Trump abruptly cancels EO signing event after top AI firm CEOs declined to go

President Donald Trump canceled a planned executive order signing event hours before it was scheduled after learning that several top AI company CEOs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, would not attend, despite having given them only 24 hours' notice. The executive order would have granted the government authority to test frontier AI models before public release, but faced industry opposition over concerns that safety testing could delay product launches. Trump's decision to cancel was reportedly influenced by Musk, Zuckerberg, and former AI advisor David Sacks, though Musk denied involvement.

President Donald Trump abruptly canceled an event on Thursday just hours before he was scheduled to sign an executive order granting the government the power to test frontier AI models before their public release. As The New York Times explained, Trump had been hoping that top executives from leading AI firms would attend the signing. He decided to pull the plug after learning that some CEOs couldn’t make the event. That made Trump unhappy, even though he’d only given them 24 hours’ notice. Other AI executives who quickly rearranged their schedules to go “were midair on their way to the Oval Office” when they found out that the trip was for nothing. Reporting from Semafor indicated that OpenAI “supported” the signing. However, xAI founder Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly helped “derail” the executive order, supposedly urging Trump to “call it off.” Additionally, Trump’s former AI advisor David Sacks—whose special government employee designation expired in March, The Information noted—joined the push to delay the signing, Semafor reported. According to Reuters, the tech industry lobbied against the order, fearing that safety testing could delay model launches or require changes that set back model development. Musk has denied having a hand in Trump’s cancellation of the signing event, Reuters noted, writing on X that “this is false” and claiming that he doesn’t “know what was in that EO.” Trump has taken a hands-off approach to regulating AI since retaking office, but members of his administration got spooked and began recommending safety testing after Anthropic flagged cybersecurity risks with its latest model, Mythos. Their plan was to get Trump to expand the number of firms submitting to voluntary government testing and vetting of frontier models.