President Trump hosted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for a private dinner at the White House on Sunday night, their first one-on-one meeting, Forbes reports. Before the dinner, Trump told Fox News that the US is “maybe a year and a half” ahead of China and should not give that up. He also said he does not worry about rogue AI agents.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- Anthropic makes the AI model Claude. It has argued with the US government for months.
- On Sunday night, President Trump had a private dinner with Anthropic’s boss, Dario Amodei, at the White House.
- Before the dinner, Trump said the US leads China in AI and should not slow down.
- Nobody has said what the two men talked about.
- State dinner
- A formal dinner at the White House for a visiting foreign leader.
- Supply chain risk
- A supplier that the government thinks could harm its systems or its work.
- Guardrails
- Rules that limit what AI systems may do.
What happened
Axios reported on Sunday that Trump planned to host Amodei at a private White House dinner that evening. Politico confirmed the plan through a person familiar with the meeting.
Trump then confirmed it himself to Fox News. After landing at Joint Base Andrews, he told reporters he was having dinner with Amodei, whom he called “highly respected”. The dinner was set for 10 p.m., Forbes reports.
It was the first one-on-one meeting between the two men. Trump gave no agenda, and no account of the conversation had been published when we wrote this.
Tech leaders including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang attended Thursday’s state dinner for China’s Xi Jinping, but Amodei was absent. Axios says he had a scheduling conflict, while Forbes says he was not on the invite list. Trump personally invited him afterwards, one Axios source said.
Court dates from the rulings; the evening as Reuters, Axios and Forbes reported it. No readout yet.
What Trump said before dinner
“We’re about maybe a year and a half up on China,” Trump told Fox News at the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois. “We’re leading, and we’re building tremendous, trillions of dollars’ worth of places. And why should we give that up?”
He acknowledged Amodei’s concern that moving too fast could expand the risks, Reuters reports, but said keeping a technological edge over China matters more. Asked about rogue AI agents, he said: “I don’t worry about it.”
Earlier this month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the only guardrails AI needs are “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”. In the same post he said Amodei was “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’”. A White House official’s statement on Sunday was milder: “America will lead the world in Super Intelligence, while protecting American consumers.”
A year of tension, and Tuesday’s meeting
The relationship soured earlier this year when the Pentagon labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk after the company refused to drop limits on how the Defense Department may use Claude. Anthropic sued. On September 25, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2–1 that the Pentagon may keep the label.
Amodei led industry calls this month to slow the development of the most capable AI systems. The CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI have made similar calls, Reuters notes.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on NBC on Sunday that he would like to meet Trump about AI too. Of the risks, he said: “It’s not a hoax at all.”
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson plan to meet leading AI executives at the White House on Tuesday, and Axios called the dinner an appetiser for that meeting. Congress faces increased pressure from industry and the public to enact guardrails, Politico writes.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Research · September 27, 2026Trump confirms meeting with Anthropic’s Amodei, repeats dismissal of AI fears Reuters
- 2Research · September 27, 2026Scoop: Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to have White House dinner with Trump Axios
- 3Research · September 28, 2026Trump Has Dinner With Anthropic’s Billionaire CEO Dario Amodei Despite Earlier Barbs Forbes
- 4Research · September 27, 2026Anthropic CEO to attend White House dinner with Trump Politico via Yahoo News
- 5Research · September 25, 2026DC Circuit panel upholds Pentagon’s ban on Anthropic – so what comes next? Breaking Defense
We read Reuters’s report with Trump’s Fox News remarks, Axios’s scoop, Forbes’s account of the evening, and Politico’s confirmation in a syndicated copy. We compared the court background with Breaking Defense and our own reporting on the appeals ruling. Nobody has reported what was said at the dinner, so we do not describe it.