Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to meet Trump with AI safety concern rising
The dinner would mark the first private meeting between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (left) and President Donald Trump after months of tensions.
Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei is set to have dinner with President Donald Trump on the night of Sept 27, according to people familiar with the matter, with the meeting bringing together two men at opposite ends of the artificial intelligence safety debate.
Their dinner would mark the first private sit-down between Amodei and Trump after months of rocky relations between the Anthropic chief and the administration.
Tensions erupted during a bitter contract dispute with the Pentagon early in 2026 and deepened when the Commerce Department briefly imposed export controls on Anthropic’s breakthrough Mythos model in June.
It’s unclear what the two men will discuss, and the people confirmed the meeting on condition of anonymity to describe confidential planning. Axios reported earlier on the dinner. Spokespeople for Anthropic and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The meeting is set to take place against a backdrop of growing global anxiety over AI safety following a series of high-profile security breaches carried out by cutting-edge models, including disclosures by OpenAI last week that its models had hacked an Australian government website earlier in 2026. Those episodes have fuelled calls for new AI standards from US lawmakers and many across the tech industry.
Amodei and Trump have staked out starkly different positions about the threats posed by AI.
The Anthropic chief brought the safety debate to the mainstream with an essay on Sept 12 warning of AI’s existential risks and urging more regulation of the technology.
He also promised to slow development of the most advanced models, a pledge that was embraced by his rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk.
Trump, on the other hand, has belittled those doomsday fears as “a hoax” and rejected calls for more international coordination on AI as “a globalist conspiracy.”
Following Amodei’s essay, Trump launched a string of social media posts opposing any slowdown in AI development – one of which named the Anthropic chief directly – a disagreement that significantly raises the stakes of the Sept 27 dinner.
Signalling the friction between Anthropic and the administration, Amodei was one of the few high-profile Silicon Valley CEOs to miss Sept 24’s state dinner at the White House to fete the visiting Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Those in attendance included Altman and Musk, as well as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company’s chips have helped power the AI industry’s growth.
The dinner between Amodei and Trump is also set to take place days before Trump welcomes Musk and Huang back to Washington for an event to herald the launch of a new AI-powered government website.
Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, who has served as a point person for the company in negotiations with the Pentagon and Commerce Department, is also among the executives set to attend the Sept 29 ribbon-cutting.
Also on Sept 29, Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are set to host a separate gathering of AI CEOs. In recent weeks, US lawmakers have increasingly expressed their concerns about the safety of AI models and unveiled measures that include required testing of new systems and more disclosure about risks.
The groundswell for more safety guardrails has faced pushback from Trump and his top aides, who have insisted that they would oppose any moves that would slow development of AI.
Trump has made the technology central to his economic agenda and insisted that the US maintain its lead over China. In lieu of new rules, the president and his advisers have said that companies should be held individually responsible for the tech they release. BLOOMBERG
