Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei arrived at the U.S. Senate. A meeting between the White House, congressional leaders, and AI executives is scheduled for the next day.

That evening, Amodei met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who described the talks as "productive" and stated that Anthropic had reviewed draft legislation related to AI risks and provided feedback. Both sides still need to find a balance between safeguards and innovation. Thune, along with Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz, is still discussing legislation to reduce catastrophic risks, but key provisions have not aligned; Cruz promised that the Commerce Committee would hold a markup meeting, with the date yet to be determined. Amodei did not answer questions from the press on-site.

The previous day, he had a one-on-one dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House, marking their first private meeting. Amodei was absent from a state dinner last week attended by Altman, Pichai, Zuckerberg, etc., due to scheduling conflicts, and was personally invited by the president afterward. Trump publicly stated that they would discuss regulation while reiterating that slowing down research would cede the lead to China, claiming the U.S. is ahead by about a year to a year and a half, and expressed no concerns about AI overreach.

The next day's lunch in the White House East Room is expected to include Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google's Sundar Pichai, Palantir's Alex Karp, and NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, with House Speaker Mike Johnson also in attendance. Vice President JD Vance and others will also host a longer policy event that day, covering topics including AI, energy, and aerospace. Recently, Amodei published an article advocating for a slowdown in the pace of cutting-edge models and committed to opening near-employee-level system access to third-party evaluators.

Anthropic's relationship with the current administration has been tumultuous throughout the year: the Pentagon previously listed its products as supply chain risks and restricted their combat use, and a federal appeals court has upheld related bans; the company's model was one of the few usable systems in the defense secret network. The meeting is seen as a tentative easing rather than a legislative breakthrough.

In market mechanisms, this is a regulatory expectation trade, not a model release. The buyers are Congress, which seeks legislative clarity, and the White House, which demands industry commitments; the sellers are laboratories seeking licensing, contracts, and paths to declassification. The competition for funding and computing power continues, with political capital being redistributed between the safety faction and the racing faction. Benefiting are companies that can engage with both the White House and the Senate Majority Leader's office, while under pressure are laboratories that write slowing down as a unilateral commitment yet still seek to bid for government contracts. A meeting does not change the training schedule.

Source: Public Information