President Donald Trump is rounding up his tech buddies for next week’s state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The guest list reportedly includes former Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Bloomberg reports, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Cook is expected to attend the Sept. 24 dinner. The news comes just weeks after Cook stepped down as Apple CEO and handed the reins to John Ternus, who took over on Sept. 1.
Cook is now executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors. When Apple announced the transition, it said Cook would remain involved in parts of the business, including “engaging with policymakers around the world.” With Apple’s deep ties to both the U.S. and China, the iPhone’s two biggest customers, it’s not hard to see why Cook made the guest list.
The dinner is part of Xi’s planned visit to Washington for a one-day summit with Trump. Trade and technology are expected to be major topics of discussion, including tensions over AI chip exports and other economic restrictions. Reuters reports that Xi is also bringing a large delegation of Chinese business leaders, putting business at the center of this visit.
AI safety is also expected to be on the agenda.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Axios this week that the U.S. is open to discussing “shared risks” from AI talks with China this weekend ahead of the summit. “The United States remains the leader in AI. And we are open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of our two systems. We expect our discussions to cover both open and closed weight models,” Bessent told the outlet in a statement.
The talks come after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the industry to slow the pace at which it develops more capable frontier models. His rivals OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk publicly backed his proposal.
Trump, in contrast, has dismissed calls to slow development, calling safety concerns a hoax.
“No, I don’t have any,” Trump told reporters last week when asked if he shared concerns about AI causing human extinction. “I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position. We are leading China right now by a pretty good period, I would say a year, which is, you know, considered a lot.”
During his second term, Trump has signed multiple executive actions aimed at accelerating AI development in the name of national and economic security.
Cook won’t be the only U.S. tech leader at the dinner. OpenAI confirmed that Altman will attend, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is also expected to be there, according to Reuters.
Apple, OpenAI, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.