WASHINGTON — President Trump called for “tremendous self-regulation” of artificial intelligence Tuesday at a White House lunch with tech billionaires — where they agreed to a “morally binding” set of principles for the technology.

Trump hosted nearly two dozen business titans in the East Room before surprising journalists by walking his guests onto the driveway outside the West Wing for a 33-minute impromptu press conference.

“There’s a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation,” Trump said during the lunch as he sat between Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang on his right and XAI’s Elon Musk and Google’s Sundar Pichai to his left.

President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, during a meeting with top executives of AI firms. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

“We automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that. But the self-regulation is very important.”

At the meal, Trump and six of the CEOs signed a one-page document titled the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence: Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities.”

“It’s almost like a constitution in a way,” Trump told a stunned pack of reporters crowded around him and the group of businessmen on the driveway.

“The biggest people in the world signed that, and I signed it as president, and it really is a form of protection… I think it’s morally binding.”

The leaders of Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI and XAI signed alongside Trump.

The accord commits the firms to “four layers” of safeguards, including establishing internal controls to monitor risks to “cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats, and to ensure that its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.”

Companies will then designate internal teams to track compliance. External auditors will conduct independent reviews, with a committee of each company’s board of directors in charge of “ensur[ing] any issues identified are remediated.”

The six companies “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems,” the document says, adding, “Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.”

Zuckerberg said the agreement would yield “multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review, external auditors and evaluators, and agreeing that we’re going to have all of our boards of directors independently review the reports that come from the auditors.”

“The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do. It is that this is a start and an accord that the whole industry could come to,” Zuckerberg said.

Huang, whom Trump called a “very handsome guy,” said that AI was essential to economic growth and had created about a million jobs in the US.

US President Donald Trump, SpacexAI Founder and CEO Elon Musk, and Nvidia President and CEO Jensen Huang attend a luncheon for tech leaders in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on September 29, 2026. REUTERS

“There’s no conflict between innovation, technology, and safety,” Huang said.

“You see behind me just an incredible number of leaders in our industry moving together as one, and we’re going to advance this technology that is so consequential to humanity, so consequential to the future prosperity of our nation. We’re going to do it responsibly and safely.”

OpenAI President Greg Brockman said AI would help small businesses and boost scientific discoveries.

Pichai, jokingly introduced by the president as a “monster,” said “we are signing up to a set of processes and controls, like we do in other areas like financial controls.”

Trump speaking to the press outside of the White House with Speaker Mike Johnson and a number of tech executives. Tierney L Cross/POOL/EPA/ShutterstockMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on the White House driveway. REUTERS

Trump fended off questions about polling showing 71% of Americans think the feds are doing too little to regulate AI and about Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ claim Sunday that AI could cause “a billion deaths” if mismanaged.

Trump said there was nothing to fear because the firms would be “policing each other” and “if something goes wrong, their companies are at stake.”

Trump said that if he learned of catastrophic threats, “I’d come out here, I’d hold a news conference, and I’d let the world know about it.”

‘We can win safely’

Trump hosted the unusual driveway press conference shortly before signing orders renaming the technology as “super intelligence” — a term he pushed last week at the United Nations and during meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The new terminology will be used in official communications, but there’s no guarantee of wider adoption.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai reacts as Trump jokingly introduces him as a “monster.” REUTERSAnthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for slowing down AI advancements. REUTERS

Trump said the “extremely friendly” lunch, whose bigwigs included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, featured “a lot of commonality.”

Amodei, who dined with Trump on Sunday night, this month called for a deliberate slowdown of AI — after doomsday warnings from his former employee Jacob Coxon sparked Democratic calls for regulation.

“I think the technology has very real risks,” Amodei told reporters alongside Trump outside the West Wing.

“And the mechanism of how we address those risks is still under discussion. But we all need to work together to make sure that we can win and that we can win safely.”

Amodei added: “If we do this right, we work with the president and everyone here, we can win safely.”

Trump hosted the unusual driveway press conference before signing orders requiring US officials to call AI “Super Intelligence.” Getty Images

The president basked in the presence of the famous tech pioneers — many of whom were invited to his inauguration last year, despite some of the cohort censoring and deplatforming him following the 2021 Capitol riot.

“These are the greatest, the most brilliant people probably in the world,” he said.

“The job they’ve done is unbelievable. We have a very big lead, and we’re going to keep our lead, and it’s a very positive thing. It’s an amazing industry.”

“We’re leading, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Trump declared.

“It’s not artificial. We all agree on that, and we’re going to be renaming it super intelligence, officially renaming it.”

Trump also said that AI companies would make more of an effort to win over reluctant neighbors of massive new data centers springing up around the country.

“They’re going to do things for the community that will be really financially beneficial and otherwise beneficial,” he said.

“The one thing that we all have in common is we love our country, and we love the world, and we want to make sure it’s a safe place. And what we’re talking about today will make it a better place and a much safer place.”

The tech giants in attendance included Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su, who joined the head table as Trump hosted Xi for a state dinner last week, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels.