Trump Privately Met Altman After Dismissing AI Concerns

At last week's Republican National Convention, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman secured a private backstage meeting with President Donald Trump. In the days after, Trump told audiences that AI safety worries are a hoax.

Three people familiar with the encounter stated that Altman was the one who requested the session. Their brief overview described a conversation about the degree of influence AI currently holds.

Public Hoax, Private Meeting

The timing creates a conflict for Trump's messaging. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged developers to slow the next step in model capability. Altman joined that industry push for slower progress alongside Elon Musk.

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.

Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our…

— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 12, 2026

Throughout the week, Trump dismissed those warnings. On Monday at the All-In Summit, a Silicon Valley investor conference, he called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live on stage and repeated his hoax framing to the room of investors.

"I'm telling you it's all a hoax. The data centers are great. They make people wealthy. They make states wealthy…"
— Donald Trump.

Holy crap POTUS just phoned in @JensenHuang live on stage at All In Summit

We will not lose the ai race! And whatever Dario said this weekend won't stop our progress

This made my morning!
$NVDA

— Ben Pouladian ✈️ All-in Summit (@benitoz) September 14, 2026

Nvidia shares dropped three percent that day, and chip stocks broadly fell as investors priced in an AI spending slowdown despite Trump's endorsement.

A Contradiction Investors Face

Trump says AI fears are manufactured. Yet it is unclear why the industry's most prominent executive sought a private audience with the president. Trump has also asserted broad authority over AI firms, a stance that sits oddly alongside dismissing the risk as fiction.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has expressed skepticism toward AI executives seeking government regulation. That skepticism complicates the administration's message ahead of Trump's meeting with China's Xi Jinping next week.

Neither the White House nor OpenAI has disclosed what was discussed backstage. This leaves the gap between Trump's public dismissal and his private engagement unresolved for now.