U.S. President Donald Trump plans to host Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a private White House dinner on Sunday evening, Axios reported, citing sources familiar with the plans.
If Amodei indeed attends, it would be the first one-on-one meeting between the pair, according to Axios. The dinner comes two days before Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are expected to meet with tech CEOs at the White House to discuss artificial intelligence and safety, per a report from ABC News.
Trump personally invited Amodei after the Anthropic CEO missed last week's state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, one source told Axios. Axios said Amodei had a scheduling conflict.
The Latent reported Thursday that Amodei was not on the invited guest list the White House released for the Xi dinner. Tech CEOs including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Google's Sundar Pichai flanked Trump at the dinner, Axios reported.
A White House official said in a statement to Axios: "President Trump has been clear: America will lead the world in Super Intelligence, while protecting American consumers. We will drive innovation, strengthen American competitiveness, and ensure this transformative technology works for the American people."
Trump is touting "Super Intelligence" as a new term for artificial intelligence, and said in a Truth Social post on Friday morning that "everyone" at the Xi dinner agreed with his idea.
Anthropic's newest Claude model, Opus 5.5, currently leads the field in The Latent Score with 144.2 points, five points ahead of OpenAI's latest offering, GPT-6 Astra, at 139.2.
Tensions date to a Pentagon dispute
Anthropic's relationship with the Trump administration has been unstable all year, Axios reported. The Pentagon labeled Anthropic a "supply-chain risk" on March 5 after Amodei declined to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude, and Trump said on Sept. 14 that Amodei was "pretending to be a perfect little angel."
Two days before that post, Amodei called on frontier labs to slow development, a proposal that Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose company owns Grok maker xAI, both backed. Trump has rejected those calls and said existing law is enough to police AI companies.
Last week, Trump allies sent the White House talking points about Amodei's role in the effective altruism movement, according to Axios. Last night's season premiere episode of "Saturday Night Live" also mocked Amodei over his personality and his views on AI safety, with cast member Jane Wickline playing the CEO.
Months ago, when Anthropic first floated a one-on-one with Trump, some people advised against it because "Dario's a little too weird" for the president, a senior official told Axios.
Speaker Johnson wants safety on Tuesday's agenda
Johnson has said Tuesday's meeting will cover "the responsibility of the companies to maintain safety, and what role, if any, the government has to play in that," ABC News reported. ABC did not name the executives expected to attend.
Trump has also promised to name an AI czar "in the near future." On Friday he ruled out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the job.
The dinner lands as Anthropic weighs a public listing. The company has picked Nasdaq for a potential IPO, Business Insider reported earlier this month.