Trump is calling the shots again, and this time he’s doing it from the White House’s freshly upgraded Rose Garden, where he’ll host a closed-door dinner on Thursday night with two dozen top tech and business executives.
The high-level gathering will follow a separate event on artificial intelligence hosted earlier in the day by First Lady Melania Trump. The dinner is being labeled the administration’s inaugural tech-policy dinner, according to information confirmed by a White House official.
The confirmed guest list includes Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman. Each of them is expected to attend this private meeting, which is invitation-only.
A broader list includes 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.
Trump excludes Elon while bringing in crypto czar and reshoring allies
Also attending are Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and Micron Technology’s David Limp. All of these names have either aligned themselves 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 attending is Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4, despite the fact that Trump canceled his NASA nomination back in June without explanation.
One person not attending is Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was notably excluded from the invitation list. Elon 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, focused on crypto, before resigning in May.
Trump explains Elon’s absence and addresses personal feud on-air
When asked about the snub during a phone interview on The Scott Jennings Show, recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday, Trump didn’t dodge. “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,” 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.”
In response, Trump initially floated the idea of terminating government contracts tied to Elon’s companies. But during a press interaction in June, he toned things down. “Look, I wish him well. You understand? We had a good relationship, and I just wish him well.”
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