Trump’s New AI Czar to Visit Top AI Firms on Silicon Valley Tour

Jay Clayton, the US director of national intelligence and newly named leader of President Donald Trump’s so-called Super Intelligence Force, is starting off his latest role with a trip to Silicon Valley for meetings with some of the AI industry’s most powerful executives.

Clayton is set to meet with Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic PBC’s Dario Amodei and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe private plans. The sit-downs mark Clayton’s first meetings with tech industry leaders since he took the helm of a new group in charge of coordinating federal engagement on artificial intelligence.

Many of those executives were in the same room as Clayton just last week during a White House luncheon where Trump and AI developers signed a voluntary safety accord. Days later, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that Clayton would lead the force, which reports to him and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Other members of the group include Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon Under Secretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael and Director of the Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor, Trump said in the post. The group has 120 days to prepare a report on AI risks and the government’s role in mitigating those perils while simultaneously promoting the technology.

Trump declared his intention to name a new AI czar last month after growing public concern about catastrophic risks became too hard for the administration to ignore following a spate of breaches by rogue models. On Wednesday, Clayton said that the companies driving AI development would keep public safety in mind while pursuing the technology.

“These models must have control and monitoring that is not only acceptable to the developers and the companies, but is acceptable to the American people,” Clayton said on CNBC. “We’re going to hold the industry to that commitment.”

Read More: Trump Backs Independent AI Audits in Shift of Safety Posture

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Clayton is in regular touch with various internal and external stakeholders. The companies had no immediate comment on Clayton’s plans.

Prior to becoming Trump’s AI czar and before he became the US spy chief this summer, Clayton was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. The office he led oversaw several key technology prosecutions, including a high-profile semiconductor smuggling case that is still waiting a trial but already led to the arrest of a Super Micro Computer Inc. co-founder.

Clayton is well known on Wall Street, having served as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term. He later became the chair of asset manager Apollo Global Management and joined the board of payments company American Express, stepping down from those roles when he became US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

As part of his Silicon Valley travels, Clayton sat down on Wednesday with Nikesh Arora, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks Inc. The two men discussed AI safety during a joint interview on CNBC where Clayton defended the administration’s plans to rely on existing liability laws as a linchpin in holding the industry accountable.

“If you want to survive, you’ve got to behave,” Clayton said.