Trump Invites Anthropic CEO To Private White House Dinner After Months On Blacklist

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will dine one-on-one with President Trump on Sunday night amid the AI doomsday fears he has helped stoke.

The White House did not immediately respond to a Daily Wire inquiry about the dinner. Axios reported that Trump personally extended the invitation after Amodei missed last week’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping because of a scheduling conflict. The outlet called the upcoming dinner — the pair’s first one-on-one sit-down — a sign of “thawing relations between Anthropic and the administration, whose officials and allies had longstanding tensions.”

But Trump’s former AI czar, David Sacks, offered a less diplomatic assessment on this week’s episode of his All-In podcast, accusing Anthropic of “corporate schizophrenia.” He questioned how the company could pursue an initial public offering while its leadership warns that the technology it develops could wipe out humanity.

“You have current leadership in the company saying that there’s a greater than 10% chance of causing human extinction, and their own product is unsolved in this area … How do you IPO with your own management of the company saying that?” he asked.

Sacks also pointed to the tension between Anthropic’s warnings about biological risks and its own expansion into the field. “Then you have them publishing an essay about the bio risk associated with AI and how that needs to be stopped. Meanwhile, they announced a new bio lab in San Francisco.”

Amodei has repeatedly called for the government to put regulations and restrictions on AI companies as they advance. 

Amodei has repeatedly called for the government to put regulations and restrictions on AI companies as they advance — even as Anthropic races to build more powerful models. That apparent contradiction has become fodder for Saturday Night Live. On this weekend’s season premiere, cast member Jane Wickline played Amodei opposite Weekend Update anchor Michael Che. “Sam Altman, myself, all the major AI players have discussed this extensively, and we are all on the same page here: we do not condone what we are doing,” Wickline’s Amodei said.

“Shouldn’t you be talking about the pros of AI,” fired back SNL’s Michael Che playing the news anchor interviewing Amodei. 

The dinner comes two days before Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are set to host top AI executives at the White House, as Republicans face mounting pressure to regulate the industry ahead of the midterms. The two countries’ publics see the technology very differently. A Microsoft-Gallup survey released last week found 93% of Chinese respondents expect AI to mostly help people in their country, compared with 36% of Americans.

Anthropic has spent much of this year in the hot seat with the Pentagon. In February, those tensions erupted into a public showdown over the military’s use of Anthropic’s technology. The Pentagon demanded access to the company’s models for all lawful purposes, while Amodei sought assurances that they would not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth accused the company of trying to dictate how the military operates and designated Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security.” “Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military,” Hegseth said. “That is unacceptable.”

Hegseth announced that military contractors, suppliers, and partners would be barred from conducting commercial activity with Anthropic, while the Pentagon would spend six months transitioning away from the company’s technology.

The designation came on the heels of a sweeping directive from Trump, who ordered every federal agency to stop using Anthropic’s tools. He called Anthropic a “RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY” whose “selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

The fight has since moved to the courts. On Friday, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld one of the two supply-chain-risk designations the Pentagon relied on, ruling 2-1 in the administration’s favor. A federal judge in San Francisco struck down the other designation in August. “We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review,” an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC.

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