Donald Trump\u2019s AI summit in Washington this week was a fanfare-filled event catered to the tech elite. The president took the stage on Wednesday evening, as the song God Bless the USA piped over the loudspeakers, and then he decreed: \u201cAmerica must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape, so they can\u2019t move, so they can\u2019t breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message was clear \u2013 the tech regulatory environment that was once the focus of federal lawmakers is no longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been watching for many years,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cI\u2019ve watched regulation. I\u2019ve been a victim of regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Trump spoke to the crowd, he addressed them as \u201cthe group of smart ones \u2026 the brain power\u201d. In front of him were tech leaders, venture capitalists and billionaires, including Nvidia\u2019s CEO Jensen Huang and Palantir\u2019s chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. The Hill and Valley Forum, an influential tech industry interest group, co-hosted the confab, along with the Silicon Valley All-in Podcast, which is hosted by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks.<\/p>\n
Dubbed \u201cWinning the AI Race\u201d, the forum was an opportunity for the president to deliver what he called the \u201cAI action plan\u201d, which aims to loosen restrictions on the development and deployment of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The cornerstone of that plan are three executive orders that Trump said will turn the US into an \u201cAI export powerhouse\u201d and roll back some of the rules put in place by the Biden administration, which included guardrails around safe and secure AI development.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning the AI race will demand a new spirit of patriotism and national loyalty in Silicon Valley \u2013 and long beyond Silicon Valley,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
One executive order targets what the White House calls \u201cwoke\u201d AI<\/a> and requires any company receiving federal funding to maintain AI models free from \u201cideological dogmas such as DEI\u201d. But the other two focus on deregulation, a major demand of American tech leaders who have taken an increasingly bullish stand on government oversight.<\/p>\n One of those promotes the export of \u201cAmerican AI\u201d to other countries and the other eases environmental rules<\/a> and expedites federal permitting for power-hungry data centers.<\/p>\n Millions in lobbying<\/p>\n To get to this moment, tech companies have been forging a friendly relationship with Trump. The CEOs of Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Apple donated to the president\u2019s inauguration fund and met with him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, has become a close ally of Trump<\/a>, and Nvidia\u2019s Huang has also cozied up with the president with promises of investing $500bn in AI infrastructure<\/a> in the US over the next four years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that big tech companies are still spending tens of millions of dollars to curry favor with lawmakers and shape tech legislation,\u201d said Alix Fraser, the vice-president of advocacy for the nonprofit Issue One.<\/p>\n In a report<\/a> released on Tuesday, Issue One looked at lobbying spending in 2025 and found that the tech industry has spent record-breaking sums. Eight of the largest tech companies spent a combined $36m \u2013 that\u2019s an average of about $320,000 per day when Congress is in session, according to Issue One.<\/p>\n Meta spent the most, $13.8m, and has hired 86 lobbyists this year, according to the report. And Nvidia and OpenAI<\/a> saw the biggest increases, with Nvidia spending 388% more than the same time last year, and OpenAI spending 44% more.<\/p>\n In the lead-up to Trump\u2019s unveiling of his AI plan, more than 100 prominent labor, environmental, civil rights and academic groups countered the president and signed a \u201cPeople\u2019s AI action plan\u201d. In a statement<\/a>, the groups stressed the need for \u201crelief from the tech monopolies\u201d that they say \u201csacrifice the interests of everyday people for their own profits\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t let big tech and big oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families\u2019 wellbeing, even the air we breathe and the water we drink \u2013 all of which are affected by the unrestrained and unaccountable rollout of AI,\u201d the groups wrote.<\/p>\n