Trump Floats Government Stakes in AI Labs, Dines Privately With Amodei

Trump held a private one-on-one dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and publicly called him "fantastic," saying they "all agree" on AI direction. This follows Trump's statement to TIME that he "might" pursue government equity stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, modeled on what he described as the government's 9.9% stake in Intel, which he claimed generated "like $60 or $70 billion" for the US. Trump ruled out full nationalization of frontier AI labs. On Nvidia, Trump said he told CEO Jensen Huang the US would require a cut in exchange for access to restricted chip sales. Trump also warned that companies pushing for AI regulation risk being put out of business. OpenAI separately explored offering the administration a 5% equity stake as part of deepening ties, and Sam Altman held preliminary discussions about distributing AI-driven financial gains to the public. Trump has also moved to rebrand AI as "Super Intelligence" across the executive branch and plans to name an "AI Czar." No deal, terms, or timeline have been disclosed for any equity arrangement.