Breaking

Anthropic CEO Amodei scheduled for private White House dinner with Trump

Axios, TechCrunch and The Hill reported a Sunday evening meeting, the first one-on-one between the Anthropic chief and the president, amid tension over AI safety and a Pentagon supply-chain designation.

Motion Media News Staff

Sep 28, 2026

2 minutes

North facade of the White House with columns, portico and circular drive.

Photo: Nishkid64 (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons (source)

President Donald Trump planned a private Sunday-evening White House dinner with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, Axios reported, citing people familiar with the invitation. TechCrunch and The Hill each confirmed the dinner with their own sources.

It would be their first one-on-one meeting, Axios and TechCrunch reported. Amodei skipped Thursday’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, where technology leaders present included OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, The Hill reported. Axios said Amodei had a scheduling conflict and that Trump personally invited him afterward.

Context

Anthropic and the Trump administration have clashed for much of the year. Amodei has pressed for a slower build-out of frontier AI systems, writing earlier this month that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” The Hill reported. Trump has dismissed AI risk concerns and has sought to rebrand the technology as “super intelligence,” TechCrunch and The Hill reported.

Separately, the Defense Department labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company sought limits on military use of its models; Anthropic is fighting that label in court, TechCrunch reported. On Friday, a 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit let the designation stand, The Hill reported. After the ruling, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted, “Confirmed: @AnthropicAI = Supply Chain Risk,” The Hill reported.

A White House official told The Hill: “President Trump has been clear: America will lead the world in Super Intelligence, while protecting American consumers,” and that the administration would “drive innovation, strengthen American competitiveness, and ensure this transformative technology works for the American people.”

Axios also reported that Amodei’s critics circulated a negative memo on him intended for White House readers before the meal. The document is not an internal White House product, Axios said, and its origin was unclear. Axios said the brief casts Amodei as having “a long record of attacking Trump” and “deep Democratic ties,” and cites Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon.

What's next

Axios reported that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are set to host leading AI executives at the White House on Tuesday, and cast the Amodei dinner as an appetizer for that session. Neither the White House nor Anthropic had issued a public readout of the Sunday dinner as of Monday morning.