The who's who in tech and business showed up for Trump's dinner with China's leader at the White House

September 25, 2026 adminsr

Donald Trump’s dinner with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday was a glitzy gathering of the biggest names in tech.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said during a fireside chat at the New York Stock Exchange that she will be attending Thursday’s White House event, joining executives expected to include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Plenty is riding on the talks. Washington and Beijing are negotiating amid a trade truce, with tariffs, critical minerals, and semiconductors among the issues at stake. The US has also proposed a channel for the two countries to notify each other about significant AI safety incidents, which remains under discussion.

“I think technology is one of those areas where we rely on the global ecosystem to come together,” Su told Fox Business’s Liz Claman in a fireside chat on Wednesday, adding she is “honored” to join the White House dinner.

“So, yes, I think we’re anxiously looking at what will come out of it,” Su said. “And the truth is, we want to ensure that there’s good stability across the global ecosystem as it relates to technology.”

The seating arrangement

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

In clockwise order, Trump’s table consisted of himself, first lady Melania Trump, Musk, Su and her spouse, Daniel Lin, Jensen Huang and his spouse, Lori Huang, former Apple CEO Tim Cook, China’s first lady Peng Liyuan, and China’s leader Xi Jinping.

Vice President JD Vance and Usha Vance were seen seated at a different table to the right.

Altman spotted chatting with Mark Zuckerberg

The two tech CEOs have both recently weighed in on AI safety issues, as the topic is expected to be discussed with China’s leader.

Altman has backed setting shared safety standards, including rules for when companies should slow or stop developing more powerful models, while Zuckerberg has said that AI labs have strong incentives to make their models safe and can decide for themselves when to slow down.

Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO who also led the call for more cautious AI development, is notably absent from the dinner.

Jensen Huang spoke to other guests at the center table

Huang, dressed in more traditional business attire, was seated at the main table alongside Trump and Xi.

Nvidia has felt the tech rivalry between the US and China acutely over the past few years. After Washington imposed new export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 chips in April 2025, the company said it missed out on $2.5 billion in shipments that quarter and took a $4.5 billion charge tied to unsold inventory and purchase commitments.

As recently as August, Nvidia was still assuming no China data center chip revenue in its forecast.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk mingled with guests, including Anna Brockman

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk mingles with guests as U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a state dinner for President of China Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan and in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DCDC. Trump is hosting Xi for a three-day state visit to

Musk and Brockman, who is the spouse of OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman, are both heavyweight Trump donors.

Musk, in particular, holds major business interests in China due to Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai, which produces about half of the automaker’s deliveries.

The world’s richest man said earlier this month, during a podcast appearance, that the US and China should agree to peer review or test AI models from the leading firms in each other’s countries.

Musk’s SpaceX is also arguably the single most important company to the US space race against China, providing the bulk of American orbital launches and maintaining the world’s largest satellite constellation.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Secretary of State Marco Rubio

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with Sundar Pichai, Google, CEO, as they attend a state dinner hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is hosting President Xi for a three-day state visit to Washington, DC where the leaders are expected to discuss trade practices, artificial intelligence and furthering "strategic stability" between their countries. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The Google CEO was seen having an animated conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Google, one of the leading AI labs in the US, is investing heavily in AI capacity, with a total capex forecast of $195 billion to $205 billion this year. That’s higher than most of the rest of Big Tech, except for Amazon, which estimates $220 billion in total capex in 2026.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos

Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos attend a state dinner hosted by President Donald Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2026. President Xi is on a State visit to the United States from September 23 to 25. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI

Amazon doesn’t operate its marketplace in China, which has its own, far more domestically successful e-commerce platforms.

But the country has become a major supply and export hub for Amazon, to the point that the company built a global warehousing and distribution network this year in three major Chinese shipping ports to funnel goods to the US.

Bezos and Sánchez were just two representatives of America’s corporate elite invited to Thursday’s dinner — lead executives for BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, and Lockheed Martin were also among those present.