Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are meeting in Washington on September 23-24, 2026, to discuss artificial intelligence competition and safety protocols. The leaders previously met in Beijing in May 2026, but that discussion did not result in a formal agreement.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are working to establish an AI dialogue channel. A key proposal involves creating incident notification protocols, which would function as a hotline system to report serious issues arising from AI development.
The meeting includes executives from major technology companies, specifically Elon Musk of Tesla, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia. Their presence highlights the intersection of diplomatic negotiations and the commercial interests of these firms.
The US continues to enforce export controls on high-performance chips, such as the Nvidia H200, to limit China's access to hardware for training AI models. In response, China is investing in domestic alternatives, with some models like DeepSeek reportedly performing close to top US systems.
