as much on the news.

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