United States President Donald Trump is set to host about two dozen tech and business executives at the White House, hosting the closed-door dinner at the newly upgraded Rose Garden. According to information confirmed by the White House, the dinner is being labeled the administration’s inaugural tech-policy dinner, and follows an event on artificial intelligence hosted earlier in the day by First Lady Melania Trump.
According to reports, the guest list includes Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman. Each executive is expected to attend this private meeting, which is by invitation. Others include Greg Brockman, who is president of OpenAI, Sergey Brin from Google, Shyam Sankar from Palantir, and Alexandr Wang, who co-founded Scale AI and now leads a superintelligence group at Meta.
Donald Trump hosts tech execs amid surprise Elon Musk snub
Other attendees include Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and Micron Technology’s David Limp. All of these names either share an affiliation with Trump’s second-term economic reshoring agenda or played roles in past administration-led announcements on emerging technologies. David Sacks, a venture capitalist who now holds the title of White House crypto and AI czar, is expected to be seated at the table.
Also in attendance will be Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4, even though Donald Trump canceled his NASA nomination earlier in June without explanation. One high-profile absence is Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk. Musk previously held a position as a special government employee in the early months of Trump’s current term and later ran the administration’s DOGE office, before leaving the position in May.
Trump discusses Musk’s absence amid feud
When he was asked about the snub on a phone interview on The Scott Jennings Show, Donald Trump addressed the topic in full. “He’s got 80% super genius, and then 20% he’s got some problems. And when he works out the 20%, he’ll be great,” Donald Trump said. He continued, “I always liked him. I like him now. But he went off the reservation, and he wished he didn’t do it.”
Trump described Elon as “a man of common sense” and “a good man,” then added, “I don’t think he has a choice. What’s he gonna do? He’s gonna go with the radical left lunatics? They’re lunatics.” Elon reportedly contributed at least $277 million to support Trump and other Republican campaigns. He later took credit for Trump’s 2024 victory and the GOP’s Senate edge.
In a June 5 post on X, Elon claimed, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.” He followed that with “Such ingratitude.” The feud escalated after Elon publicly slammed the administration’s latest tax legislation, nicknamed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which had passed earlier in the year. On social media, Elon called it a “MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK.”
