The Zhitong Finance App learned that the core leaders of the global artificial intelligence technology industry chain, such as Musk, David Sachs, Sam Altman, and Huang Renxun, will collectively participate in an important Group of Twenty (G20) ministerial meeting, which means that the AI competition is rising to the level of global policy coordination with record AI capital expenditure dominated by tech giants.
At a time when the global AI computing infrastructure process is in full swing and continues to prosper, according to sources familiar with the matter, SpaceX and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk — who even made a high-profile initiative to cut US government spending in Washington last year, and David Sachs, the former White House head of artificial intelligence affairs, plans to speak at a technology-themed G20 ministerial meeting to be held in North Carolina next week; Nvidia's founder and CEO Hwang In-hoon and Sam Altman, who is at the helm of OpenAI, will also attend.
The event was organized by Michael Krazios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, as part of the pre-preparations for the G20 summit. Bringing together the world's largest economies, the summit will be hosted by US President Donald Trump at his golf club in Doral, Florida in December.
People familiar with the matter said that Musk and Sachs are scheduled to deliver speeches on September 1, the first day of this science and technology conference. Also attending with them was Dina Powell McCormick, president of Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms; McCormick served as US Deputy National Security Assistant during Trump's first term. As the agenda has not yet been announced, these people familiar with the matter requested anonymity. One of the people familiar with the matter added that the three will be speaking online. Altman and Hwang In-hoon will attend the second day of the conference led by the US Department of Commerce.
One of the people familiar with the matter added that the goal of Krazios's meeting is to push G20 members — which include China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the United Kingdom and France — to agree on a non-binding framework; the framework calls on governments to adopt a more relaxed approach to regulating emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. The framework will be submitted in the form of a joint statement for consideration at the G20 Leaders' Summit in December.
White House and US Department of Commerce spokespersons did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Altman's plans to attend the event, while a Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Musk and Sachs also did not immediately respond.
Is the AI big model and AI computing power arms race entering the Group of Twenty?
One person familiar with the matter said that this framework, known as the “Carolina Principles,” requires policymakers to avoid establishing new regulators, while encouraging industry-specific governance practices and strengthening cooperation between the government and the private sector to jointly test emerging technologies. White House officials have begun discussions on this proposal, hoping to persuade G20 countries to accept these principles before the ministerial meeting is over.
The person familiar with the matter said that Musk, Sachs, and McCormick plan to discuss their views on how the regulatory environment should be shaped to promote innovation. The global AI boom has raised increasing questions about what role governments should play in regulating this emerging technology. Washington officials have been trying to balance protecting innovation with dealing with emerging cybersecurity and national security risks brought about by artificial intelligence, and this dilemma has already sparked power disputes within the Trump administration.
The person familiar with the matter added that other speakers on the first day of the tech event included Bob Mumgard, CEO of the nuclear fusion startup Federal Fusion Systems, and Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Venture capitalist Sachs continues to advise Trump after leaving the White House position earlier this year.
Nvidia's latest quarterly revenue reached $96.2 billion, data center revenue rose to $89 billion, and a growth forecast of about 70% for the next fiscal year; at the same time, Anthropic and Nscale signed a six-year computing power purchase agreement totaling 45 billion US dollars, locking in about 460 megawatts of power capacity and planning to deploy the Nvidia Vera Rubin platform. These signals indicate that the global AI infrastructure competition is further extending from chip orders to data centers, power resources, and long-term computing power contracts, and capital investment intensity is still accelerating.
In this context, core leaders of the technology industry, such as Musk, David Sachs, Sam Altman, and Huang Renxun, collectively participated in the G-20 Ministerial Meeting, which means that competition for artificial intelligence is rising from corporate capital expenditure to the level of global policy coordination. The key topic of the conference was the Carolina principles of promoting “light regulation, sector governance, and government-enterprise collaboration”; if supported by major economies, it is expected to reduce institutional friction in AI deployment and extend the computing power investment cycle, but since the framework is not binding and countries' interests in technological security, sovereign artificial intelligence, and industrial policy are not consistent, its actual impact still depends on the political consensus of the G20 Leaders' Summit in December.