Trump's White House dinner: Meet Indian-origin tech CEOs who joined US President's AI-focused White House meet

US President Donald Trump hosted a group of prominent tech executives at the White House on Thursday, using the occasion to highlight advancements in artificial intelligence and celebrate corporate investments across the United States.

“This is taking our country to a new level,” Trump remarked, seated at the center of a long table and surrounded by what he described as “high IQ people.”

Five Indian-Americans who attended the dinner meeting:

Confirmed attendees for the high-profile White House dinner include several important Indian American executives, such as:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Google CEO Sundar Pichai

Micron Technologies CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.

They were joined by Vivek Ranadive, Chairman of TIBCO, and Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, both also of Indian American origin.

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The dinner was originally planned to take place in the Rose Garden, which had recently been repaved by President Trump and outfitted with tables, chairs, and umbrellas resembling the outdoor setting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

However, due to inclement weather, the event was relocated to the White House State Dining Room.

Earlier that afternoon, the White House hosted a meeting of its newly formed Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force, chaired by First Lady Melania Trump, with participation from several tech leaders who also attended the dinner.

The White House confirmed that the dinner guest list included several major figures from the tech world: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Blue Origin CEO David Limp, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO Chairman Vivek Ranadive, Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman.

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While the dinner marked another step in President Trump’s continued outreach to top tech leaders, the move stirred some controversy within the Republican Party.

Earlier, one of Trump's closest allies, Senator Josh Hawley, delivered a scathing critique of the tech industry during a speech at a conservative conference in Washington.

He condemned the lack of regulation around artificial intelligence and called out Meta and ChatGPT by name.

“The government should inspect all of these frontier AI systems so we can better understand what the tech titans plan to build and destroy,” the Missouri senator said.

On Tuesday, Trump said a video showing items being thrown out of an upstairs window of the White House must have been created by AI, despite his team seeming to have confirmed the video’s veracity hours earlier.

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Trump then said, “If something happens that’s really bad, maybe I’ll have to just blame AI.”

The first lady, at her event Thursday, likewise highlighted both the potential and peril of AI.

(With inputs from agencies)