Last week, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a dinner at the White House with a who’s-who of AI.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and more were all there.
The event sent a clear message: The administration wants Washington and Silicon Valley aligned to cement the U.S. as the global leader in AI. As the White House framed it in a press release after the dinner: “President Trump, Tech Leaders Unite to Power AI Dominance.”
While the Silicon Valley crowd brought the know-how and big investment plan, the Trump administration brought the political ambition for “winning the race” through America’s AI Action Plan, largely by deregulating whatever Silicon Valley needs to stay ahead of China and other international rivals.
AI Avengers … assemble!
If you’ve ever seen a Cabinet meeting during the Trump administration, you already know what the vibe was like at the dinner.
Executives took turns talking about their company and heaping praise on the president for championing policies that could help them win the AI race.
The theme of the dinner was to discuss bringing AI infrastructure back to the U.S. Basically, do it fast, and do it big. It was a signal that the U.S. is going all-in on AI, treating it like the next big economic and national security project.
Trump started things off by making clear he wants Washington and Silicon Valley pulling in the same direction.
Zuckerberg set the tone as he talked about the $600 billion that Meta is investing in the U.S. over the next three years.
“This is quite a group to get together — and I think all of the companies here are making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation,” Zuckerberg said.
The other CEOs jumped in with their own numbers, all promising massive investments to build data centers, chips, and factories here in the U.S.
“Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president. It’s a very refreshing change,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman said. “We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful. The investment that’s happening here, the ability to get the power of the industry back in the United States, is going to set us up for a long period of great success leading the world — and I don’t think that would be happening without your leadership.”
AI’s First Lady
While the CEOs talked numbers at the dinner table, the First Lady used the night to draw attention to a different kind of investment.
She announced the Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge, a new program for K-12 students and educators to dive into AI projects.
“This will be the first step in preparing our next generation with a base understanding of this important new technology,” said Melania, framing the initiative as both educational and a national priority.
In a recent AI.gov video, she shared her own experience experimenting with AI while creating her audiobook, pointing to both its potential and its risks.
The Challenge itself is designed to be hands-on. Students are encouraged to create projects that use AI to solve local issues, while teachers can experiment with creative ways to bring AI into the classroom.
The goal is to make AI less mysterious, more approachable and part of everyday learning.
It’s a clear bet that preparing young people to use AI responsibly now will pay off in the workforce and economy later. And just as importantly, it’s meant to ensure America’s education system — and future talent pipeline — stays ahead of the rest of the world.
Global scorecard
If the White House dinner showed anything, it’s that America is leaning hard on its corporate arm, but it has fallen behind elsewhere.
The U.S. continues to dominate in private capital. According to the 2025 Stanford AI Index, U.S. firms poured $109 billion into AI in 2024, compared to just $9.3 billion from China.
While the performance gap is narrowing, the U.S. still has the edge in money and corporate leadership.
But China is playing another game that the U.S. is only just beginning to enter: AI education at scale.
Starting this fall, Beijing is making AI education mandatory across schools. Kids as young as six will now get at least eight hours of AI lessons each year. They’ll learn everything from hands-on basics in elementary school to real applications and innovation in high school.
That kind of top-down mobilization highlights the contrast. While Washington courts CEOs and trims regulations to unlock private investment, Beijing is engineering a generation of students raised with AI literacy.
Most of us are too old to have been raised with AI literacy, but it’s never too late to try to catch up! What better way than subscribing to the best AI newsletter in Arizona?
Photos become worlds: Star Trek fans will get a kick out of this one. It looks like the Holodeck is closer than ever. Fei-Fei Li showed off a new genAI tool that turns still images into explorable 3D environments.
Claude pulls the plug: Anthropic gave Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 the rare ability to end conversations on its own — only in extreme cases of abuse or harm. Most users will never see it, but if Claude ever cuts you off, it’s by design.
Sandbox time: Sen. Ted Cruz unveiled the SANDBOX Act, a proposal allowing AI firms to request two-year exemptions from federal rules, as long as they submit safety and financial risk plans. It’s aimed at encouraging innovation while keeping safeguards in place.
Babel buds: The new AirPods Pro 3 can now live-translate conversations. Which means your earbuds are officially better at languages than you, your high school Spanish teacher and Duolingo’s angry owl combined.
