Tech Leaders Dominate State Dinner with President Trump, Signaling Shift in US-UK Economic Priorities Towards AI and Quantum Technology

Prominent figures from the tech industry graced an elaborate banquet held in honor of President Trump during his second visit to the UK on Wednesday.

The seating arrangement for the gala included Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA; Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO; David Sacks, a venture capitalist and White House advisor on AI and cryptocurrency; Ruth Porat, president of Alphabet and Google; Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO; Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO; and Sam Altman, co-chair of OpenAI. This list was disclosed by The New York Times.

On the subsequent day, the US and UK signed a collaborative agreement named the Tech Prosperity Deal, aiming to advance developments in nuclear technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing. In addition, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and OpenAI unveiled plans earlier this week to establish data centers in the UK. Furthermore, CoreWeave and Salesforce announced a substantial investment of billions of pounds in the country. Collectively, American tech companies pledged an impressive £31 billion ($42 billion) towards bolstering AI infrastructure in the UK.

Compared to previous occasions where Hollywood celebrities were more prevalent, this banquet guest list appears to showcase a higher number of tech and business leaders. This shift underscores the evolving economic priorities of both the US and UK in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the growing influence of technology and its leaders within the second term of President Trump’s administration.

Over the past year, several major tech companies like OpenAI, Google, and Apple have agreed to collaborate with the government on initiatives ranging from AI assistant tools for government services to constructing digital health ecosystems for the US healthcare sector.

President Trump has also shown increased interest in technology-related matters, including criticizing Tim Cook for Apple’s outsourced supply chain, signing an executive order targeting work-replacing AI, and instructing the attorney general to investigate private companies receiving federal funds with controversial Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.

During this year, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and other tech leaders attended the president’s inauguration. In early September, President Trump hosted a tech dinner featuring 33 prominent figures from Silicon Valley, including Altman, Cook, and Zuckerberg. Elon Musk, previously known as “First Buddy,” was absent at both events.