U.S. President Donald Trump plans to have a private dinner at the White House on Sunday with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the company that created Claude, in what will be his first face-to-face meeting, according to Axios, citing sources familiar with the plan. The invitation came from Trump himself after Amodei missed the state dinner that the White House offered to Chinese President Xi Jinping last week due to an agenda conflict (Axios).

The evening is seen within the administration as a possible thawing of the relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration, which has been strained for much of the year. Amodei himself acknowledged that his company and the administration have had "tense moments," with a senior official telling Axios that months ago some were warning against a one-on-one date because "Dario is a little too weird for Trump" (Axios).

The context is not minor: the cut with the industry is beginning to change its tone. Last week, top tech leaders — from OpenAI's Sam Altman to Google's Sundar Pichai — sat alongside Trump at the state dinner for Xi, with one notable exception: Amodei. This new dinner is the appetizer of a meeting scheduled for Tuesday between Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson with the country's top AI executives (Axios · CNBC).

The underlying tension is, above all, the safety of AI. On September 12, Amodei published a 3,800-word essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," in which he called on the entire industry to slow down the development of advanced models and allow time for security measures, with a three-phase plan that Anthropic pledged to adopt unilaterally. Altman and Elon Musk publicly joined the call (Dario Amodei · BBC). Trump, on the other hand, downplayed it, saying that Amodei "wants to look like a perfect little angel" (The Manila Times/AFP · Yahoo News).

The conflict also has a judicial chapter. On Friday, a federal appeals court in Washington upheld the Pentagon's decision to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk and veto it from defense contracting, a move the Defense Department took after the company refused to give it unfettered access to its models. Anthropic sued the administration, calling the move "retaliation and punishment"; the court ruled 2-1 in favor of the Pentagon, and the company is considering "all options, including further review" (CNBC · The Washington Post · CBS News).

In parallel, Axios revealed that Amodei's opponents circulate a very negative report about him to the White House just before the dinner, while the figure of the CEO of Anthropic begins to sneak into pop culture: he was parodied in the season premiere of Saturday Night Live (Axios · TechCrunch).

The White House defended the agenda: "President Trump has been clear: the United States will lead the world in superintelligence, protecting American consumers," an official spokesperson told Axios (Axios). "

Sources and credits: Axios (Scoop) · Axios (negative report) · CNBC · CNBC (appeals court) · CBS News · The Washington Post · BBC · The New York Times · TechCrunch · Yahoo News · aipost (Telegram). Cover: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the G7, via Axios (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).