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.

9/5/25 2:24PM

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 were 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 2024 presidential election.

GettyImages-2233060790 — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump at the White House (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
First Lady Melania Trump
Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder
Safra Catz, Oracle CEO
Gal Tirosh
Jamie Siminoff, Ring founder
David Limp, Blue Origin CEO
Mark Pincus, Zynga cofounder
John Hering, Lookout cofounder
Lisa Su, Advanced Micro Devices CEO
Meredith O’Rourke
Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff
Shyam Sankar, Palantir CTO
Sergey Brin, Google cofounder
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 and 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. CEO Jensen Huang was notably missing from the gathering, but maybe he prefers one-on-one dinners at Mar-a-lago.

Jon Keegan2h

Data center frenzy taxes natural resources, sparks anger around the globe

The race to build ever-larger, power-hungry data centers isn't limited to the US. In Ireland, more than 20% (!!!) of the country’s electricity is consumed by data centers. In Mexico, poor communities near data center sites are seeing water supplies dry up and their fragile power grids falter.

A New York Times report examines what these data center projects look like around the world, and track the local opposition mounted by environmental groups seeking to block future projects.

The report notes that despite growing local opposition, countries are still bending over backwards to lure the billions of dollars in investment that come with these data center projects, offering rich tax incentives to the companies developing the projects, in exchange for a relatively small number of jobs, and promises of various-if-vague local benefits.

Much like in the US, the data center deals are shrouded in secrecy, with elected officials required to sign NDAs, and the extensive use of shell companies masking the identity of the massive tech companies behind the projects.

AI Data Centers Create Fury From Mexico to Ireland

A New York Times report examines what these data center projects look like around the world, and track the local opposition mounted by environmental groups seeking to block future projects.

OpenAI claimed a math breakthrough this weekend, only to be smacked down

The embarrassing episode sprouted from a misunderstood post, amplified by an OpenAI executive as proof of GPT-5’s mathematical prowess, but turned out not to be what it seemed.

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Rani Molla6h

Analysts expect iPhone revenue to return to growth this year and next

Sales of Apple’s latest iPhone are shaping up for a good year, after a couple of pretty crappy ones, according to the latest analyst consensus estimates from FactSet.

Analysts have been revising up their iPhone revenue expectations for the fiscal year ended in late September — which includes a half month of the latest iPhone sales — and now expect iPhone revenue to rise 4.5% in FY 2025 to $210 billion. Growth for FY 2026 is now pegged at 5.5%. Last year, sales were basically flat after declining more than 2% in FY 2023. Of course, as Apple’s hold on the global smartphone market has grown over the years, its latest growth expectations pale in comparison to the early 2010s, but still represent the strongest growth since the pandemic.

Some are crediting the iPhone 17’s physical redesign for positive sales indicators, but we suspect the boost has more to do with a natural upgrade cycle than any specific features.

The stock is trading up nearly 2% premarket and is expected to open near a record high today, following positive early sales estimates from Counterpoint Research and an upgrade from Loop Capital which raised its price target to $315, a Street high.

Apple reports its 2025 fiscal year results on October 30.

14%

Rani Molla8h

During its first 10 days on the market in the US and China, Apple’s iPhone 17 outsold last year’s iPhone 16 by 14%, according to Bloomberg, citing Counterpoint Research. This data builds on other indicators suggesting the new iPhone is a relative hit.

Counterpoint credits the phone’s improved display, added storage, and the upgraded A19 chip for the sales boost, but we think it probably has more to do with a natural upgrade cycle.

Jon Keegan10/17/25

Google’s Gemini 3.0 reportedly due to be released in December

Google is aiming to release the latest version of its flagship AI model, Gemini 3.0, in December, according to a report from Sources.news.

The updated model is expected to make significant gains that should boost it to the top of the leaderboards, according to the report.

The Gemini app also spent some time at the top of the iOS App Store leaderboards, propelled by Google’s Nano Banana image generation model, which proved popular with users looking to turn themselves into action figures. Gemini briefly knocked ChatGPT from the top spot, which is now occupied by OpenAI’s other hot app, Sora.

Recently, there have been signs of ChatGPT downloads slowing, which could provide an opening for Gemini to gain market share. Adding some premium Gemini features to the free tier is a plan under discussion within Google, per Sources.news.

Sources.news also reports that a “small, secretive team” inside Google is working to integrate Gemini into Apple’s operating systems.

Google readies Gemini 3, Perplexity hits its goal