This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Financials), the software and cloud computing behemoth, is putting CEO Satya Nadella in the company of some of the tech industry’s most powerful executives at a White House dinner with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Nadella is expected to attend the state dinner on Sept. 24, Bloomberg reports. Also likely to attend are Apple Executive Chairman Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
The gathering comes at a critical time for the tech industry. Washington and Beijing are managing wider trade and technological challenges, with artificial intelligence and sophisticated semiconductors essential to the relationship.
That gives the meal relevance beyond the who’s who.
Microsoft has a lot of exposure to AI through its cloud business and relationship with OpenAI, while Nvidia and Qualcomm are directly tied to the semiconductor side of the tech race. The gathering of executives from all three businesses in one place brings together a number of significant pieces of the AI ecosystem.
Nadella’s presence doesn’t imply any particular deal with Microsoft, according to sources.
The more immediate question for investors is what will come out of the broader Trump-Xi talks on technology, trade and access to sophisticated computing.
Anything that happened may have repercussions for the firms represented at the event.
