A significant gathering of global tech leaders took place at the White House, hosted by former US President Donald Trump. The event, a dinner held in the State Dining Room, saw prominent figures from the technology industry in attendance. The absence of X boss and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, however, drew considerable attention. Questions arose as to whether Musk was uninvited or simply chose not to attend. The dinner was moved indoors due to inclement weather, shifting from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. While Musk was not present, his competitor in the AI space, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, was among the attendees. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta announced plans to invest at least $600 billion in the US over the next several years to build data centers and infrastructure. Other notable attendees included Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Bill Gates, Google’s Sergey Brin, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and executives from Micron, TIBCO Software, Palantir, Scale AI, Blue Origin, and Shift4 Payments.
